“I always enjoyed going into the holodeck” –
Jonathan Frakes
By now, it is assumed that most Americans know there is a security exercise to be performed on the power grid and will take place this week called GridEx II / GridSecCon. This exercise involves the cooperation of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. Simulations of physical and cyber attacks on the power grid could occur during this exercise.
These dates also coincide with another first time ever joint humanitarian/disaster relief exercise with the U.S. Army and the Communist Peoples Republic of China Army. This exercise will involve actual boots on the ground disaster relief exercises in Hawaii. U.S. Army Pacific said the two countries will practice providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to a fictional third country during the Nov. 12-14 exercise.
The official dates for the power grid exercise, according to the GridEx II NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) Update, are November 13-14th.
A Breakdown of what the GridEx II really
means…
According to their own
documents, “GridEx 2013 is a North
American Wide Distributed Play Exercise” The first exercise was performed in November
2011.According to an obtained Board of Trustees document titled, Grid Security Exercise (GridEx) II Executive Tabletop, published on August 15, 2013,
- “The goal of the November 14, 2013, GridEx II
Executive Tabletop discussion is to examine policy-level issues and decisions
required to manage the impact of a severe emergency event. The objectives of
the Executive Tabletop are to:
- Demonstrate industry response to a simulated coordinated physical and cyber attack that damages the Bulk-Power System and causes widespread outages followed by partial restoration and rotating blackouts lasting weeks or months. Participants will have the opportunity to review and exercise their security and crisis response plans.
Once the GridEx II exercises are performed, an Executive Table Top will examine the
policy-level decisions between the industry and government, which is required
to manage the impacts of a severe emergency to Bulk Power System reliability.
The main objectives of GridEx II are as follows:
Who are the participants in this drill?
102 Full Player Organizations are involved. According to the
documentation, each participant/organization will be assigned a Lead Planner
(LP) who will have a role in shaping the scenario and or event. Full players
have participated in the planning conferences, will respond to all exercise activities,
and copy or report their responses to NERC and BAH aka Booz Allen Hamilton (yes,
the same group that Edward Snowden worked for…).
Approximately, 49+ other organizations will monitor and
respond and only exercise the scenarios that are internal. They will gather the
personnel and act as an internal table top for the exercise.
There are a number of organizations participating nationwide in the GridEx II power grid
drill. The following map shows the toal registered organizations to
participate. It is unclear whether this list is the most up-to-date.
Communications:
The GridEx II Communications paths are shown below. As you
can see, it illustrates the major communications pathway that will take place
during the exercise involving the NERC crisis action teams.
Leads, Players, Working Groups, and Injects, and Interests
Lead Planners (LP) will determine and notify independent
employees aka players that will need
to participate in the GridEx II exercise. They will also assign the internal
controllers and evaluators to conduct the drills. Lead Planner will also be responsible for
periodically calling the SPP Conference Bridge to report the organization’s
responses to the exercise.
The likely players per Master Scenario
Events List (MSEL) will be:
Internal
Most of your Key Personnel
Those with defined roles within your Incident Response
and Business Continuity Plans.
Utility Market/Trading Personnel
Corporate IT Network and SCADA
IT Security
Physical Security
Corporate Communications/Media Relations
External
Member Utilities
Local L/E, FBI, and DHS
NERC ES-ISAC
DOE
The Round Table - Grid Security Exercise (GridEx) II
Executive Tabletop
There are approximately 10 CEO’s from the industry including:
electricity industry executives, e.g., chief executive officers, general
managers, or chief operating officers. All participants will be selected by the
Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC).
An additional 10 assistant secretary level players of
government agencies will also participate including DOE, DHS, DOD, FEMA, FBI, and others. These players are selected by
the Government Coordinating Council.
These 10 facilitators will provide the injects, moderate the discussions, and industry response for the
two days of training.
The GridEx II Executive Tabletop will simulate
a severe emergency caused by a high-impact, low frequency (HILF) event aka a successful coordinated physical and
cyber attack. This will prompt the
need for timely policy-level decisions, which includes:
- How will initial situation assessments be made and
how will they be shared with industry executives and senior government
officials?
- Will the site of a suspected terrorist attack be
treated as a crime scene and how might this affect the industry’s ability to
restore the electricity service?
- Will the industry inform government of its
restoration strategy and provide periodic updates?
- What input will the government have regarding the
electricity industry’s restoration priorities to customers, particularly other
critical infrastructures, and how might these change through a prolonged
outage?
- What assistance from government will the electricity
industry need under these extraordinary circumstances?
- What legal authorities will government invoke to
deal with the emergency?
- What new
authorities will be needed?
GridSecCon – ExCon
(Exercise Control) - Herndon, VA
The GridEx II Task
Force
There will be
regional plays. An example would be Southwest Power Pool (SPP) GridEx II Task
Force. During the exercise, SPP will have open conference calls during the
exercise to catch similarities in SPP members responses and to find ways to
integrate and coordinate regional responses for next time. (Predictive Programming
for the next exercise?)
Map via Wikipedia
CONCLUSION
Across
the internet, media of all types have been ramping up the concerns for the GridEx II 2013
Power Grid attack
exercise. There are also rumors floating around as to the real reasoning
behind
the drill. Researchers across the internet, forums, and blogs have
speculated
the exercise is to get ready for preperations for a major power grid
failure. This failure could be caused by a natural or man made
catastrophe, cyber
attack, Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMT), or false-flag event. These
speculations
range from EMT’s and Comet ISON coming, terrorist attacks on American
infrastructure,
and war. Other reasons have been speculated but those listed above are
by far
the most common.
But
is it really all that or just hype to keep feeding the beast…?
DHS,
the
CIA, FEMA, and others have endlessly instilled fear into the Americans
that the terrorist bad guys are coming and ‘could’ destroy the power
grid,
which would cripple the infrastructure. Fear sets in when one thinks
about this
possible scenario, which would leave many Americans without food, water,
and
power. The fear tactics left behind resemble the usual 101 business
class of the
problem-reaction-solution model scenarios… a never ending cycle of ‘Get
Ready’ the
bad guys are coming and the ‘OMG, we must be afraid and prepare for the
never
ending unknown Act of God’ program…
Even former Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano warned “a major cyber attack is looming,” as reported
by Reuters earlier this year. Napolitano also said,
“A
cyber
9/11" could happen "imminently" and that critical infrastructure
- including water, electricity and gas - was very vulnerable to such a strike. "We
shouldn't wait until there is a 9/11 in the cyber world. There are things we
can and should be doing right now that, if not prevent, would mitigate the
extent of damage," said Napolitano, speaking at the Wilson Center think
tank in Washington and referring to the September 11, 2001, attacks.”
Paul Joseph Watson, writer for Infowars, stated
in an article titled, North
American Governments to Run Massive Cyberattack ‘Drill’ in November,
“Last November, the National
Academy of Sciences also released
a report entitled “Terrorism and
the Electric Power Delivery System,” detailing how “Terrorists could destroy
key elements of the electricity generation and delivery system, causing
blackouts that are unprecedented in this country in duration and extent,” and
how “Under some circumstances (e.g. a heat wave) such blackouts could also lead
to significant loss of life.”
As
you can see, these agencies and others cannot survive without some sort of ‘threat’
coming in the near future. Every since 9/11, does it not appear that everything
in government literature has to do with some sort of threat..? Whether it’s the
worst flu season ever, worst storms ever, terrorist attacks, cyber attacks, the
lone gunman on the loose, the threat of the worst earthquake, the worst comet
or asteroid coming, the inevitable doomsday scenario plays out in these disaster
preparing and authoritarian agencies that seem to mysteriously coincide with
Hollywood doomsday movies and disaster preparedness articles, publications,
polices and procedures, laws, codes, rules, and regulations...
This
GridEx II is obviously a two-fold drill. It serves the purpose of preparedness
in case of a cyber attack on the infrastructure, but it also has a downfall and
that is the dollar amount spent in these types of exercises that are for one
thing and one thing only… to keep these governmental agencies in business! That
is what it has become – a business…
What
if I told you that in order for these participants to continue doing business,
the government has made it mandatory that regulations include ‘disaster
preparedness’ manuals and policies and procedures in order to keep their
license to do business. What if I told you that these agencies have to continue
their regurgitation of fear and predictive catastrophe programming in order to
make their fiscal paychecks?
What
if I told you these national preparedness drills, whether they are the active-shooters,
the cyber attack terrorists, the new strain of deadly flu scenario, the next
shake-down earthquake, the next economic collapse, the next artificial police
chase, the next typhoon, or next power grid failure are all set-up for your
entertainment to keep the public/private employees in these fields up-to-date
on their national preparedness scorecards so they can renew their industry practitioner’s
license…
go ahead and think about it…
Is
this really just about Money, Control, and Power? It appears the federal
government is now in a position that dictates to the states, corporations, and individuals who needs to
participate in these ‘doomsday’ scenario disaster preparednes drills in order to be worthy of renewing
their industry license…
Interestingly
enough…
we must present the concept of the ‘super-soldier’ when debating this
reasoning for predictive catastrophe planning and disaster preparedness
training.
It is just that… training. These agencies have to have some sort of new
‘threat’
in order to carry out their war games or problem-reaction-solution
scenarios.
Military and militarized humanitarian organizations have cashed in on
these
disaster planning and doomsday war game scenarios so that the new and
improved ‘super-solders’
can continually feed the need to be praised by authoritarians and feel
as
though they are compassionate and life saving heroes… Is this an example
of Obama's new Citizen Army of nationally prepared worker bees?
I know... as Alex would say... there is a war on for your mind...
It
never ends, and now, it is a specialized degree. Without disaster preparedness
and super-solder hero training… how will these people majoring in these field
across campuses ever survive? As long as there is a ‘predictive threat’ there
will be the need to employ those that can diffuse it.
Are
you seeing the bigger picture yet?
Someone
needs
to ask the hard questions. Are you ready to fall away from the fake
paradigm
that we must live every day of our lives with the predictive programming
of a
new ‘threat’ coming? Does it not seem to you that these 'perceived'
threats are never ending? Always moved back to the next month...etc?
Where
is
this money coming from to keep these disaster preparedness training
camps
in business? From the American Taxpayer Slave? Maybe it is time the
nation
reevaluates the Constitutional way to of making an honest living?
Speaking of the American Taxpayer Slave agenda... Why is the IRS advising of a Power Outage Ahead of Grid Ex Electricity Drill: “This service will
be unavailable” ??
Take
for example the US Army/China disaster
preparedness humanitarian drill that is taking place in Hawaii at the same
time as the GridEx II exercise this
week. According to numerous reports, the biggest ever typhoon has just struck
the Philippines . Over 10,000 people are predicted to be dead as of
today? If
this is really the case then why is China still parked in Hawaii? If
they are
really here on American soil, with boots on the ground for a
humanitarian exercise, then should they not reschedule the 'drill' and
go do the ‘real-deal’
in the Philippines…? Omg, just asking…
As you ponder those questions… Other drills within a month
time frame resemble the same characteristics…
Are we going to lose power? I guess that depends on the problem, reaction, solution... Yes?
Plus... China here before? Dropping off Troops?
--------------------------------------
*this article was updated and corrections were made since the original posting.
Sources
http://www.thegovernmentrag.com/GridExII%202013.html#.UoLXT43wDRz
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