The World is Watching

Shortly after George W. Bush became President at a contentious time, the communist Chinese government forced an American reconnaissance plane to land in China. It became a test of how Bush would handle these sorts of crises and an aggressive Chinese government.

The world was watching.

Now, an American company that controls the flow of 45% of petroleum for the Eastern seaboard has been hacked by a gang with ties to the Russian government. It is a private company, but it is causing a national security and economic issue for the Eastern seaboard of the United States.

The world is watching.

The Biden Administration’s default instinct that this is a private sector business that will have to deal with the problem itself is a good one. We should not want the government intervening in private sector decisions, including IT decisions for private companies that failed to do necessary things to protect themselves.

But in this case, the company controls 45% of the gas flow for the Eastern United States. This is a problem bigger than one company. It is affecting airlines, police, private companies, and individuals. It will have major ripple effects in an economy that is already seeing major price hikes.

The price of corn is up 50% from last year. Lumber prices are 4 times higher than last year. Companies are short-staffed and forced to raise wages and still cannot compete against the government subsidizing unemployment. Now fuel is scarce and prices are rising.

The world is watching and the Biden Administration seems not unable, but unwilling to respond.

This is going to incentivize bad actors to engage further and do more of this. Already, we have seen attempts to hack water supplies. Now the fuel supply is being held hostage. How long before the power company is hacked? How long before hospitals are hacked?

Private sector companies need to beef up their security. They need to figure out how to make themselves less reliant on the internet. The government should act with restraint when this happens in the private sector.

But sometimes the private sector directly impacts the nation and this is one of those times. The Biden Administration is hostile to the use of fossil fuels and hostile to expansions of pipelines. The hackers and bad actors are taking advantage of the Biden Administration’s unwillingness to expand fossil fuel access and supply to the detriment of our economy.