After Donald Trump desperately – and ridiculously - tried to blame Minnesota for cyberattacks on its own water systems, I can’t wait to hear his excuse for similar attacks on water systems in Michigan and at least five more states.
Despite Trump's repeated claims about his prowess in Iran, it keeps getting clearer that no such thing is the case. According to The New York Times, the cyberattacks “may be far wider” than the seven states as “authorities raced to safeguard the nation’s water supply against an assault that increasingly appeared to be the work of Iran.”
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “has for months been warning the public that Iran may seek to compromise water utilities and other critical infrastructure,” The Times noted.
Trump seems to have done nothing to make them more secure.
Maybe Trump shouldn’t have put so much of our cybersecurity on the chopping block before starting his unnecessary Iran war, eh?
Trump and DOGE pal Elon Musk so decimated CISA with cuts and reassignments that it was left in dire shape, TechCrunch reported on February 25. That was two days before President Peace Prize attacked Iran.
It’s not only CISA. Trump’s totally unqualified goon and acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, boasted last week that during his short tenure, he has already cut about 30% of the intelligence workforce.
What a brilliant move in the middle of a war with Iran, guys! Especially since, as NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell noted in the above report, Trump has “repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including its water desalination plants.”
According to what’s left of CISA, hackers have been “targeting water entities of all sizes,” The Times said. Heather pointed out in her post about the Minnesota hacking that most utilities are run either by local municipalities or private companies. So there may well be countless numbers of water systems around the country that could be vulnerable.
It may not be so easy to fix all of them. Nate George, the mayor of a small city north of Minneapolis, told The Times that “the troubling thing on the horizon” is that “IT infrastructure upgrades are very costly.”
