This is a known old mind-set flaw that I and others have been talking about since the very early 1990's. You know as well as I do that redunancy is vital. That is why it is so idiotic for AT&T to continue to put the redundant air traffic control cable in the same ditch as the original, or why it is idiocy to put your backup magnetic tapes (back in the day) on a shelf in the same room as your computers. Here is the original threat slide from that era, Graphic: Cyber-Threat 101<http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/04/2010/12/graphic-cyber-threat-101/> We are still our own worst enemy, and the US Govenrment, in our name, is about to waste $12 billion a year on cyber-war instead of cyber-reliability. In Australia a guy took a chain saw to the cable linking all of Northern Australia, entering through a clearly marked manhole cover. I used a slide for many years where Cable Crossing was replaced by a sign that said "Cut Here." Governments and corporations are simply not serious about sustainability. The Dutch, on the other hand, do get it, and Richard Cook's work in that arena is sensationally useful. Reference: Building National Knowledge InfrastructurebHow Dutch Pragmatism Nurtures a 21st Century Economy (The Cook Report on Internet Protocol)<http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/03/reference-building-national-knowledge-infrastructure-how-dutch-pragmatism-nurtures-a-21st-century-economy-the-cook-report-on-internet-protocol/>Reference: Cook Report on Internet Protocol<http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/03/reference-cook-report-on-internet-protocol/> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 10:52 AM, RichardCAdler <richardcadler@gmail.com>wrote:

I dismissed this when I first saw it. Had to be an Onion story. .

Then Sterling blogged it:

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/04/penniless-little-old-lady-des...

Perhaps we could at least build a nextnet distributed enough to prevent *this* sort of thing?

"TBILISI (AFP) b Georgian police arrested a 75-year-old woman who single-handedly cut off Internet connections in Georgia and neighbouring Armenia, the interior ministry in Tbilisi said on Wednesday. The pensioner was digging for scrap metal when she hacked into a fibre- optic cable which runs through Georgia to Armenia, forcing many thousands of Internet users in both countries offline for several hours on March 28...."

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