Snipers, Cyberattacks & Fire: America’s Power Grid Is in Danger I IRONCLAD

I mean this stuff is very much exposed right I mean a substation might have a fence around it but it's not that hard to find and it's not that hard to Target with a long gun you know and um this it's usually a substation not I don't actually I can't say this for certain but a substation attack there's been that that's usually what sort of makes the news if you're talking about a um targeted attack on electric electric infrastructure um and the has been trying to do more to safeguard these facilities but like you know to put a you know a concrete Dome over all these things you can't do that how can I help how can I be useful in ending needless suffering do not be afraid of work that has no end we have to organize a social movement we have an opportunity to lead by example versus just talking hot air I think the more people in this fight the more we grow eventually you could change the people are the ones that can make the change ladies and gentlemen welcome back to change agents in Ironclad original proudly presented by Montana Knife Company today's episode is about the reporting of Katherine blunt on the vulnerability of the power grid specifically her extensive writing on the power G gas and electric companies better known as pg& in California and their connection to the deadliest wildfire in California history and attacks on the power grid Katherine is a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of California burning the fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and what it means for America's power grid which is a national bestseller and winner of the 2022 golden poppy award for non-fiction her coverage of pg& in the wildfire in California made her a finalist for the 2020 Pitzer prize she's also the winner of the Gerald lobe award which is the highest honor in business journalism for those of you that may not know the 2018 campfire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history and the year's most expensive natural disaster in the world in terms of insured losses the campfire killed 85 people injured 12 civilians and five firefighters causing an estimated 16.5 billion in Damages it destroyed the towns of par Parise and canow in California maybe a good way to unpack it would be to describe how our power grid in the US actually grew to the point where it is today and then we could focus maybe more narrowly on the west coast of pg& sure sure so um well the the Grid in in general was built I mean gosh this I mean this kind of goes back back to like Thomas Edison and Tesla and Westinghouse and like um developing first um power plants and and distribution lines to serve cities I me you saw that with um Thomas Edison's Pearl Street plants in the I don't know I can't remember the exact year but we're talking like very early 1900s and then um efforts to build transmiss sorry those first power plants or power stations we're talking a matter of miles I mean this wasn't something that was spanning States right when Edison exactly you could see the factory down the block and your light bulb was on but that was like the distance that it could push power that's right and I think I if I recall correctly um Edison's first power plant I think um served 86 customers in in like the financial district of New York and so I mean it's it's very small and so in order to um have a power plant built outside of a crowded population Center and be able to transmit that power over a longer distance you need high voltage transmission which was a you know that was um it took a little while to develop that in the scheme of things but um so if we're talking so now we have a network that you know starts with a power plant that's usually built again outside of a major city outside of a major population area you have a high voltage transmission wire that's kind of akin to a highway right moving a lot of electrons over a long distance and then you have substations which step down that voltage so that it can be distributed to homes and businesses through um smaller power lines kind of akin to a network of of local streets um and transmission in particular especially on the west coast um there are aspects of that system that are very very old um there were large transmission networks built in the sort of the 1910s 1920s in California and other parts of the West to support hydroelectric development one of our earliest sort of clean cheap forms of power and uh that has major consequences for PG and other um uh Utilities in the west um certainly uh there was continued growth um when you think I mean throughout certainly the I mean the first part of the the century but especially after World War II because of the population boom so then you have other elements of the grid built out at that time and but now we're well we're a ways out from that right and a lot of these um power lines or power plants or substations or whatever 40 50 assets so um there's there's a lot of stuff that needs to be upgraded or replaced in full so when you say that some of this equipment whether it's the line or the production itself meets the end of its service life is that I mean is it still capable of being used the risk just astronomically goes through the roof yeah I mean just trying to determine what risk it poses uh there's a number of variables that influence that how well has it been maintained over time have there been aspects of it that have been replaced to the point where its life has been extended um but you know if we're talking about a power line has it been exposed to the elements for decades on end without careful inspection if we're talking about a power plant has it just run too many cycles right is it just been used too much and it's becoming more more vulnerable to breakdown um you know careful maintenance can certainly make it so that an asset can be relied upon for longer but if that's lacked been lacking at any point um you do face certain risks of failure whether that be you know not having electricity Supply or not being able to get the power where it needs to go or in the case of PT you know you see a line failure that results in catastrophic Wildfire because of um the risk of infrastructure failure in the west and and also elsewhere has gotten a lot higher because uh we're seeing generally more periods of extreme drought and heat that make it so that forests simply aren't as healthy as they weren't as uh they once were making it so that you know a spark has the poal to create a fire with more potential to spread all right guys check this out this new Ironclad original series dangerous questions I'm Dom Roso and I am so fired up about this series because I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time this series is really about you and about the challenging and uncomfortable questions that you've been afraid to ask we're going to dive into topics like home defense self-defense travel combatives we are going to cover so many different topics topics and again the best part is I get to do it with you guys and we get to learn together we're going to be able to do live video callings you guys can write your answers in you can leave comments we are going to look at them all one of my favorite Parts about the series is that we get to break down real life scenarios and videos to analyze them to learn from them and take away value to apply to your own life this series is dropping on April 26th and I cannot wait make sure you send in your questions and I'll see you guys soon all right pg& so let's dial this into California um can you explain to me and for the listeners too who is PG what are what is PG where did they come from and then we can jump right into the campfire in 2018 what happened and what was the actual human cost of that yeah so PG Pacific Gas Electric is the um utility company serving almost all of Northern and central California has service territory covering 70,000 square miles of course you know well-known power provider San Francisco and San Jose but also um lesser known areas of the rural Sierra Foothills right in Central Valley and uh the company um you know has a it's more than a hundred years old um kind of uh came a came to be um with the sort of uh race to develop hydroelectric power in the early 1900s um Pacific Gas and Electric Company formed in 1905 um after kind of the there was a company that uh it was it was still a time in in which utility not utilities but power companies were competitive right so there was a bunch of little power companies competing to serve different areas and a couple of um pretty smart entrepreneurial guys created a company that bought up all of these competitors not all of them um had one one competitor for a period of time called Great Western power uh the only real competitor PG ever had um built um quite a bit of transmission infrastructure high up in the Sierra Nevada and um and then the two companies merged in 1930 creating the the Great Northern California Monopoly that we know today um around that time it became sort of conventional wisdom that um utilities should be uh monopolies given the right to operate exclusively in any given service territory um in exchange for uh submitting to regulatory oversight so that's sort of history there um and it worked well for period of time but then um you know a good lens through which to view how things can go wrong is the 2018 campfire which ignited when a hook on a Century old transmission tower in the Sierra Foothills failed it broke it was a hook about the width of a fist it broke nearly in half and dropped a live wire that swung against the metal Tower spark settled in the dry brush below and within hours a massive Wildfire was Blazing completely out of control it destroyed the town of paradise and several nearby towns and killed 84 people um and that hook that broke uh was original infrastructure from uh something like 191 15ish um purchased for 50 cents and it had been built by grey Western that one competitor that P had back in the day and you know with that acquisition obviously you know records and stuff got lost and purged and it's like when it came time to investigate the disaster P had very little records on this on the origin of the infrastructure for one and also had very poor records as to what the what they had done to inspect and maintain the line over time um and it was just determined that over time the company had um done too much to reduce the the frequency and thoroughness of its inspections up there I mean this is very remote infrastructure that's hard to access but it was really becoming prone to failure and they should have been doing more I was going to say Do they have any other close calls prior to the campfire I mean something made in 1910 I can't think of a single item in my daily life that I use that even approximates something that old for a reason yeah so if we're talking just about transmission which is um you know sort of the specifically the issue the campfire right the age of this um high voltage Network developed to you know carry Hydro power uh way way back in the day when when PG did a thorough inspection of that system in that region after the campfire it was determined that there was many many other hazards that could pose similar risk so it so happened that it was this disaster that revealed other problems on the transmission system but there's another major risk category that P grapples with and that's the the the um Prospect of trees hitting lower voltage distribution wires so wires that are closer to you know towns and cities and you know serve that directly serve your house and in 2017 the um there was a massive Windstorm this these sorts of winds happen every fall in California both this the South and the north um in the north they're called the Diablo winds so the Diablo winds start to blow in October of 2017 and roughly 17 or 18 wildfires ignite as a result of branches touching pene power lines and that underscored the fact that the company needed to do much more to keep vegetation away from the wires it hadn't been doing so effectively until that point and so it's an unfortunate fact that like in this industry and and others it often takes a disaster to to make company aware of of how short its efforts have fallen as it relates to risk management um but this is something that P is still grappling with as far as I'm aware they've done uh more to make the transit transmission system safer but this issue of um distribution wires and and trees is still very active that's actually an issue I live in Northwestern Montana um the timber here in areas is very dense and actually um if I go outside from the building I'm in you can see these very high power transmission lines they cut the uh the break and the forest as it travels through the hills and it goes in different directions but we get wind storms here from time to time and you know come August September October there's been times where you I can't even see a block down the street because of the smoke and I would imagine it's very similar to and for people not familiar the campfire was up north of Sacramento I would say in the Foothills actually up the Foothills there's a lot of Timber very very similar to where I am um it's a it's an interesting issue in the newer construction here they've started burying power lines which at least seems to insulate from the trees falling over but the vast majority of the infrastructure in place is not new where I live so I don't know how they tackling that yeah and you make a great point with this um this idea of putting wires underground um because so it's interesting in Europe actually after World War II there had to be a pretty massive rebuild of parts of the the the grid right and um companies were smart to say let's put this underground um I think at the time of course it was like well maybe it can't be taken out as easy easily next time right it wasn't necessarily so much a fire issue but um we never really had the opportunity in the US for that kind of like large scale rebuild and so for that reason in most parts of the US distribution lines still run overhead um in some places companies have selectively put it underground but to kind of retrofit the system in that way is really expensive um and PG so I'll just say in 2021 PG got a new CEO after these massive fires the company ultimately went through a bankruptcy restructuring process and she comes in with the intent of making things safe right this is sort of like going to be her Legacy uh career move um and six months into her tenure a little tree falls on a distribution line not too far from where the campfire ignited and ultimately the second largest wildfire in California history uh spread throughout the Foothills covered more than a million acres and and um in that moment she sort of made an executive decision and she went up to announce that the company was going to bury 10,000 miles of wire in the highest risk areas of fire and wow it's like that would be unprecedented within the US utility industry um could do a lot to reduce risk in those particular areas because if the the wire is underground it has almost zero chance of igniting any sort of fire but really expensive right now it costs about $3 million a mile of wire $3 million a mile so we're talking this is a you know at least a 20 billion undertaking at a time when other I mean California has had high electricity rates for a long time and we're talking about having to do other upgrades to the system to support some of the state's goals that as relates to electric vehicle rollout and broader electrification and there's other climate risks that the state is contending with and so there was a real debate last year as P was proposing its first tranch of work as to like how much is appropriate when you've had this other stuff that could put pressure on rates and P's argument is you know over the life of these power lines it's it's cheaper to put it underground because we have to be spending billions of dollars keeping the trees away and doing other things like that and I think that is true but like this question is like how much can you and me paying for electricity today be asked to Bear to kind of ultimately benefit people like decades later and so um PG got approval to bury about 1200 miles of of wire over the next few years um and I think that they really want the opportunity to show that they can develop the economies of scale needed to do this more cheaply but it's there's like a lot of questions that are in play as to how that's going to develop yeah the bearing of the P power lines specifically in that area would certainly help from a fire mitigation but you bring up an interesting point I left California in 2017 and we liveed down in San Diego and you know rolling blackouts were not a term that I grew up with uh in Santa Cruz and then down in San Diego I started hearing terms about rolling blackouts which I never dug incredibly deeply into it but I assume and please correct me if I'm wrong that's a basically a an issue of supply and demand you know demand at times was exceeding Supply capacity so they would and I don't know how they would but they would selectively choose areas that were going to receive power and those that were not rates were going up um you know you mentioned the electric vehicle uh desire for the State of California which don't even know if the power grid if if it's if we're still dealing with rolling blackouts in the supply and demand issue I don't know how the implementation of electric vehicles into that power grid is going to play out given its current state it is a it is a very complicated issue I hope you are enjoying season 2 of change agents which is an ironclad original and if you are a fan of the podcast you know that we are presented by Montana Knife Company which from where I am sitting right now is a short 2-hour drive maybe 120 mil due south towards Missoula I was first exposed to this brand through its founder Josh Smith um and actually when I first met him I wasn't even aware of what Montana Knife Company was he sat across the table for me we had a conversation and I have been a fan ever since this was a few years ago and the velocity and trajectory of that company is unbelievable I directly associate that growth with who Josh is what he stands for and what he puts into his product so a little bit more about Josh he's been making KN for 30 years they're made in the USA they have a multi-generational warranty and free sharpening they're designed tested and they're built by hunters and mkc's a hunting knife company first and foremost they sell out their knives sometimes in under 60 seconds uh and if you want to see what they have available or what's coming up surf over to montanan knif company.com they have a new knife drop every Thursday at 7 p.m. here's what I'm going to say on that practice checking out as ridiculous as that sounds you need 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presenting sponsor of change agents they are right fantastic organization ladies and gentlemen today's episode is also brought to you by Mountain tff it's a unique functional fitness program that is of course supported by hunters and seals and Rangers and those from the Special Operations Community but that is not my favorite part of the mountain Tuff system or program although it was developed with insights from the backcountry Hunter and Veteran Special Operations Community there is an emphasis on more than just physical strength which I believe to be essential it is also about building an unbreakable mind it is easy to build muscles from the neck down it is far more difficult to build muscles from the neck up and the resilience between your ears the mountaint app provides the best functional fitness program directly to your phone tablet TV or a web browser so you really don't have an excuse to say oh I didn't know what I could be doing or should be doing whether it's a program or 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assess to be behind these attacks sure well there was a there was a series of attacks in North Carolina or at least one very prominent attack on um a a Duke Energy substation that resulted in significant blackouts and you know attacks on um energy infrastructure are not new this has been a risk that the utility industry has been grappling with for a long time so when you think about it I mean this stuff is very much exposed right I mean substation might have a fence around it but it's not that hard to find and it's not that hard to Target with a long gun you know and um this it's usually a substation not I don't actually I can't say this for certain but a substation attack there's been that that's usually what sort of makes the news if you're talking about a um targeted attack on electric electric infrastructure um and the industry has been trying to do more to safeguard these facilities but like you know to put a you know a concrete Dome over all these things you can't do that right so it's uh they the there are several sort of regulatory bodies or quasi regulatory bodies that are trying to do more to to um uh create standards by which utilities can work to to make these things more um hardened against these sorts of attacks but I think the consensus is we live in a pretty politically polarized Society there's sort of interest among certain groups and who knows what you know knocking out the power for all kinds of different weird political reasons and um uh that risk doesn't seem to be um going away anytime soon so we haven't fortunately we haven't heard much since then but um there's uh there are also of course um sort of folks in the in the National Security Realm who are trying to track chatter among those who might be planning these kinds of attacks and it seems like that's become more of a full-time job lately I think if we just put it put it that way yeah looking at the stat here and it said in 2013 snipers took out 17 Transformers critical to supply power to Silicon Valley which I was living in California at the time I never heard anything about this do you know anything about that that was that was the metf substation attack right I thought I don't it was 2017 a little earlier 2013 says it says 17 Transformers in 20 in 2013 oh 2013 yeah so I think I if I'm recalling correctly that's that was a big PG Transformer I mean that was like one of the most prominent attacks we've seen over the last 20 years um and I don't exactly know what the motive was I don't quite know if it's possible that other people do and I don't but um it it certainly underscored uh the fact that this can be very consequential and um and the fact that like utilities definitely need to do more to to safeguard these substations um so it's uh it's it's sort of yet another risk layered on top of everything else we've been talking about well and it's a you know I think what we're talking about so far as individuals with some mechanism it sounds like it's probably a long rifle at a substation I was just thinking as you were talking about that how would you protect these if you're not looking for them I bet you most people drive by them every day and don't realize they're there and again where I live in 100% where I live in rural Montana as you were talking about that I was thinking about my daily drive like oh I think I passed two of those and they are completely in the open that chain link fence is really just doing its national security job definitely a deterrent for nothing whatsoever so yeah and I don't know how you would protect that but there's another layer of that so you have environmental conditions you have the Aging uh infrastructure you have the ability for people to interact with it from something with a long rifle but then there's cyber attacks what have you noticed when it comes to and that one this is actually the one that I think concerns me the most because this could be and I know maybe this is movie based but this could be somebody sitting in their basement in a completely different country who has nothing but time on their hand and hatred for filling in the blank for whatever reason having the ability to metaphorically throw the switch on a massive amount of the US population yeah so candidly this is not a subject that I've done a ton of reporting on but there's no no question that this is like there's there's massive cyber secur risk I mean as the it it only grows with time like as our technological capacity increases right it's just like it it could be it could be anyone I mean I not anyone but it it could be um it's becoming easier for someone without a great deal of um you know knowledge about like specific aspects of the Grid or whatever to inflict real harm I I mean there's there's there's no question and I can't really do much to like quantify how that's changed over time but I do have a colleague who I worked really closely with on some of the PG stuff and it's really unfortunate that she um uh retired fairly recently and then uh passed away but she was doing a ton of work on some cyber security grid related stuff and she didn't quite finish the project that she wanted to work on but kind of the The Parting thoughts were like this is a very big deal do you have any understanding that it's not your direct uh perview but do you have any understanding of how linked the power grids are not only in California but let's just say in the US how intrinsically tied are they to technology I mean is there a human I'm assuming it requires uh something other than a human being watching a me or you know like a vacuum meter going back and forth for supply and demand but is it hard stopped by a human or are we do you think we're accelerating towards a place where it is completely technologically managed oh well I mean certainly I mean the the systems used to track all all different aspects of the of the power grid are tied into like computers yeah right so I mean there's um when you go into like a a control room whether it be at a utility company or at the grid operator level I mean there's there's all kinds of programs and software used to track a lot of things and um you know control output on power plants and you know I mean even just that in and of itself if you're controlling the output of a power plant like this plays in just the sort of supply and demand issue that we were talking about earlier I mean to either like to have it just you know go totally offline unexpectedly or like multiple all at once then all of a sudden again you you're creating that like cascading failure issue that we were talking about so I mean there's there's lots of ways in which this could be disrupted like how easy that is based on like the the way that the computers are used I I don't quite know but it's it's not that hard to imagine that is uh it's terrifying to me I um I feel like we live with a thinner veneer of stability and security than most people would want to wrap their heads around and I don't uh I don't remember exactly where the quote comes from but I do I do like the quote I believe it to be true but it essentially says that we're nine meals away from Anarchy at any given time meaning three days of what the power goes out and you know the first day you're going to be all right second day things are coming off the edges a little bit and then the third day not that it would happen this fast um you know neighbors are eating each other I think that would probably take a little bit longer but I don't know how much longer and and that's probably the biggest concern that I have especially in areas I love California born and raised in California but the subdivision that I lived in quite frankly has more people in it than the city that I live in now in Northwestern Montana they're spread out more they're a little bit more self-reliant I don't know what it would look like if the power went off legitimately for beyond that three-day time period or pushed it into nine or pushed it into a month I worry as to whether or not uh our society would hold up very well I it across the I mean there's been instances in which the power has been out for three or four days for large numbers of people and where it's like it's been disastrous in many ways we didn't like end up resorting to cannibalism right but it's like that's on the fourth day you know maybe the fifth day it's hard to say um well let me let me put it this way I so there's been a couple there's been a number of instances for different reasons that we've seen in recent years when there's been several days without power um one of the most um acute issues happened in 2020 gosh 2021 yeah in in um Texas and so we're talking about we were talking about rolling blackouts earlier Supply demand issues um it was across theboard failure for a number of different types of power plants talking everything coal gas nuclear PL plant PL froze wind and solar went up and down sometimes overperforming sometimes underperforming and the grid operator had to call for Rolling blackouts but because de like there was so little Supply relative to demand the blackouts couldn't roll right so like a utility company is not going to shut off a critical circuit serving a hospital so they have the the choices of sort of the discretionary circuits they had to like choose all of them all at once and so the power was out in in um Texas in sub freezing Texas tempatures for as long as 4 days in some places and like we didn't see like fullscale collapse of society but you did see people burning Furniture in their homes right and like just doing other rash radical things to try to survive and more than 200 people died whether just because they froze or because there was some sort of issue with like running the car in the garage or whatever it might have been you know and like um and uh it was terrifying right it's just like it just underscores the fact like how Reliant we are in this infrastructure and the fact that it needs to function in order for us to live as iron clut Originals launched a couple years ago Don was always on our short list of kicking things off this has been the project that we've been looking to do for a while this is Dave Ramsey meets John Rambo where you get to call in and uh get answers to the most dangerous questions that you [Music] have all right one more electricity question for you then I got an off-the-wall one um your Queen for a Day Catherine is put into the seat and you get to choose anything you want to uh as far as you know maybe enhancing or improving or stabilizing the California power grid What would your first move be uh um I've never been asked this question uh uh does cost matter sure actually no no because this is a totally hypothetical situation let's just make the whole thing hypothetical cost relevant doesn't matter everything's free um if if cost Was No Object I'd put the power lines underground yeah that makes sense what if cost was an object I think I'd speed up battery deployment a bunch more batteries and it would be uh much better for um actually that and sort of making more localized power grids in some of these high-risk areas would that be using batteries or or whatever so that hopefully um more of these communities could stay online when the risk conditions are high that's not a huge cost intensive thing and it could be used to help all right that makes sense all right we're going to do a complete 90 180 because they put this at the bottom of my briefing notes and there's no way I'm not asking you about this so you report of uh you were part of a report reporting team that found that Instagram's algorithms connect pedophiles and promote underage sex content so for those of you who have been listening about electricity stand by we're taking a right-hand turn here for a second the reporting actually led to Mark Zuckerberg being brought before Congress can you explain what your team found and how meta which for people who don't know it owns Instagram which this is a California company too so I guess we're still staying in the boundaries of California yeah so we talking about a reporting team uh big shout out to a reporter Jeff Horwitz he is our meta reporter he is really really talented I got brought in to assist with this investigation it's obviously not my usual area of focus but um we are still talking about complex institutional problems here and uh so Jeff is uh has done so much um to uh expose a lot of problems within meta some listeners May potentially remember this big package of work the Wall Street Journal had called the Facebook files predicated on a whistleblower who was in touch with Jeff um Francis hgan and you know um he wanted to sort of expand on this sort of idea of of of what does meta's algorithms facilitate and what does meta know about that and of course you know issues with child sexual abuse material child porn I mean that's very dark very consequential and what we discovered was that um you know this is this is not a story about there's bad stuff on the internet right like everyone knows that like there's always going to be bad stuff on the internet you can never fully eradicate it that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about the fact that um Instagram's algorithms basically make it so that if you are a user who demonstrates interest in child porn like it is going to help you find lot a lot of it it's going to help you find other people who like it it's going to help you find people who sell it and the reason for that in large part is because the algorithm is very very well trained to help people with Niche interests find those interests and so if we're talking about building ships in bottles right I create an I create an Instagram account because I want to learn how to build ships in bottles and I want to connect with other people who build chips and bottles and I want to find people who will sell me the parts to build chips and Bottles it will do that for me it'll do that because I click on one little thing that says I like building ships and bottles and with that I'm giving the algorithm a really strong signal right so like I'm in my 30s I live in San Francisco I like hiking and I like cooking and I like you know um I like animal videos you know I like um knowing what's happening in San Francisco like I am my profile on Instagram is like any other 30-some woman living in San Francisco I'm not giving it any sort of strong signal whatsoever it's just like it's pretty generalized content whereas I again if I set up that new account in the interest of you know pick a pick another one building model rockets right like all of a sudden that whole account is going to be flooded with model rocket Enthusiast stuff and unfortunately the same logic applies to people who demonstrate sexual interest in children and that can that can look like finding truly illicit material that can look like connecting those users to like child model accounts there's a whole proliferation of the influencer economy that kind of stuff um it can result in uh sort of the reals video function feeding these users like really weird reels that are kind of like it's not illegal but it's really unsavory kind of just you know it's it's it's a really dark world and it's really the forces of the algorithm to make it almost unprecedentedly easy for users with this sort of interest to find that content what was Zuckerberg's explanation of that it it's a byproduct of an algorithm that is not designed to be used by that but could be based off of your input basically and I think that generally speaking and not just in relation to this particular issue but others as well there's been a real tension within the company because to to sort of make it so that this isn't so affects collateral damage right if I'm using it for the right reasons then all of a sudden my experience is diminished certainly that has an effect on ad Revenue targeted ads like that kind of stuff and so the company's response to date has been like let's build the technology to better weed out the Bad actors as opposed to make meaningful changes to the functionality of the algorithm in a way that's going to have Ripple effects throughout the entire platform the complicated problem I wonder sometimes how well they even understand their own algorithm I mean it works I I and I know this because sometimes I swear I just have thoughts and then I see an ad for the thing that I absolutely don't need but I was thinking about or you say you know you say a brand and all of a sudden brand has populated your your account yeah yeah to Instagram and then onto Facebook and then the next thing you know it's showing up in a a YouTube ad it's it is I can only imagine so complex I wonder how many people truly at a deep level understand the mechanism of how it works well I can tell you there's been instances in which Jeff has shown that he understands it better there's other instances in which staffers whether safety staffers or others have done deep Dives kind of recognized something is wrong and studied the way that it works and then escalated it to higher levels and that's where things kind of start to break down yeah well fortunately if the power goes out in California because the grid fails eventually so will the smartphones and I guess it could solve both problems you could definitely make that argument not saying I want that to happen but I'm just trying to put somehow a Rosy bow on this topic because I mean if it doesn't scare the [ __ ] out of you I think you're not paying attention both on the social media front but also the power grid front I truly do believe that the veneer that we live security and safety is a lot thinner than most people think yeah definitely I'll give you the final words what would you like to close it out with now that we've terrified everyone um I'll leave it up we can scare them more or you can leave them with a message of hope it's up to you well um I'm going to leave with a practical note right so I think for a long time we took for granted that the lights would go on um reliably and safely right that was just sort of um it to to have something else happen was sort of the exception not the rule right whereas now we're moving into a time in which there's major safety issues there's major reliability issues of the grid I think everyone's thinking about the Grid in a way that they haven't had to before doesn't necessarily mean it you could they everyone necessarily understands it better but I will say like there are there are ways to learn for one um I my it's like one thing that really enthuses me as a journalist is trying to help people understand these problems right because they're pretty complex but they're they really affect you um I wrote a book about P but it's more it's more than about P gen it's really about utility companies all across the country and you know as as like tedious as this may sound the regulatory process is participatory you know it's like if you understand what's going on like you have you can weigh in on like what should these companies do to make it safer um you can submit public comment you know you can go to hearings I realize in that everyone has the time and the resources to do that but there are people that do and you can like kind of coordinate with those people in your community like this is something that it doesn't necessarily have to happen in these dark halls with no public input as it has for a very long time it's something that like more people are getting active and I think that like you know if you understand what's going on you have the potential to have a voice as well I love it that's a perfect ending Katherine thank you so much for your time I really appreciate it thank you I enjoy this really hope you enjoyed today's episode if you want to learn more about Katherine's reporting on pg& you can read California burning and you can also visit her website at www.in blunt. that'll be down in the show notes thank you again for listening to change agents and iron clad origin proudly presented by Montana Knife Company we'll see you next week with an all new episode so we've known Dom for over a decade now as he was transitioning out we were just getting fired up with Ironclad we've done a ton of projects together we just have always had a great working relationship so as Ironclad Originals launched a couple years ago joh was always on our short list of kicking things off we did a couple special episodes of danger close together we've done some other other things in the originals atmosphere but this has been the project that we've been looking to do for a while this is Dave Ramsey meets John Rambo where you get to call in and uh get answers to the most dangerous questions that you [Music] have so anytime you launch a show you always know what you think you want and your way that you think it's going to look but until you start recording you don't really get some of those nuances so day one of filming was really getting our reps in getting some uh some runs in and really getting a lay of the land this will be on the screen that you're looking at and there'll be a camera looking back at you so as you're walking you can talk through it and then we can Loop it and you can kind of say what they do right and wrong so when when you're looking at that say that's the TV screen the camera's mounted where the C is you're watching and then and then you're going to turn to the big to the other one say all right guys this is what I see here BL and you can just do your thing day two we tweaked the set a little bit tweaked the lighting a little bit and it flowed flawlessly there was no cuts it was smooth straight tape all right these have been awesome let's see what the next question is um I think you guys are going to notice that a lot when you start watching this thing that it's going to keep getting better and better that's the beauty of the show that it'll evolve as the questions evolve as the people evolve as the opportunities evolve you're going to be seeing more and more people call in and you're going to also see Dom articulate things way more also you'll see the studio continue to evolve the background the props and the way that Dom interacts with those things so this is only the beginning and we're really excited where where it's going to go about each episode he can talk about something like moral or ethical death each episode he can talk about a tactic or combative that's like practical and then each episode he can break down a scenario yeah so that was the strategy there you know a lot of our formats are sit and chat uh formats we also um with Borderland or change agents have introduced the beginning middle and end where we introduce the subject and go into the more curated this show is a lot different um this show is much more segmented it has the opportunity for each segment to breathe to evolve to to to grow um and it's it's a format we're really looking forward to this format is not the end with this podcast we see dangerous questions for kids we see dangerous questions for teens we see it turning into a book uh when it goes down special episode series you might be seeing something soon all of these things are just the beginning in the foundation for a T of evolution this format really allows us to really grow what should I do if I hear shots ringing out or what I should do if there's a major terrorist attack how is your faith tied in to being a protector is there a moral case for taking a life what is your recommendation on critical EDC what should I have what's the best what does that look like what would you recommend is there anything I could do

Channel: IRONCLAD

Views: 119,129

Keywords: power grid, blackout, blackouts, infastructure, Katherine Blunt, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, PG&E, Energy security, Infrastructure vulnerabilities, National security, Cyber threats, Grid resilience, Electric utilities, Emergency preparedness, Critical infrastructure, Cybersecurity risks, Grid modernization, Renewable energy, Threat intelligence, Disaster recovery, Risk management, Ironclad, ironclad, this is ironclad, andy stumpf, true crime, change agents, special forces

Id: YqjWVHL7-cc

Length: 48min 10sec (2890 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024