r/politics • u/tetaniclemur • 5d ago

No Paywall Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-a-national-emergency-to-secure-americas-bulk-power-system/
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u/No_Celery_5373 Canada 5d ago

It's a wild but somewhat educated guess for me ~ Doug Ford has made comments about threatening to cut off the power supply to the US, and Canada's stubbornness in not agreeing to a sovereignty destroying trade deal, I'm presuming this one is a direct threat to Canadians at this time that "shutting the lights off" like Ford wanted to do would be considered a national security issue.

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u/Winston905 5d ago

its more to do with the iranian hack on industrial equipment. PLC control hooked up to networks and look out. hydro one is just as vulnerable. remember 20 + years ago when iran was trying to purify their uranium and they kept on blowing up centrifuges. this was a usa hack on them. it was a learning lesson for iranian hackers. recent take over of water systems in the usa.

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u/LightningMcLovin California 5d ago

Iran is not capable of making something like Stuxnet.

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u/No_Celery_5373 Canada 5d ago edited 5d ago

Interesting. I'm not an IT person or hacker, but I am an industrial technician and PLCs don't typically have great security, I program them pretty frequently. The ones I've worked with can be re-flashed with eprom chips with pretty much no safety checks on them. I understood that they're supposed to only be connected to Intranet and never Internet. Are they doing that and the Iranians are finding ways in?

I know that the Iranians had a centrifuge that was sabotaged digitally and it was only ever connected to intranet, so someone had physically found a way in by either getting in, or getting a worm onto something that a technician brought in.

To me, it doesn't seem like a good idea to have PLCs connected to anything anyone can access remotely. The most security I've worked with so far is one that had a static 4 digit password.

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u/sj4nes 5d ago

Kim Zetter’s Countdown to Zero Day is said to be the book-length investigation of the Stuxnet hack. I just added it to my TO_READ pile.

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u/AnonAwaaaaay 5d ago

I wonder how much this will effect California considering it's such a huge economy. 

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u/No_Celery_5373 Canada 5d ago

I've tried to look up statistics and it just says "significant importer" which could just mean 5%. California is likely to be okay. Maine is 64% and probably feel a lot of pain. I hope that we can all find a way to stand down before it gets worse, but it will not be at the expense of our nation.

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u/AnonAwaaaaay 5d ago

Thanks! 

Yeah. Hopefully Canada realies our dumbass in Chief will light the house on fire to win a point and instead decides to not fuck the entire nation because us being weakened causes hegemonic issues elsewhere in the world that can lead to evil ass nations like Russia and China destabilizing shit on us.

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u/CAredditBoss 5d ago

Bigly

Unfortunately, this drives a massive wedge from California and into Canada.

Buckle up

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u/Motorbarge 5d ago

He's getting ready to invade Canada to take over the power grid. Knowing Trump as we do, he will send the army in to secure the facilities without waiting for more.

Republicans love war and we don't have the army to fight this off. Of course, they will kill a few dozen Canadians for good measure.