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Gas Pipeline Shutdown: Leftists Who Hate Oil Pipelines Suddenly Discover Their Value

Leftists suddenly discover the value of oil pipelines they have wanted to shut down.

Gas Pipeline Shutdown: Leftists Who Hate Oil Pipelines Suddenly Discover Their Value

As ransomware hackers shut down a 5,500-mile fuel pipeline from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, Leftists suddenly discover the value of oil pipelines they have wanted to shut down. Is this the only way Progressives can learn?

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46 replies on “Gas Pipeline Shutdown: Leftists Who Hate Oil Pipelines Suddenly Discover Their Value”

Then there’s Elon Musk, Bitcoin, and Tesla.

Musk apparently decided not to accept Bitcoin anymore because someone explained to him that they are mined. Using electricity. That comes ultimately from fossil fuels.

How long before he connects the dots?

Or more likely just looked at the chart and found it’s already went as fas as it could, so time to exit from his pump&dump machination.

It’s almost as if someone said, “hmmm, where does most of Washington, D.C.’s (and those richest counties surrounding it) gasoline come from?”

And then, their victims demonstrated their weakness by paying the hackers!! (Does anyone believe the Administration’s line that they were leaving it to a private company to decide what to do?)

Putin and the CCP are laughing at us.

It only took 100 days for Biden to get us to this point.

Umm….
Wasn’t it George Westinghouse who built the first town with electricity in every home?
And didn’t Edison steal many of his inventions from Tesla?

No, you’ve got it all wrong. The first all-electric city was in Africa, eight centuries ago. It was actually done by Arabs and blacks, from whom we stole all our modern technology!

Thanks for the reply, Wayne.
I find that hard to believe.
What was the name of the city?
And who’s this “we” you speak of< is there an 800 year old mouse in your pocket?

As a “Systems Engineer” who has worked on “Infrastructure” like the machines that Build the Silicon Chips in everything and Satellites that transmit those wonderful programs between continents, it is gratifying to have someone finally notice I’m (and my thousands of toiling brothers) are EVEN ALIVE! 🙂 Thank you guys for the ‘tip of the hat’
That said, do not think that this will wake up those leftist minded “green-new-deal” Intellectuals who WANT everything to work magically…but it should wake us up to the insanity of their dream.
There Ain’t NO SUCH THING as a FREE Lunch. Ya gotta build it if ya want the product.

And all physical systems deal with limits. We are near the physical limits on output for solar and wind energy per unit so that an increase for significant increase to meet actual demand even intermittently would have us covering 25% of the land surface. This would be structure and nothing “infra” about it.

I had just finished watching the backstage show, before I watched this. You were talking about Rumble’s monetization. Apparently you figured it out. Because as I turned to watch this episode, I noticed this on the Rumble page…not exactly a fortune to be made at this point, but it is something. lol

Ha! If you think having a pipeline down for a few days is a drag …

Wait until due to negligence and ridiculous foreign policy based on magical thinking Iran develops an atomic bomb*. Then runs a tramp freighter up to somewhere off the east (or west, God please let it be the west) coast and from that platform launches a single weapon high over the nation and detonates it in the upper atmosphere. Which will generate an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) strong enough to knock out anything that uses electricity for whichever half of the U.S. (and a good part of Mexico and Canada) it’s detonated above.

Permanently destroy, not a week or two of inconvenience and aggravation like the Colonial Pipeline. Much of the electrical grid is made up of crucial elements for which there are no spare parts. Much of those parts have to be ordered custom made and come from overseas suppliers.

Imagine it carefully; no magic electricity coming out of the wall for years, any car that uses any sort of computer electronics won’t run, your phones/computer/hard drives/tablets and pads all turned into doorstops and boat anchors …

Either the day of that attack or the day after, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Bethlehem, Beersheba and Elat all rise into the stratosphere on mushroom clouds and are scattered by upper atmosphere winds …

How plausible is that scenario? Plausible enough if America makes the wrong moves and refuses to show strength and determination in matters of Foreign Policy. Russia will be quietly facilitating as much of that as it dares, too.

How likely is that scenario? It becomes more and more likely with every passing minute of a weak, foolish administration like the one we have now. This is an example why such inept administrations and such foolish, self-serving foreign policies are important to the actual survival of the United States of America and the Free World.

Do I think this kind of thing is going to happen? Not tomorrow, probably not this year or next year. However, I can assure everyone most emphatically that there are people who do not like us putting long days and lots of money into just this sort of thing.

(*Iran is a long, long way from the thermonuclear fusion warheads that we have in the thousands. That’s another order or two of magnitude harder to create and make reliable enough to count on. What Iran is capable of creating is atomic fission weapons on the lines of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Probably smaller yield and less bulky than those two original bombs but well capable of destroying a significant portion of a large city and very easily capable of generating a devastating EMP. The EMP scenario creates the most damage and allows for multiple launches only one of which needs to get through defenses and detonate.)

This scenario used to get a lot of discussion. Now it seems to be moth-balled to the point where cynical me wonders if it is an embargo, to keep the sheepul from panicking. It is the main reason to make sure Iran never gets nukes, of any kind. It is (or should be) understood that a nuclear-armed Iran uses those weapons.
If we continue to allow Hamas to harass Israel with impunity, diverting attention from Iran, the reality of nuclear Iran will come much sooner. We are focusing on the magician’s assistant and his right hand rather than his left hand. When that is on stage, it is entertaining. On the street when the pickpocket strikes it is annoying and potentially dangerous.
In the game of Global Thermonuclear War, it is very dangerous to lose focus. The current administration is focused on nothing.
The only thing standing in Iran’s way right now is Israel, who no longer has the support of the US. File this under things that keep me awake and imbibing quality whisk(e)y.
BTW – Chattanooga Whiskey, both the 111 and 91, I highly recommnend.

GMTA and thanks for the whiskey recommendation. Are those available at ABC?

Unfortunately, not at the moment. I got a bottle of each when I went to a wedding outside of Knoxville.
I will be asking my local to see if they can order it.
From their website.
Available in your favorite retail stores, restaurants, and bars across Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Ohio and Illinois. Or order online and ship directly to your door.

Two Things that need to be said;
1 – This “attack” does not occur if PDT is still in the oval
2 – If this is a cyberattack by this group in Russia, they act with impunity from that govt. This should therefore be considered as an act of war that has damaged our infrastructure. It should be met in kind.
Appeasement leads to more of these type of events.

There has been a very long standing, ongoing problem with cybercrime originating on Russian soil. Russia turns a blind eye to that sort of crime as long as the criminals are not targeting Russia or Russians. Within that condition they are welcome to do as they like, Russia needs the hard currency.

These guys are often treated more as local heroes than as the thieving vermin they really are. They have a perfect base to operate from, access to ultrahigh bandwidth backbone conduits and the tacit cover of both Russian intel and law enforcement agencies.

They are the perfect cyber weapon for the Russian government also. A tip here, a wink and a nod there, and ‘No problem, Komrade’ from both sides gives the Russian government “plausible deniability”.

The only reason they dared pull this caper off is that they know Sleepy Creepy Uncle Joe is not only all talk and no action but very little talk either.

You’re absolutely right the only way to stop this is to punish them severely, smack ’em back hard. I don’t see that happening in the current administration. Obama let them have a big chunk of Ukraine including all of Crimea, Biden might stumble and mumble through some sort of scolding but that will be about it.

If you haven’t seen it already, George poses a question below that I think is right up your alley. See his reply to one of my comments.

And to continue the Sci Fi connections, didn’t Edward James Olmos demand that his Battlestar have NO networked computers on it, to avoid precisely this same issue?

I actually watched that a couple of weeks ago. To me it was still very entertaining.
Don’t mince words, Bones. What do you really think?

Yeah… The one I use with my brother fairly often (although it doesn’t seem like it would have a relevant way to use it): “Still. Old. Friend. You’ve managed to Kill just about Everyone Else, but like a poor marksman, you keep Missing the Target.” (capitals to expound where Shatner went Shakespearean).

The “hidden hand” of the market working to hide the “hidden structure”. But when I open my wallet or make an internet bank transfer to pay for this service, then I see that the money to supports all of this value creation happening is no longer hidden. And that is a good thing.

As our friend LG has said: Reality Is Not Optional! Or TANSTAAFL.

I recently heard a theory that I believe is worth thinking about. This person suggested that the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline might be a hoax. That the company was facing problems due to a leak happening in North Carolina that has been spilling since last August and has put approximately 1.2 million gallons of oil into the local environment. They needed to shut down to fix their pipeline, without facing a lot of legal repurcuusions. Then there is this ransomware attack, which forces the shutdown, but in a way that the company is a victim and not guilty of malpractice. And they can accuse Russia, because the media will run with it, and not look too closely. There’s no proof of this, but it’s interesting to think about.

While I doubt the veracity of the ransomware attack, the idea that there is that large a spill since August that is not page 1 with AOC and others getting screen time is hard to believe. Something like that is too big to be a secret and is just the type of story oil haters would want to have out there. Too many would know about it to keep it silent.

Just fyi, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article248632600.html, and it is much worse from last report directly from the EPA. This is happening and has been ongoing for months. Another point is that this is not “oil” but actual processed gasoline. Your truth about AOC not screaming about this, maybe its because for some reason she has vested interest in ignoring/covering this up. Its not always what is being reported but sometimes the lack of interest that speaks volumes….

Thanks for the link. I am amazed that this is not one of the top news stories. There has to be more to it. What caused the crack? Green-vandalism? Pretty hard to over-pressure a pipeline (over pressure meaning over the burst pressure, which is typically 3x the expected max pressure in operation). Leaks at joints, sure. Gasekts and o-rings degrade over time. But cracks during normal operation. Not very often.
This should be an eco-warriors dream come true. That it is essentially embargoed nationally is perplexing.

Thanks Dale. This just complicates the narrative even more. Of course the leak is true, it’s there in black and white as real reporting. Journalism. Now a group claims they did it for ransomwear. But of course, according to press and the administration, it was the bad guy Russians.

Interesting that the article has little context. 1.2 million gallons of gasoline is a lot. However, 1″ rain on 1 acre of pavement produces approximately 27,000 gallons of storm run off. So over the 142 acres of the nature preserve is 3.8 million gallons of water per inch of rain. So over the last six months, lots more water than gasoline.
But still a leak worth finding.

Well, FWIW the “attack” characterization is obviously a hoax. They just got infested by a random computer “virus”. That once executed could spread to all other computers on their unpatched vulnerable exchange network.
Some article stated they paid $5M to some cryptocoin address — could be belonging to anybody from Hunter Biden to some employee there. And supposedly got some decryption key, but was “very slow so really just used backups for recovery” — indicates they probably didn’t get anything just a general program that can brute-force decode that malware. Or not even that.
The crypto transaction is not reversible so why would one bother with followup. And if you fell like collecting easiest is to just pick any ransomware you stumble on and replace the account address with yours.
Of course when almost everyone in USA eats up anything mentioning Russia it’s the default scapegoat instead of admitting “we just had lousy security + bad luck”. And you can reap sympathy instead of the due rage that way.

Years ago, I worked in the power industry. At one of the first trade shows I attended there was a booth for some US Govt agency. He had two large maps as the backdrop of his booth. One showed the main electrical lines throughout the country all the way down to 15kV class. It was a maze of lines, very complicated, but with a wealth of information that helped me target potential customers.
The other map was of pipelines: natural gas and liquid products. It was nearly as impressive and complicated. Anytime I see someone protesting a new pipeline, I ask them what they want to do about the hundreds of thousands (a million?) miles of pipeline already in this country. They of course tell me I am wrong that there is nowhere near that quantity. Like most leftist they are absolutely certain about incorrect information. Stopping the flow in these pipelines would bring this country back 100 years in a few days.
A pipeline is simply the most efficient way to move liquid of gas (or in the case of Keystone and the oil sands project, slurry) from point A to point B. It is also the safest. How can we know this? Look up train accidents with petroleum products. Now look up pipeline accidents.
Full disclosure: I have advanced degrees in Aerospace Engineering and my first job was designing pipeline compressors. They are incredibly cool installations, and very little product leaks, because delivering product is how they make money.

would be interesting to see similar 3D maps for subway systems in NYC and London (and elsewhere?). Lot of stuff kept “safely” underground, until the software control is compromised.

What are your thoughts about creating a dedicated control software product, specialized to these various infrastructure industries, with security as the main requirement? Seems something with a dedicated function might be easier to protect? Also with some form of isolating partitioning, perhaps, to limit damage from a given compromise? Maybe also smaller code base so easier to track trial attacks, etc.? And of course — they have all of that now and it is not up to snuff as it should be? I suppose humans are often the weakest link in security protocols.

and here in Florida we should put almost all normal voltage power lines underground (sand easy to dig in) but still – cost! vs. outage cost via hurricane, terrorists, etc.

As more equipment is connected to the internet one of my current company’s biggest projects in on the security of equipment access and the code used to control equipment. Not securing the code from theft, but securing the equipment and code from being hacked and damaging the equipment. This is not unique to us, as most equipment manufacturers are doing likewise. The threats are real.
20 years ago we worried that substations could be taken off-line in multiple cities through brute force attacks. It wouldn’t have been difficult to damage vital power grid equipment in multiple locations with a couple of guys in trucks with shotguns.
Now it’s a couple of guys in basements anywhere in the world.
Maybe ACTS will weigh in, this is more his area of expertise.
And yes, I agree power lines should be underground if at all possible. The higher voltage are more difficult but residential definitely should be. However, sand while easy to dig in also erodes very easily. Cable conduit needs to stay where it is laid.

As you point out, the problem is not that specific software for specific infrastructure equipment is not being properly developed. Over the 20 years you mention we’ve gotten to the point where almost everything requires some sort of software to make it work as desired. That’s actually a very good thing as far as labor saving, economics and control of the infrastructure goes.

Security against hacking and prevention of all unauthorized access is foremost on the minds of the people who write that software. It’s a feature that provides a competitive environment and is driven by the free market. Whoever writes the best, safest, most secure software gets the contract — all else being equal.

The problem as in most other things is the human element. Every single character of every single line of code in that software was written by a human being somewhere along the road from conception to deployment. There are an estimated 2.8 trillion lines of independent original code that have been written in the last 20 years. That’s not to say 2.8 trillion is the end number at the moment either. I.E. millions of personal devices are running the same lines of code so I don’t know if an estimate of active code is even possible. It’s safe to say it’s well into the upper zetabyte (a million petabytes) range and could even be higher.

(Note: Not every single character of code needs to be written every single time for every single application. There are large chunks of generic code that can be copy/paste dropped in where needed. That’s what the .dll files are on your Windows computer do for instance. Often that kind of thing contributes a lot to “bloat”, there might be thousands of lines in such a library file and only a few or a few dozen are actually used. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to do it that way but there are drawbacks too. Those library files often contain a vulnerability and are slow to be updated or fixed. They provide a tempting avenue for bad actors.)

Catching every single error or vulnerability or potential for exploitation in every single line of code is not humanly possible and there is so far no sort of AI that can do it. I’m not sure we want an AI that can self correct and self program anyway, but that’s a different subject.

You might think “Well, we just need to be a lot more careful, line by line, with code writing.” But that’s already being done and in most cases it’s maxed out. The problem isn’t one of responsible attention to detail, it’s a matter of no one being prescient. You can’t see the future so you don’t know what exploits someone might invent until they invent them and then turn them loose in the wild. Then you can see the code THEY used, decompile and reverse engineer it to figure out how to “patch” your own code. The generating of exploits for unknown and unforeseen vulnerabilities is an inventive process. Until the invention occurs it is very nearly impossible to anticipate. Sure, you can be mindful of likelihoods and historic vulnerabilities but you cannot see the future.

The sheer scope of application of computer code is fairly mind-boggling. Just think about a PC operating system for a moment. That system has to be designed to run across all possible platforms with all possible permutations in hardware and firmware conceivable now and in the immediate future. It’s a gargantuan task to come up with something like Windows 10 and get it to work as well as it does. It could be made to work a lot better but then it would cost 100,000 a copy instead of around $200 and no one would buy it. The only problem I have with Microsoft on this issue is their method of discovering and correcting errors has deteriorated badly in the last 3 iterations of Windows. Which is also an issue for another discussion.

People can be compromised in myriad ways to leave a backdoor somewhere it will be difficult or impossible to detect until it’s used. Drug problem, gambling problem, sick relative, marital indiscretions are only a few of the ways leverage can be used against someone to accomplish a purpose. I’ve rooted out these and many more over the years but I’ve by no means seen all of them.

You know the old saying about how a country like Israel has to win every single war they fight but their enemies only need to win once? You can have 100,000 lines of code and 99,999 of them can be pristine and secure as Fort Knox. It only takes one vulnerability to take the whole works down. This is basically how Ransomware works, btw. It doesn’t take over your operating system, it simply jumps the stops on encryption and encrypts everything you have. You can have it unencrypted and get it back with a key. Which you get when you pay the ransom …

I’ve lost clients to ransomware. Despite warning them, the decision maker(s) didn’t perceive the threat as being worth the cost of mitigation. That cost can be considerable and it’s not unusual for decision makers to de-emphasize developing or unfamiliar risks. A lot of people just think “Nah, it can’t happen to me” until it does. I can’t do a damn thing about that because it does zero good to nag people like that. I tried to avoid saying “I told you so” as they closed the doors for the last time on their business. Saying that was accurate and appropriate but unhelpful to anyone and doesn’t even make me feel better.

There again is the problem of human beings making human being grade choices and having human being class vision.

What’s really tragic in all of this is that usually, more often than not, the attack vector that takes down something like the Colonial Pipeline goes right through an employee who is surfing porn, gambling, or getting cutsie-pie emails from friends and relatives. That kind of thing is one of the most easily prevented vulnerabilities of all. Unfortunately it takes conscientiousness on the part of every single employee without a single failure. If everyone only ever used their work systems for work there would be very little problem with a lot of these things.

Those are the problems that need to be solved to make things secure. There are more, there are variations but those are some of the big ones, just to give you guys an idea of what we’re facing.

If you use general-purpose computers and connected to the internet, you’re more or less hosed by definition. Even if they are only around.
There was a nice case ~20 years ago — lazy to look up the year WINNUKE was a thing. (For those unfamiliar, there was a bug in the Microsoft tcp/ip stack, all you needed to know the IP address of a vulnerable box, sending it a simple datagram and it bluescreened.) And it’s pretty easy to send datagrams to random or semirandom addresses…
A big part of the USA power grid went down as a victim. What led to question why it is controlled by computers with Windows and connected publicly. Guess what, it wasn’t. It used some special equipment. However, it was old and hard to use. Even harder to add more functions, so instead additional programs were written for regular PCs, and those presented the state in everyday operation. Then once those went down, the operators were effectively paralysed.

I keep hearing that it’s the work of Russian hackers…
…but I keep hearing that from the same people who screamed “Russian collusion!” for over three years.
Personally I think it’s more likely to be the work of leftist Greens.

Not only from those. https://youtu.be/izDNGSmoynE
Also heard was mentioned on plenty other streams I look at. With a question “why Russia keeps being the default boogyman?” With pretty convincing that it was meant as actual question.
Well, isn’t it obvious? Because it fuckin’ works. On the melt brain of people who are supposedly on the correct side.
It looks the USA brains are so deeply indoctrinated without much hope of change. And they are not even aware of it. I heard Bill mentioning plenty of questionable claims related to Russia or Putin.
There was a nice viva/barnes stream recently with Szamuely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO29ku7xAq0 and you can watch the trending comments. Well demonstrating how people prefer their bubble and preconceptions. And pesky reality be damned. The left does not hold monopoly on that.

In this case it is more painful than the usual, one would think people with brain cells can figure as much as running Microsoft stuff on critical infrastructure, and connect it to internet, and not bother with patching the vulnerabilities that are released with details and proof-of-concept code anyone with the will can exploit is between bad idea and outright malpractice. And that any script kiddie can then “hack” the system — if that activity even deserves the name. And if it’s “ransomware”, can insert any identity, pointing anywhere. Making any claim on knowing who did what is worse than quoting the Steele dossier.
Yet, the voices who should point out that, instead play along. Who needs an enemy with friends like that.

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