Review: ‘Lights Out’ by Ted Koppel, A Newsman’s Public Warning
As terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and racial tension dominate headlines and demand the attention of the American public, former ABC News and Nightline anchor Ted Koppel seeks to fire a warning flare amidst the cacophony of voices debating the nation’s most threatening specter in “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath”.
As a journalist with over forty years experience under his belt, and perhaps a deserved credibility as the last of a breed of Great American Anchorman including the likes of Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings, Koppel hopes to use his voice to draw attention to the threat of a large-scale attack on the U.S. power grid, the consequences of which, he details, would be “catastrophic for our national security and economy.”
Koppel first lays out the organization of the nation’s aging power grid separated into three main interconnections and numerous substations, all critical parts functioning to provide electrical power to a nation of over 300 million citizens. He details the regulatory bureaucracy involved in keeping these sites running safely both on the ground and in cyberspace before listing off the myriad of vulnerabilities available to be exploited by those seeking to disrupt the system — including anecdotal evidence that some parties may already have in small-scale test runs. Continuing on, he provides interviews with various government officials demonstrating an apparent pervasive lack of preparedness despite congressional acknowledgement that “timely reconstitution of the grid following a carefully targeted attack…would result in widespread outages for at least months to two years or more…” Concluding his exposé by presenting stories of groups in the general public that would be best prepared to survive the aftermath of such a widespread electrical and cyber outage, Koppel leaves the reader by contending the importance of preparation on a national as well as a personal scale, conveying in no uncertain terms that an attack on the grid is not a matter of “if” but rather “when.”
But, somewhere past the midway point of his book, Koppel seems to lose his way. After providing an excellent background on the nation’s power grid followed by countless discussions with experts detailing the threat to America posed by rival nation-states and independent actors, Koppel starts repeating himself. Furthermore (and more problematically), in the latter chapters of his book Koppel passes beyond the scope of his subject by closely detailing the stories of doomsday “preppers” who spend small fortunes and large parts of their free time stocking up on supplies and building fallout shelters to ready themselves for society’s impending collapse. Indeed, it is at this point that the reader experiences a tinge of doubtfulness as to the actual likelihood of a nationwide power failure when confronted with these sometimes outlandish characters who preach preparedness against the inevitable nuclear war, biological attack, or economic meltdown among a host of other possible world-ending scenarios that they see as eventualities. Indeed, this newfound skepticism experienced by the reader is a shame as it undermines Koppel’s presentation of a previously clear and present danger to our national security that has yet to receive the attention it is warranted. Koppel deviates further from his subject by inexplicably dedicating an entire chapter to expound on the structure of the Mormon organization in order to highlight the culture of disaster preparation prevalent within the religion. Consequently, by allocating a third of his book on networks of preppers — whether to serve as examples of adequate or insufficient planning, a point that is unclear —Koppel demonstrates that his book may have been better served as a shorter piece or a lengthy editorial in the New York Times.
Ultimately, though Ted Koppel’s voice trails off towards the end of “Lights Out,” and not surprisingly includes a few moments of his characteristic pro-government bias regarding the trade-off between personal privacy and public security, his title proves to be an informative and interesting read on an underestimated threat.
“Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath”
Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Crown (10/27 2015) ISBN-10: 055341996X ISBN-13: 978–0553419962
