But, if you want to know about those – the real threats and how they can be dealt with – this is not your book. There are indeed threats to the power grid. Incredulously, he said “no.” I don’t think Koppel understands the significance of that exclusion, and therein is the fundamental problem with this book. In an interview for CSO Online, Koppel was asked if he interviewed penetration testers who have experience in the electric generation and transmission sector. What’s conspicuously missing is his speaking to any cybersecurity expert with experience in SCADA, malware or related areas. What Koppel did is speak to a lot of very senior people and put what he gleaned into writing. Incredulously and disconcertingly, Koppel states that he didn’t always follow the advice of Dr. Koppel notes that he sent transcripts of key interviews and rough drafts of relevant chapters to Dr. Ryan Ellis of the Cyber Security Project at Harvard University. To help him navigate through the arcane world of grid reliance standards and the evolving relationship between power industry groups and federal regulators, Koppel engaged the services of Dr. Koppel admits that he is not proficient in the complicated energy sector. Johnson comes across somewhat clueless of the energy sector cyberthreat, about which Koppel noted that, while Johnson’s answer to Koppel’s question lasted 13 minutes, he never addressed the question, and it was an area in which Johnson conceded that he had little expertise. One of the more disturbing interviews is with Jeh Johnson, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is a detail of Ted’s great adventure. From preppers in Montana, to leaders of the Mormon Church, whose doctrines include planning for cataclysmic events, and more. Much of the book contains details of Koppel’s travels and narratives of the people he meets. While these doomsday and worst-case scenarios are indeed terrifying, never does the book detail the specific how. Throughout the book, Koppel sets up his straw man and uses terms such as imagine, may, could and similar, tenuous phrases. While it’s a disturbing hypothesis, never once does Koppel detail how such an attack would actually take place. The book’s premise is that a major and devastating cyberattack on America’s power grid is imminent. He sets up a straw man question, never fully identifies the threats facing the power grid, and never gives specific weights to those threats, such that the reader is left with Chicken Little meets the power grid. The problem with Ted Koppel’s book is that his approach to the topic is anything but structured and methodical.

Yet, with his over 50 years of journalistic experience, this book shows that, just because you are a world-renowned reporter, that doesn’t mean you always get the story right. And read indeed, as his new book Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath is in the Amazon top 200. In the world of broadcast journalism, when Ted Koppel speaks, people listen. Hutton, based around the catchphrase, 'When E. One of the most successful television commercials in history was for the financial firm E. In this tour de force of investigative reporting, Ted Koppel reveals that a major cyberattack on Americas power grid is not only possible but likely.

Lights out ted koppel summary