There is a saying that “crisis creates opportunity”. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware hack attack happened just a few days ago. As a result, it forced the shutting down of over five thousand miles of critical pipeline, critical INFRASTRUCTURE, that our nation relies on. This has I believe, presented President Biden with a giant tactical opportunity, as he seeks to push a massive Infrastructure bill through the Senate, against Republican and Conservadem opposition.
In this instance, according to current information, the attack was conducted by a non-state actor group, the DarkSide. There is ongoing investigation and debate on whether this group is connected to governments and how deeply, but the intent in this case were criminals seeking money. In that sense, it was more of a capability demonstration than an attack on us.
Imagine however, that a nation with mature, sophisticated cyber infiltration and espionage capabilities, (think Russia, China, the DPRK, Iran, Israel) decided to seriously and all out attack our power, fuel, water, air, internet and telecommunications infrastructure. Imagine instead of a single pipeline being shut down, dozens or hundreds of pipelines, power plants, airport control towers and the like get shut down in a matter of hours. The nation would be crippled for weeks, months, or even longer. The implications for security and stability cannot be overstated.
This demonstrates that infrastructure goes far, far beyond “targeted brick and mortar projects” that the Republicans and certain Democrats want to pigeonhole the conversation into. Infrastructure is, in my view, literally the entire physical fabric of our society. It encompasses the internet, water and air, food and medical systems, etc.
At the technical level, very little investment has been done in resilience, hardening ,redundancy-safety mechanisms, even though it has been discussed since the Obama era. At the policy level, almost nothing has been done to restructure our fuel and power sectors to be self-sufficient, and not rely on foreign resources. Deficiencies at these two levels must be addressed simultaneously and that requires big, bold spending over the next two decades and beyond. Far more than the paltry 15-30 billion a year to fix some potholes the Republicans are offering.
The idea is simple. President Biden needs to do a prime-time speech to the nation about infrastructure and the pipeline attack that just happened. Its bully pulpit time. He needs to frame the conversation in terms of protecting AMERICAN assets and sovereignty against Russian and Chinese interference, which the GOP is obsessed with. (RW link), against the CCP of which he is an agent in the deluded minds of Q’ers. He needs to make a specific, numbers specific ask on live TV, for 3-4T to secure American infrastructure against the foreigners. He needs to call out Manchin.
The beauty of this, is that he can just this once, ignore mentioning climate change entirely. He can completely steal the national security, tough on Iran/China/Russia ground, that the GOP hypocritically occupies and uses as a cudgel.
Call Manchin and the 10-12 of the most moderate GOPers out by name. Call them out and DARE THEM on live TV to vote against strengthening national security and protecting the country. Hammer them until they beg for mercy.
I really hope in his spare time, Biden is studying T. Roosevelt, F.D Roosevelt, and Johnson.
UPDATE: Rec List?! Wow!! Thank you all for your time and thoughts. Several commenters have argued that publicly attacking Sen. Manchin is likely to just antagonize him and be counter productive, and perhaps it is not the way to take. You may well be right, but I definitely think if there’s something thats going to move him to yes, and the Romneys and Murkowskis to yes, its going to be framing this purely from a national security standpoint, and emphasizing the job creation and fuel cost reduction aspects. Democrats need to OWN that messaging, I really think it has a chance to get through, to this segment of the Senate.
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