I’m a retired microbial scientist/computer scientist/business leader with crossover experience in emerging threats and disaster recovery (DR).
DR planning is a pretty expensive addition to normal operations. It’s avoided at all costs except when it can’t be, when the cost of developing a DR capability is far exceeded by the cost of consequences in an emergency,
Of course plans are only plans until they’re tested. Simulation testing can be sufficient, but not always or not for every decision maker. Testing a whole, large, national system with millions of people impacted under a real disaster is almost impossible to sell, again, except for when the consequences of failure are intolereable. I’ve been involved in a small way in such planning and testing.
The trick is to test the entire system without the people even noticing. It happens and when it does it’s the only 100% sure test of DR, the pièce de résistance of DR.
Of course, there are some systems too huge and too consequential such that a test being unnoticeable is impossible and it’s virtually impossible to get approval to conduct.
This week I experienced, for the third time since retiring, a reflex of wonderment if what appeared like an accident or phenomena or too stupid and unexplained it was actually such a test.
I’ve never worked for the Department of Defense but did work at the CDC for a short (and controversial) time and I believe its release of an impending review of nuclear explosion impacts on the public was a leak. The firewall of political oversight of CDC scientists has been ongoing as long as I’ve been aware — many decades — and they would have known to expect the automatic & final push back from Congress. So I think it was leaked, maybe as floating a balloon, maybe as a provocation.
So when the following week the “wrong button was pushed” in a DOD system that undergoes constant testing my suspicions arose. I have no clue as to the truth but that button story is bullshit.
One of other two times was in 2007 when news stations alerted the public that at that very moment a person with an extremely drug resistant, active TB infection just happened to be known to be a passenger on several commercial flights between the US, Canada, and Europe. And flew back! At the time I wondered how DR & Homeland Security might utilize the DOD’s use of virtual reality firms made popular in the Iraq War. (Links: 1, 2)
The other was a weekday morning when an awful smell permeated NYC and people were told to stay indoors for hours and for the most part did.
Assuming none of these events were actual intentional tests conducted by the gov’t, which could be dismissed as ct since incompetence is so much more common that the level of cooperation such events & secrecy require, each of them became a disaster recovery test the minute they occurred. Legions of dedicated scientists, service people, and bureaucrats would have known to kick into action.
I hope all of the test results were harvested and used.
But again, incompetency and political and financial restraints are the most common clear and present dangers.
Here, in the absence of information, speculative post-action analysis by the public happens.