Politicizing cybersecurity; another miscalculation by Republicans
For Republican leadership—the same leadership that represents this now maladjusted and disordered party—to suggest the current cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline is because Democrats are not supporting more fossil fuel dependency is just culpable.
We don’t need the Keystone XL Pipeline.
That’s not why Eastern European hackers, known as DarkSide, set out to disable a part of our infrastructure.
Consider this piece from Kate Aronoff in The New Republic:
The Colonial Pipeline crisis shows that we need more American energy to fuel our economy, not less.” So tweeted Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, shortly after a cyberattack prompted Colonial to shut down a pipeline serving huge chunks of the East Coast. McCarthy chided the Biden administration for canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and “leaving our energy supply more vulnerable to attacks.”
McCarthy, Cruz, and Jordan can recurrently exclaim this manifested condemnation for The Green New Deal; a plan rigorously crafted to curb the detrimental effects of climate change, but they can’t compare how we need to reform strategies to protect our infrastructure from these cyberattacks.
Furthermore, how much longer do these party leaders feel the constituents of the Republican party—who are not swayed by the madness of the Trump doctrine—continue to put up with this? The effort to continue this game of trotting out disinformation to counter a proposed policy on the Democrat side is just asinine. Will the party ever develop their own policies to help benefit our country?
In reality, the East Coast faced gas hysteria this week because a company with notoriously bad cybersecurity and pipeline monitoring software — and multiple record-breaking spills to its name — got hacked, and shut down gas flow rather than risk being unable to bill customers effectively. But the fossil fuel industry’s implausible spin on this story appeared almost immediately, and quickly percolated up into the Republican Party: The industry is committed to working with government on cybersecurity, and needs even more pipelines to protect American Energy Independence and keep things like this from ever happening again. Insofar as there’s anyone to blame for this week’s disaster, it’s Democratic climate policy that has not yet passed Congress. This was the message behind Sommers’s absurd rhetorical pivot on CNN on Thursday: “We need of course to take care of cybersecurity,” he said, “but we also need to protect existing infrastructure from attacks from regulators and government officials who want to shut these pipelines down.”
It didn’t take me long to realize the incongruity of the statement.
Republicans are claiming, negligibly, that we do need to improve our cybersecurity. However, they are also declaring this: the only reason cyberattacks occur is because the Democrats have moved to shut down other superfluous pipelines around the country. And by doing this, the party is hindering our infrastructure. Really? They are also enjoying this new propaganda: the East Coast ran out of fuel this week because we don’t have enough supply in our country. Really x2?
We all know Colonial Pipeline officials shut down the pipeline to ensure the ransom attack wouldn’t spread further, not because they wanted to create a fuel shortage. The Federal government worked around the clock, following the pipeline’s shut down to pull reserve fuel from other sources. Adding to the fuel shortage was the public’s anxiety to hoard the fuel, creating more supply issues. It’s beyond incongruous to assume Republicans believe that having alternative pipelines would have been a solution to the shortage. Come on.
Representative Jim Jordan, who has received $287,800 from energy and natural resource company PACs since coming to Congress, tweeted that, “In four months we’ve gone from energy independence to lines to get gas.” Referring to a “gas crisis,” Senator Ted Cruz — who has gotten $426,500 from the same grouping of PACs as a senator — said, “Welcome to the Green New Deal.” Lobbyists have been making the rounds this past week in search of further handouts — now looking to make claims on upcoming infrastructure legislation. “Anytime you’re talking about infrastructure legislation, whether you’re talking about bridges or highways or roads,” API’s Frank Macchiarola said recently, “you have to talk about pipelines.”
This Republican strategy is abhorrent. This is a strategy centered around a perpetual focus to blame Democrats for what they deem as existential threats to our country. Let’s consider this example: the pipeline is shut down, due to a massive cyberattack, and there are gas shortages for a limited amount of time. Leave it to these Republicans to focus on an ineffectual assertion that Democrats have destroyed our energy independence because people waited in long lines to get gas and hoard unendingly. People were filling up garbage bags full of it. Come on.
Aronoff conveys, in the piece, that Republicans and their constituents—and even their opponents—seem to forget about the amount of money being supplied to Jordan and Cruz from the PACs. It’s a woeful, ugly realization to understand that the constituents can be so focused on polarizing their platform against the other side, that they are willing to descend to the belief that it’s acceptable for their elected officials to be so corrupt. Perhaps, in a similar circumstance, these constituents operate in the same manner; a cognizance that would explain the notorious self-approbation.
If “energy independence” were McCarthy’s real concern, it would make sense for him to favor temporarily halting fuel exports, which he instead wants to expand. It would make sense for him to urge refinery operators to invest more in being able to process the light, sweet crude flowing out of the Permian Basin. Needless to say, the Midwestern Keystone XL pipeline expansion McCarthy and other Republicans have used the cyberattack to pitch would not have either prevented a ransomware attack or alleviated fuel shortages among the East Coast gas stations the Colonial Pipeline supplies.
Finding ways to improve cybersecurity, as well as alleviate the reliance on fossil fuels, should be the goal. Republicans seem to live in this universe where there are no consequences for battering the environment with disadvantageous and antiquated processes. They are more inclined to head for the money, instead of place any concern on what these disasters do to harm the economy and environment, as well as their supporters. As President Biden pointed out several times: if we could focus on educating more folks to train and be part of the technology sector—so that we can better prepare our infrastructure against these attacks—we would not be dealing with the consequences in the first place. Let’s not forget, the SolarWinds attack took place during Trump’s administration; it was kicked down the road, discernibly.
Politics can be convoluted, particularly when it comes to working on different issues within the substructure of what party donors seek to influence politicians. Of course, this can be a nuisance to the common person, but characteristic for these politicians. However, we should expect more from the folks we elect; the Republican party has to find a way to move from “disinformation obstructionists” to productive lawmakers. At this time, consider it a paradoxical delusion…
Works Cited:
1. Aronoff, Kate. “Republicans Are High on Colonial Pipeline’s Fumes.” May 14, 2021. The New Republic. https://newrepublic.com/article/162398/republican-colonial-pipeline-hack-fossil-fuels. Accessed May 14, 2021.
