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Technology

How to short-circuit the US power grid

By Paul Marks

9 September 2009

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Attackers could cause a cascade of failures in the US west-coast electricity grid

(Image: Dan Tuffs / Rex)

PREDICTING how rumours and epidemics percolate through populations, or how traffic jams spread through city streets, are network analyst Jian-Wei Wang’s bread and butter. But his latest findings are likely to spark worries in the US: he’s worked out how attackers could cause a cascade of network failures in the US’s west-coast electricity grid – cutting power to economic powerhouses Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Wang and colleagues at Dalian University of Technology in the Chinese province of Liaoning modelled the US’s west-coast grid…

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