System Vulnerability in Iraq

By: Stephen Collier

An article in today’s New York Times reports on attacks on Iraqi electricity infrastructure. As Stephen Flynn has said, they are getting a lot of practice attacking vital systms.

2 Responses to “System Vulnerability in Iraq”

  1. ckelty Says:

    Wonderful! Just recently, a similar problem has started to affect Houston–with different and thankfully less disastrous effects–
    this story and this one are about the theft of copper wire and the fact that it is messing with housing prices, and hence with all-powerful developers’ willingness to build in certain areas.

  2. Stephen Collier Says:

    The same thing was endemic in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. People were poor, so they stripped all kinds of things. Electric wire was a particularly dangerous option. One mayor told me that a few people died every year in his town trying to steal it. They would also try to steal the aluminum roofs off of Dachas to sell for scrap. In Georgia, informants told me, virtually the entire heating system of the capital city Tblisi was stolen and sold for scrap in Turkey.

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