For Koppel it was a series of what he called “repeated little items,” and he provided several examples.
“For instance, there was the time [former Defense Secretary and CIA director] Leon Panetta refered to a ‘cyber Pearl Harbor.’ Or when Janet Napolitano was leaving, after almost five years as secretary of Homeland Security. She gave a speech at the National Press Club in Washington — and way down at the bottom of the speech was this warning we were facing a cyber-attack on the power grid.
“Then President Obama in 2013 said something about foreign governments trying to break into our power grid with cyber techniques.”
While each piece wasn’t all that compelling, the combination of those mentions led Koppel to want to look into the potential threats to America. He thought initially that if all those “well-informed people are offering warnings about the likelihood of this happening, what is being done about it?”
Bookmarks