It only lasted a week, but the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline that supplies up to 45% of the daily gasoline needs to 17 states in the Southeast and along the Atlantic seaboard provided stark reminders of the long gas lines and price spikes Americans suffered during the 1970s. Unfortunately, some of the media coverage of the incident was also reminiscent of a time when the Jimmy Carter administration used the oil and gas industry as a political boogeyman to shift blame for the horrible policy decisions made during that time, and many in the media amplified that message.
The New York Times NYT +1%, for example, decided it would be a good idea to end its week of coverage of the cyber attack on Colonial on Friday by publishing a guest opinion piece targeting a favorite boogeyman of the political left, Charles Koch. The piece, written by longtime Koch critic Christopher Leonard, does little to add to public discussion around what the nation should be doing to increase energy security or combat cyber terrorism, but likely did get a lot of clicks from readers who need a boogeyman to blame for everything that happens in the world.
The fact that Mr. Koch owns a piece of Colonial really doesn’t have anything to do with what happened this past week, or what, if any actions policymakers should take in response to it. Colonial was attacked by a cyber terrorist group using ransomware to demand a $5 million payoff, a bit of blackmail that has become sadly common in the 21st century.
Colonial responded as any company in any other industry might do, shutting down its computer system – and thus its pipeline – while its experts searched for the ransomware and cleaned it out. The company also made the decision to pay the $5 million ransom, an act that has drawn some criticism but one that the Biden administration correctly pointed out was a “private sector decision.”
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