Energy Independence or Blowback?

"The nation's electric utilities have failed to fully survey the vulnerability of their equipment to computer-based attacks from foreign countries and hackers, a government-authorized regulatory group concluded this week. That assessment came as senior U.S. officials renewed warnings that experts from Russia, China and other nations have been trying for years to probe and exploit those vulnerabilities. "-Washington Post

I wonder where these countries got the idea to use software to cripple a country's electric grid. Perhaps from the CIA which did exactly the same thing when it loaded bugged software into Russian computers that caused gas valves in a Russian gas pipeline to malfunction resulting in a major pipeline explosion during the cold war. As the song says "Teach your children well" and don't forget payback is a bitch!
Meanwhile all the talk about a "smart electric grid" seems to me like just a big PR effort to justify spending hundreds billions of dollars on such a system. It's to make the sheeple feel like someone is protecting them and the electricity grid so they can always charge their IPODS. Meanwhile the electric utilities and oil companies want to make sure you will always be connected to them. To me it is much more important to become completely independent from them and stories like this one show why.