Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

adds that the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team in Pittsburgh is being deluged with reports of systems failing, but he hasn’t had time to get the details yet.
    Before you can ask the Senior Duty Officer where the President is, another officer thrusts a phone at you. It’s the Deputy Secretary of Transportation. “Are we under attack?” she asks. When you ask why, she ticks off what has happened. The Federal Aviation Administration’s National Air Traffic Control Center in Herndon, Virginia, has experienced a total collapse of its systems. The alternate center in Leesburg is in a complete panic because it and several other regional centers cannot see what aircraft are aloft and are trying to manually identify and separate hundreds of aircraft. Brickyard, the Indianapolis Center, has already reported a midair collision of two 737s. “I thought it was just an FAA crisis, but then the train wrecks started happening…” she explains. The Federal Railroad Administration has been told of major freight derailments in Long Beach, Norfolk, Chicago, and Kansas City.
    Looking at the status board for the location of the President, you see it says only “Washington-OTR.” He is on an “off the record,” or personal, activity outside the White House. Reading your mind,the Senior Duty Officer explains that the President has taken the First Lady to a hip new restaurant in Georgetown. “Then put me through to the head of his Secret Service detail,” says a breathless voice. It’s the Secretary of the Treasury, who has run from his office in the building next to the White House. “The Chairman of the Fed just called. Their data centers and their backups have had some sort of major disaster. They have lost all their data. Its affecting the data centers at DTCC and SIAC—they’re going down, too.” He explains that those initials represent important financial computer centers in New York. “Nobody will know who owns what. The entire financial system will dissolve by morning.”
    As he says that, your eyes are drawn to a television screen reporting on a derailment on the Washington Metro in a tunnel under the Potomac. Another screen shows a raging flame in the Virginia suburbs where a major gas pipeline has exploded. Then the lights in the Situation Room flicker. Then they go out. Battery-operated emergency spotlights come on, casting the room in shadows and bright light. The television flat screens and the computer monitors have gone blank. The lights flicker again and come back on, as do some of the screens. There is a distant, loud droning. “It’s the backup generator, sir,” the Duty Officer says. His deputy again hands you a secure phone and mouths the words you did not want to hear: “It’s for you. It’s POTUS.”
    The President is in the Beast, his giant armored vehicle that resembles a Cadillac on steroids, on his way back from the restaurant. The Secret Service pulled him out of the restaurant when the blackout hit, but they are having a hard time getting through the traffic. Washington’s streets are filled with car wrecks because the signal lights are all out. POTUS wants to know if it’s true what his Secret Service agent told him, that the blackout is covering the entire eastern half of the country. “No, wait, what? Now they’re saying thatthe Vice President’s detail says it’s out where he is, too. Isn’t he in San Francisco today? What time is it there?”
    You look at your watch. It’s now 8:15 p.m. Within a quarter of an hour, 157 major metropolitan areas have been thrown into knots by a nationwide power blackout hitting during rush hour. Poison gas clouds are wafting toward Wilmington and Houston. Refineries are burning up oil supplies in several cities. Subways have crashed in New York, Oakland, Washington, and Los Angeles. Freight trains have derailed outside major junctions and marshaling yards on four major railroads. Aircraft are literally falling out of the sky as a result of midair