Skyfall
5/5/202617 min
Scientists are simulating cyber attacks and system failures on real-world energy infrastructure - without ever putting the actual grid at risk.
This is Skyfall at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
From real-world incidents like the Ukraine power grid cyberattack 2015 to cascading failures across interconnected systems, this episode explores how cyber-physical incidents can disrupt critical infrastructure in the United States - and how scientists at Skyfall are working to understand and prepare for them. Researchers are using simulation, AI and new approaches like the immune infrastructure framework to understand those risks - and design systems that can adapt and recover when things go wrong.
Guests featured (in order of appearance):
- Nate Gleason - Cyber and Infrastructure Resilience (CIR) Program Lead, LLNL
- Vaibhav Donde - Associate Program Lead, CIR, LLNL
- Colin Ponce - Computer Scientist, CIR, LLNL
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Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series.
Executive Produced by Levi Hanusch.
Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Matthew Powell.
Story Editing by Levi Hanusch.
Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell.
Narrated by Matthew Powell.
Video Production by Levi Hanusch.
Brought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMatthew Powell0:00
[tense music] Ukraine, 2015. Inside a grid control center, operators monitoring the flow of electricity heard something they couldn't explain. [mouse clicking] Then they didn't just hear it, they saw it. The cursor was moving, clicking, [phone ringing] but no one was touching it. They watched, frozen, as someone else moved through their system, opening breakers, one section, then another, almost random, chaotic, until a city of 200,000 completely lost power. For the first time at this scale, a cyber attack didn't just steal data. It reached out and turned off the infrastructure on which the nation depends.
Nate Gleason· Guest1:11
It's the stuff you don't think about until it doesn't work, and then it's the foremost thing on your mind.
Matthew Powell1:16
What happens when the systems we trust are taken over by malicious actors? When bad software turns off energy or telecommunication systems? At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, there's