Americans across the country woke up this morning to a fate worse than death: widespread cell outages.
Since early this morning, tens of thousands of reports came flooding in indicating that AT&T, Cricket Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, Straight Talk, and other wireless services had experienced major outages.
Even more worryingly for some, Reddit also appears to be experiencing problems...
Now, according to major carriers, networks are now either operating as normal or have been largely restored, but that didn't stop the Twittersphere (or is it the Xsphere now?) from asking questions.
Was this a cyberattack? Was this a solar flare? Did Pete Buttigieg unplug the wrong outlet again? Was this an EMP attack?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said his office spoke with AT&T, and that the cause of the outage wasn't clear. He then raised an obvious point: We'd be totally screwed if an EMP attack was used.
"Imagine if we had an EMP attack what would end up happening in this country. So it's not necessarily a good thought because you think you're just so naturally reliant on having cell service," DeSantis said. "If you're in the car, you need to figure out where you're going to go. All this other stuff. So it's a little bit jarring to think about the implications of something like that (if it) happened on a much grander scale."
Sen. Marco Rubio was even less subtle.
And here's the thing: They're not wrong.
After all, we live in a world where Russia is reportedly trying to develop a nuclear space weapon that can destroy satellites with massive energy waves, and who can forget the Chinese spy balloons that were allowed to masquerade over the entire United States for days before we did anything?! The idea that we'd be attacked in some form by our enemies is hardly beyond the realm of imagination, let alone the fact that surprise attacks have been used in the past.
And, like the past, our society has become increasingly sure of its own safety, making the potential damage of an attack even more severe.
Look, I'm not saying that we all need to turn into doomsday preppers and channel our favorite Walking Dead character by stocking up on canned tuna, bottled water and ammunition (well ... you can never have too much ammunition). What I am saying is that we, collectively, need to rethink the level of our own insulated safety.
Yes, by nature of scale and geography, the United States has historically been safe from conflict when compared to almost every other nation on Earth. But we no longer live in a world where war is waged with infantry or ships or even bombs. We are entering a time when the careful use of military technology could cripple us beneath an electronic siege without having to fire a single shot.
And are we ready? Absolutely not.
Just food for thought when you go to the ballot box in November and decide whether or not Joe Biden — a geriatric imbecile asleep at the wheel — is the right choice for the upcoming and arguably inevitable generation of warfare that we are utterly unprepared for.
Follow Ian on X (@ighaworth).
