as seen on tv
Senator
The NASDAQ computerized stock market was “down” yesterday for 3 hours or so. Officials managed to restore the system a few minutes before the 4pm close of business. But they refuse to give an official explanation for the outage, leading to speculation that this was a “denial of service attack” similar to the ones the Iranian military has launched against major US and European banks previously, in retaliation for sanctions and restrictions on the movement of money they use to sponsor terrorism and nuclear weapons development.
The US government has “no comment” either.
Let me postulate an analogy: Suppose a small cadre of Iranian military covert ops types stormed the floor of the stock exchange, took everyone hostage, and then attempted to blow up the building? Suppose they’d previously attempted this at every “systemically important bank” in the nation – Chase, Citi, B of A, Wells Fargo . ..?
Would it be appropriate for the government to remain silent, and not take action?
Realistically, the corporate equivalent of “Norton Internet Software” is unlikely to prevent state sponsored internet terrorism. Expecting your local bank and the stock markets to fend for themselves while under sustained attack by the world’s worst rogue nations is worse than short sighted. It’s a complete abdication of defending our nation and people.
We evidently can find the time and money to vacuum up all the emails, tweets, and phone calls made from our citizens, and crunch the “big data” to see if “chatter” suggests Obama’s birthday will be celebrated by an embassy bombing .. .but we lack the clarity of mind and resources to protect our financial system, our checking account balances, our pensions?
I can’t understand why the press isn’t discussing this openly. Hey – all you talking head guys on TV. You’re millionaires. You have more to lose than the rest of us. CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN – you’re publicly traded companies and you depend on orderly, well run stock markets.
Or are YOU networks and media millionaires too stupid to figure that out as well?
Full disclosure – can we hire that computer nerd Justin Long from “Live Free or Die Hard” to send the Iranian military an “E bomb”? They might actually be receptive to offers for cheap Viagra, Nigerian sweepstakes, non stick cookware.