alt Hacker News> In 2019, the Maduro government accused the United States of conducting a cyberattack on a hydropower plant that plunged much of the country into darkness for a week.
> The power failures caused sporadic outbursts of looting and unrest, bringing the government close to collapse.
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Let's hope those chicken never come home to roost. NSA has a history of losing offensive cyber tools.
IIRC both Texas and California had widespread power outages in the last few years. I am not convinced that US power grid is much better defended than the one in the EU.
Let's not take Maduro at his word, he's great at playing the victim to hide their corruption. Venezuela has been in an energy crisis since 2009 with rationing still happening everywhere in the country except in Caracas [1] big part of it from the Odebrecht corruption scandal [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis_in_Venezuela
According to The Guardian[1]:
> New construction on thermoelectric power plants and other hydroelectric plants has been stalled for years, and localised power cuts are a daily occurrence around Venezuela.
> There have also been problems with the supply from the Guri dam in the past.
> In 2010, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, declared an “electricity emergency” after a drought caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon left waters at the dam dangerously low.
> Six years later, Venezuela’s worst drought in four decades again affected the Guri dam, which then provided about 70% of the country’s electricity.
> In May last year, a union leader representing workers in the state power corporation, was arrested by Venezuela’s intelligence service, Sebin, after warning that poor maintenance and systemic problems meant that a blackout was likely to happen.
I will use an extract from the Spanish Wikipedia article[2] about the 2019 blackouts because it summarizes the situation pretty well:
> On March 9, Ángel Javier Sequea, head of office and operations in Guyana, was found dead after being detained by SEBIN.[3] Ángel Javier left a recorded audio message about the lack of maintenance on high-voltage power lines. He worked for 13 years in the powerhouse next to the turbines at the Caruachi Plant.
> Between the night of March 11 and the early morning of March 12, 2019, SEBIN agents arrested and raided the Caracas home of journalist Luis Carlos Díaz, who was then transferred to the Helicoide.[4] Díaz was accused of inciting the blackout.[5] On the night of March 12, 2019, he was released after a hearing in the Caracas courts, in which, according to the organization Espacio Público, he was charged with the crime of “incitement to commit a crime” and was required to appear in court every eight days and prohibited from leaving the country, speaking to the media, and participating in public demonstrations[6]. On March 22, Francisco Alarcón Orozco, secretary of the Corpoelec union, was found hanged under strange circumstances[7]. Govany Zambrano, a Corpoelec worker, was arrested after participating in a press conference[8]. “Our infrastructure at the national level is in a state of neglect, vandalism, abandonment, and terrible conditions...” The government never accepted failure due to lack of maintenance as the main cause, as explained in 2010 by José Aguilar, an expert in electrical risk and international advisor[9].
As a Venezuelan, I can say that the national electrical system is in a terrible condition, with constant blackouts and power surges that damage household appliances and industrial equipment. Depending on the time of year, blackouts become more and more intense. It's very common to see news reports of areas that have lost power, and it can take weeks for CORPOELEC (the national electricity company) to fix the problem and depending on the location, even months.
No one here doubts that the blackouts of 2019 and all those that followed have been the government's fault due to lack of maintenance, failure to renew equipment, and failure to build new power plants.
Years ago, there were plans to install renewable energy sources such as windmills on the coast, but all the money disappeared thanks to the typical corruption around here[10].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/venezuela-blac...
[2] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apagones_de_Venezuela_de_2019
[3] https://www.aporrea.org/ddhh/n339228.html
[4] https://www.europapress.es/nacional/noticia-detenido-caracas...
[5] https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/03/12/actualidad/15523...
[6] https://www.elmundo.es/internacional/2019/03/13/5c888f29fc6c...
[7] http://www.venezuelaaldia.com/2019/03/23/muere-otro-trabajad...
[8] https://web.archive.org/web/20190713213240/http://puntodecor...
[9] https://web.archive.org/web/20100816181129/http://www.el-nac...
[10] https://climatetrackerlatam.org/historias/la-paralizacion-de...
Is there any particular reason to take this claim from Maduro at face value?