Industrial security

The World’s Worst Industrial Disaster Is Still Unfolding

In old bhopal, not far from the small Indian city’s glitzy new shops and gorgeous lakes, is the abandoned Union Carbide factory. Here, in one ramshackle building, are hundreds of broken brown bottles crusted with the white residue of unknown chemicals. Below the corroding skeleton of another, drops of mercury glitter in the sun. In the far corner of the site is the company’s toxic-waste dump, shrouded in a sickly green moss. Not 15 feet away, a scrawny boy of about 6 tries to join a game of cricket. A few skinny cows graze next to a large, murky puddle. Strewn on the ground are torn plastic bags, yellowed newspapers, stained paper cups. And in the air, the pungent fumes of chlorinated hydrocarbons.

On December 3, 1984, 40 tons of a toxic gas spewed from the factory and scorched the throats, eyes, and lives of thousands of people outside these walls. It was—still is—the world’s deadliest industrial disaster. For a brief time, the Bhopal gas tragedy, as it became known, raised urgent questions about how multinational companies and governments should respond when the unthinkable happens. But it didn’t take long for the world’s attention to shift, beginning with the Chernobyl nuclear accident a little more than a year later.

Industrial security

America’s industrial base is at risk, and the military may feel the consequences

Underneath the rosy picture of a strong U.S. defense industry lies a demographic challenge for the workforce and contraction issues, a new government study has concluded.

The annual Industrial Capabilities report, quietly released May 17 by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, found that America’s defense industry continued to outperform other industrial sectors in fiscal 2017.

However, long-term trends “continue to threaten the health of the industrial base, limit innovation, and reduce U.S. competitiveness in the global markets,” the report states.

The greatest challenge that could harm domestic defense capabilities is the demographics of the workforce. Only 39 percent of the current workforce is under the age of 45. And while jobs in the aerospace and defense sectors are seen positively by the majority of young professionals, only 1.5 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in the U.S. have a science degree.

Industrial security

US Data Systems Under Attack

The US government has recently issued a rare public warning about hacking campaigns targeting energy and industrial firms. The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a report distributed via email, that the nuclear, energy, aviation, water and critical manufacturing industries have been targeted along with government entities in attacks dating back to at least May. The agencies warned that hackers had succeeded in compromising some targeted networks, but did not identify specific victims or describe any cases of sabotage.

According to alarabiya.net, the goal of the attackers is to compromise organizational networks with malicious emails and tainted websites to obtain credentials for accessing computer networks of their targets. US authorities have been monitoring the activity for months, which they initially detailed in a confidential June report. That document, which was privately distributed to firms at risk of attacks, described a narrow set of activity focusing on the nuclear, energy and critical manufacturing sectors.