00:00:00.000This morning, investigators are looking to see if Iran is behind the cyber attacks that affected more than 30 water plants in Minnesota and others in at least seven states.
00:00:10.480Officials say the hackers are modifying passwords to lock out operators.
00:00:14.580They most certainly have the capability to conduct these types of cyber attacks.
00:00:19.060okay a stark intro there paul but nonetheless it kind of paints a picture of the possibilities
00:00:30.240when something like this happens minnesota is uh battling with the threat in my mind uh of course
00:00:37.500the water was not actually contaminated but the threat uh rose bubbled to the surface no pun
00:00:43.040intended pretty quickly on this one oh yeah you know interesting some quick facts on this one
00:00:48.060mike that i pulled up there's 170 000 public water systems in the united states which actually
00:00:55.740are pumping 34 000 billion gallons of water of water a daily yeah so you know that's a crazy
00:01:04.540stat 70 are non-compliant so when they were inspected they're non-compliant with basic
00:01:11.100federal cyber security risk assessment and emergency planning mandates 70 so again 107
00:01:19.020imagine this and i didn't say it very well so i'll say it quickly again 170 000 systems 34 billion
00:01:26.860daily flow gallons of daily flow 70 non-compliant with federal mandates for cyber security
00:01:33.580350 vulnerabilities identified by the EPA for critical or high-risk cyber security vulnerabilities across the U.S. water system in recent inspections ranging from default passwords, unpatched remote access software, unplugged directly into public-facing internet modems.
00:01:56.840Wow. So they're basically fully exposed to the wide internet.
00:02:01.400Well, and on top of this, Mike, you know, the three human three rules, you know, basically humans can survive three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food.
00:02:16.300So this is this is this is important, right?
00:02:19.340They get this definitely needs priority.
00:02:23.520Let's look into what the what the potential outcomes of this kind of disaster are, because I think it's worthwhile.
00:02:29.340Well, can I can I jump back for a minute? For those of you, you know, a water treatment center and we you know, most people just turn on a tap and water is there. I do. Yeah. So if you've ever had the chance, I've been lucky enough to go to a couple water treatment centers because being involved in building, you get to know the city guys and then you're interested to go see it. It is kind of disgusting when you go see it. Treatment centers, you know, as they're pulling out old tires from the water and all this stuff as they're trying to filter through.
00:03:21.040They're chemically dosing, whether it be chlorine or disinfectant, coagulation, pH balancing.
00:03:28.520so they're tampering with your chemical ratios that could poison the supply water line right
00:03:35.480it's a very fine mix of keeping the water oh yeah it's a chemistry experiment that's going on live
00:03:41.480when you're sitting there watching them you know they're dumping again they're dumping big vats
00:03:46.360of chemicals into your water as it goes into these pressurized line they're again they're
00:03:52.520They're maintaining static pressure to keep untreated groundwater and bacteria from seeping into distribution pipes.
00:04:00.300So if the pipes shut down, the risk is, quite frankly, the groundwater and all the things that are surrounding those pipes start to seep through, right?
00:04:09.700If there's no pressure going through that pipe, it gives opportunity for seepage into the pipe.
00:05:26.740If you think about, you know, a condo on fire in major centers or the inability actually with power down for people to even live or exist in those buildings at all.
00:07:35.900Other cybersecurity conducted by Iran against the United States has risen to the level of nuisance more than alarm.
00:07:42.400For example, they released all that cash, Patel, all the emails and photographs stolen from his personal account.
00:07:48.820And also, there were no indications that any water supply had been rendered unsafe to drink based on SCADA.
00:07:56.500Yeah. So the only reason I put this out here is because I want to earmark this as a cyber attack that might have been the key that started the engine on the next phase of a war in the Middle East.
00:08:10.480You know, we have seen this before. Weapons of mass destruction. Oh, they're enriching uranium.
00:08:17.140You know, all of these various tales that were told to find out later had nothing to do with the alleged assailants.
00:08:24.400Yeah. Well, you know, a nation who's polling very heavily that they don't want the Iranian war.
00:08:30.120All of a sudden, you know, you see the attack on the homeland and that changes the equation.
00:08:37.460Yeah, you're going to go for it. Now, you know, it's interesting.
00:08:40.720And I've been through I think I mentioned on a couple of shows before.
00:08:43.700I've been through a couple of hurricanes down the US in Florida when I was living there doing a couple of projects, you know, having lost power.
00:08:53.000so for those of you just wanted to go through it from a logistics perspective of what happens
00:08:57.840what happens well it's it's interesting i'm going to talk about it from from two sides so
00:09:03.020what happens technically and then what happens kind of what the population do and then i want
00:09:09.120you to kind of talk about the health yeah because it's very interesting because they they do parallel
00:09:14.040each other but you know you don't really think about it at the time um so you know two to four
00:09:20.860hours you know your water supply goes down so water reserves because there are water reserves
00:09:26.380in a lot of cities um they start to begin dropping so you know what's in the pipes starts to go away
00:09:32.700people are using it hospital hospitals move into conservation mode cyber teams work to contain the
00:09:39.260attack so you'd have a bunch of people running try to get the systems back up and running the
00:09:44.140population as they hear about it and i went through this in a couple hurricanes they start
00:09:49.180going to the supermarkets and the shelves start emptying so bottled water sales spike residents
00:09:55.900begin filling containers social media rumors spread really fast hospitals begin to face critical water
00:10:03.740shortages so it becomes a real uh you know you're seeing the mild panic at two to four hours
00:10:10.300six to twelve hours now this is this is kind of where i two to four hours two people are cleaning
00:10:16.860the shelves out like it's uh black friday i got caught in the first hurricane that i got caught in
00:10:23.500um in florida which is a bad hurricane i i reacted too slow because i had to take care of the
00:10:32.140building that i was building so i got stuck in and by the time i went to leave i couldn't get out i
00:10:37.900couldn't get a plane ticket i couldn't get onto a highway because the traffic was too backed up
00:10:45.180i went to kind of bunker down the grocery store shelves were bare all water was gone there was
00:10:50.700nothing on any shelf the gas stations were locked down like this is like this is you know within
00:10:58.86012 hours it's within a work that's a terrifying and your body starts to operate it on and i would
00:11:06.860imagine at a different frequency suddenly you're in survival mode yeah yeah so now your body
00:11:11.260chemicals are operating differently oh yeah i well i went back to the site i was building and i went
00:11:16.460and uh created a bunker in the basement and i ended up spending five days with the security
00:11:23.340team that was overlooking the site uh who were interesting group of guys mostly ex-military from
00:11:28.700the u.s military who were there to protect the pillaging of the site after the hurricane that's
00:12:02.020So the fire services begin monitoring the water pressure.
00:12:04.940restaurants gyms salons all shut down because they they rely on water uh parents go to their
00:12:11.160schools and grab their kids because there's no water in the schools communities start checking
00:12:17.320on seniors and the vulnerable right so that's what kind of goes down now so now you get to the 12
00:12:23.760hour mark uh a water distribution most cities have a water distribution plans they're not worth very
00:12:30.240much quite frankly they're like hurricane plans they don't really do much because it's anarchy
00:12:34.360at that point at that moment yeah but they issue them governments coordinate uh state and federal
00:12:40.840and provincial support with whatever they can if they have military um by this time as i mentioned
00:12:47.480grocery shelves are empty anxiety is high um families start to figure out how to conserve
00:12:54.280every drop of water uh infrastructure trust is gone what what where are we at at this point you're at
00:13:01.64012 to 24 hours so not even the end of the first day no no this is the end of this is and this is
00:13:08.240full battle mode right survival already so then so then after 24 hours it's it's survival mode
00:13:15.360so after 24 hours you're into full survival mode hospitals start to prioritize critical care
00:13:21.740so they try to figure out how to keep the people alive that are on you know on life support water
00:13:28.780restrictions expand recovery crews work around the clock uh schools close businesses for the
00:13:35.420most part close sanitation becomes a growing concern and the economy's shut right everything
00:13:41.900would have to close right so there you are so that's what happens so um wow you know because
00:13:47.580if you think about it water supports everything hospitals fire protection food production
00:13:52.300manufacturing sanitation all supported by water so in the first 48 hours we are in lockdown mode
00:14:00.060yeah just trying to survive at that point we are and there's a panic in the hearts of the people
00:14:04.540that couldn't provide for themselves i would imagine people start to concern themselves
00:14:09.100with their own lives and not the care of others yeah well they're just trying to find water right
00:14:13.420right away there and that's where you know again when i mentioned you know in the hurricane scenario
00:14:18.300the biggest issue and i again i was new so it's interesting i sat in on the meetings for this
00:14:23.820uh and you know being from canada i was like hurricanes i was really kind of under underwhelmed
00:14:29.660by the only hurricane we ever heard about was hurricane hazel which happened yeah decades ago
00:14:34.540here yeah right yeah and they're talking about uh tsunamis and floods they're talking about the wind
00:14:40.380you know they're because they've been through them yeah um and then they're starting the
00:14:44.540conversation with me about protection for pillaging so and i didn't think this was a thing i thought
00:14:50.860oh you know this is you lock the doors well it is a as soon as everyone starts to vacate the town
00:14:56.700the people that stay in the town starts to pillage everything yeah so that's why a lot of times you
00:15:01.580don't see people so in this case people would be moving around minnesota in this case if the water
00:15:07.420the systems would have failed they would have been starting to pillage anything they could to find
00:15:12.300water and if they didn't have water they would be trying to find people who did have water
00:15:18.380and that becomes the challenge right and then once that that's an interaction that changes the
00:15:23.660the civility of human beings oh yeah well you're in a you know uh gun toting we all saw the riots
00:15:31.100you know the riots in minnesota you know how many uh americans do carry firearms how many people
00:15:37.420have so then you have to secure yourself and secure your water supply because you have three
00:15:43.900days from the time that everything's fully shut off right and your water supply is fully used
00:15:50.460to survive right so that's your timeline you're on now okay so now we're completely out of water
00:15:54.860everybody's we're at the 48 hour mark roughly and maybe even earlier than that yeah so here's what
00:16:01.100happens over the next few days okay the the first few days are kind of rough people get sick stomach
00:16:06.780that's the the major first phase uh germs animal waste bacteria from the water starts to hit
00:16:12.380people's stomach because no matter how much the end of that treatment cycle there's no way that
00:16:19.180people don't get sick off of the last bit of water that comes out of the system well it's interesting
00:16:23.980mike can you remember um walkerton so a lot of us you know we had a walkerton ontario yeah a
00:16:31.340contaminated uh well or water system um and it was after a big rainfall and from the the cows and the
00:16:41.180manure it contaminated their water uh and that was just a contamination that wasn't anything due to a
00:16:47.180water shortage just a contamination once it got contaminated right away you saw 2 000 people 2300
00:16:55.260from what they i read 2300 people affected 27 people had permanent kidney damage seven dead
00:17:03.900um from that incident and that and that's a very rural area yeah 2300 could be 23 000 in most
00:17:13.100but the minor cities and towns yeah and they were moving people from hospital to hospital
00:17:17.820right they were overrun those 2300 people were violently sick and they were you know the hospitals
00:17:23.340were full and you know it was they were moving people to the u.s to get them treatment at that
00:17:27.900point it was every hospital bed inside of you know most of canada was full at that point i
00:17:34.380think that there was a hundred hospitals uh yeah affected were being used all over the country so
00:17:39.420you can one small town one small town a town like minnesota would be it'd be unbelievable because
00:17:44.220as soon as the water system starts to get jaded and tainted you're going to get people getting
00:17:49.580sick and then from there off you go right you know four days into this the dehydration spiral begins
00:17:55.340okay so you you can't help it your body craves water so much you begin to drink dirty water at
00:18:01.100that point well you have to you know for those of you you know i'm sure most people know it but
00:18:06.300as you're peeing you know what you're going to be doing through the first three days you have
00:18:11.900to drink water right you're supposed to be you know they tell you from a from a medical or health
00:18:17.500perspective that you know you're supposed to be roughly matching your your output to your input
00:18:22.540right so as you go to the bathroom you know you basically should go and grab some water a glass
00:18:27.180of water to replenish your system again you know i i joke with my son again but you know 70 of our
00:18:33.740bodies are made up of water right well even if our body is fighting the germs by day three you're
00:18:39.980putting those germs back in right and the you know you're so sick the i without iv your dehydration
00:18:47.020begins. So even if you're consuming that water, it's dirty water, the dehydration starts to take
00:18:53.420effect. Now, this is between days four and seven. Here's what you feel and see at that point. The
00:19:00.480constant sickness makes it impossible to keep anything down without IV fluids or working
00:19:04.320hospitals. People's skin starts to shrivel. The kidneys begin to shut down and severe muscle
00:19:09.320cramps set in. This is when the weakest young children, the elderly start dying from extreme
00:19:15.940dehydration so that's that's just by day seven the second week and beyond day eight and and on
00:19:23.940it's a total system crash the sickness spreads from person to person because there's no clean
00:19:28.560water to wash hands flush toilets stay clean dangerous chemicals poisons and toxic green
00:19:33.820algae from lakes starts affecting people's livers and blood and towns turn into ghost towns
00:19:39.240environments uh change entirely because most of the neighborhood is bedridden by the end of 72
00:19:48.200hours the microbial onslaught has begun and within three weeks major portion of the population
00:19:57.900started to die right yeah well this is three weeks from that moment now yeah if you make it
00:20:05.020three weeks you're lucky honestly mike you're lucky to make and that's if you have a water
00:20:08.660supply to keep trying to drip into yourself, you know, almost like an IV to keep it going.
00:20:14.100So apparently, once you get to the end of week two, the shock of what's happening to
00:20:20.700you is a multiplier of the effects around you.
00:20:24.760And so it's a, anyway, I hate to, you know, dysentery dehydration incapacitates the workforce
00:20:32.820before you know it, the people who would be supporting you can't.
00:20:35.660on a national level they're taking care of their own families they have to they have to go back
00:20:40.860and try to maintain their own water supplies so you you have pretty much public anarchy at that
00:20:46.220point and that's why the un you know when the un says off off uh uh restricted uh bombing areas yes
00:20:55.180the number one one they have you notice is power plants number two is desalination and uh you know
00:21:02.220anything to do with water you know can uh so it is a big issue and quite frankly that's why this
00:21:08.140was a scary event you know and it's a scary event on a number of fronts it's scary because
00:21:13.020you know this is a city that's gone through like you know it's interesting i got up this morning
00:21:18.700and i'm looking at the mn on that and i'm thinking is this minnesota i had the tv off and i was
00:21:25.100looking at him thinking mississota minnesota is going through something else right because
00:21:30.860minnesota's been in the news for for months now right we've we saw the you know the ice the you
00:21:37.580know the ice turn into minnesota you know you had the unfortunate death of the of the lady who
00:21:44.380you know the they say was trying to run over the ice officer who he ended up shooting and then they
00:21:50.780had the protesting and then the picketing nick shirley went up there and revealed all this crazy
00:21:56.460crime and fraud and and now uh you know uh president trump has actually uh shut off funding
00:22:05.420to uh minnesota because he says it you know if it's going to maintain such a fraudulent place
00:22:11.300they had to send in the head of ice to actually negotiate uh a resolution with the residents
00:22:18.060they ended up pulling out for the most part it's been a you know it's been a tumultuous time for
00:22:23.480minnesota now he's also minnesota is one of the targets that he has about uh oh yeah there's
00:22:29.260voter fraud galore there obviously right so this has been part of the spark that lit that fire
00:22:34.700yeah uh you know there's a bunch of places across the u.s that he's citing but minnesota was one of
00:22:39.200the main ones you know uh if you take a look at the major cities in this country that have voter
00:22:43.480fraud minnesota top of the list yeah yeah so target well voter fraud so you know you remember
00:22:50.660it's interesting target on their back i think right oh yeah well it's interesting because just
00:22:55.380just the other day it came out that uh trump was endorsing uh remember the my pillow guy yeah yeah
00:23:02.580mike lindell yeah so he was actually endorsing mike lindell to be the guy like this guy right
00:23:08.180well i mean you don't want to hang with him do you no nobody he's an interesting interesting story
00:23:13.780right former drug addict you know turned his life around found religion uh opened up a company then
00:23:20.900when trump actually did all the june 6 you know all that june 6 stuff went on quite frankly he
00:23:26.980doubled down supporting him you know saying he didn't do it um his business kind of sunk down
00:23:32.340again and now he's back again and you know before the show i said to christopher what is this guy
00:23:37.380doing now well he he doubled down from pillows he's now doing bed bed bedding and linens yeah
00:23:44.180uh pillows of course lucky pillows he's got those lumpy pillows he's got a clothing line a slipper
00:23:49.540line he's got a towel line he's got sandal line and a casual wear line now asking for a friend
00:23:56.260what are the slippers like uh slippers look nice actually you know i was thinking again some and
00:24:01.380actually putting uh logo on it but you know it actually they look pretty nice you know but but
00:24:06.580when you know i see him on get your tpl slippers now he is for the not he is going to win the
00:24:12.500nomination is for the candidacy for the republican party yeah there of course right because he's the
00:24:18.980they love him in that state republicans do some republicans do um but yeah you know it's interesting
00:24:25.060to see that uh they've even tried to change the political dynamic because remember during all this
00:24:31.540the mayor of minnesota was telling trump to get the f out of town yeah right so there was quite
00:24:36.820a few so this is his backlash to that but it is weird by the way just uh what's his name michael
00:24:42.580lindell michael lindell yeah you know how they say you know that mustache and hair of his you
00:24:47.540know how they say the carpet matches the drapes whatever i'll put it out there i i don't know
00:24:52.260what's more fake yeah so this does feel like minnesota is a tar a bit of a target like not
00:24:59.460just by they seem to be a spotlight opportunity for trump for highlighting stuff like this you
00:25:09.700know oh minnesota's so out of control they can't even protect their own water like you can hear
00:25:13.540the dialogue that comes out of this yeah yeah you know i don't want a tinfoil hat it but you know
00:25:18.500it is it is kind of when i saw it i was like why would why would anyone target water in minnesota
00:25:24.420but but there is a reason obviously maybe maybe it's because it's the weakest systems
00:25:29.460i i don't know but they seem to have caught you know let's knock on wood they seem to have caught
00:25:35.460most of the cyber attacks that have been layered onto their system and hopefully that you know
00:25:41.780maintains they have every federal agency on it right now yeah but but this is not you know we've
00:25:47.940We've done shows recently about cyber attacks and hacking and how advanced that has become, how AI is affecting it.
00:25:56.940I really do worry about this because no matter what we're doing at the federal level or the municipal level to protect ourselves,
00:26:04.480it keeps coming up that we are short and we are behind the hackers who seem to always be in the lead.
00:26:11.560So when it comes to our national protection of water and power, you know, our hospital, our privacy of this variety, it does make me worry.
00:26:24.840It doesn't take much for somebody to be a better hacker than the system.
00:26:29.120Well, and the question, it's funny because, you know, I was actually getting ready and I said to my wife, I said, I wonder where Canada sits on this front.
00:26:38.200You know, have we done a report recently?
00:26:39.820i was going to look over the weekend and i'll be back to the viewers but you know are we uh as
00:26:45.900uh negligent as the u.s with respect to cyber attacks on our water system and i hope or not
00:26:52.380i hope we've thought it through but you know uh quite a few conversations and i know you've had
00:26:58.060a mic when you look at our power grids we're not that robust in our power grid system yeah so now
00:27:04.220take a look at our i'm sure our water cyber security is is about the same i i'd assume
00:27:11.580and you know we recently had rains so you know we had torrential rains that would have it's so
00:27:17.740funny that you mentioned this because the rains that we're getting this summer as we often do
00:27:21.980are flash flood rains they come heavy yeah they have heavy impact nothing goes into the system
00:27:28.460it all becomes wash over the surface in rural areas that is the problem if the system doesn't
00:27:37.420work there and the runoff the toxic runoff it's the system that community walkerton backs right
00:27:44.220up but we've had we've had quite a few flash floods over the last few years so you look at our
00:27:50.220you know that our water sewage or water drainage systems so if they're that far behind and they're
00:27:55.340struggling with their aging and their infrastructure where are our cyber security our scad technology
00:28:01.740systems to and what is our backup plan i guess that's the question i'd have to ask and if we're
00:28:07.340seeing this i think it just it again it and you you know until we got started getting ready for
00:28:12.700the show and looking at the impacts and what the the number of hours that you have to react to this
00:28:18.380it's pretty scary stuff yeah uh let's see two weeks and decimation of population in an area
00:28:28.220that's without sort of the national help or an army or anybody but if it is possible to do it
00:28:33.320in a large area like walkerton totally damaged our health care system for a period of time oh it did
00:28:39.960and it was 2300 people it made us relook at the whole system again now you know i think we've done
00:28:45.140better job going forward at our well system and our water systems and small um you know uh rural
00:28:51.940communities but still a challenge so mike i don't want to finish the show so this is interesting
00:28:57.940because going into the weekend i think we're going to see a pretty active weekend over in iran
00:29:03.780i think now this is kind of i think yeah i think what you know this is the the catalyst for the
00:29:09.540next round of what we're about to see here so well i think the next 12 hours are kind of critical i
00:29:14.820I think that either we see a determination by the White House that this was an attack, a specific attack of a specific nation or a terrorist organization, or it looks like somebody's claimed it on the behest of those groups.
00:29:32.500But there's a big battlefront difference between the two of them.
00:29:36.480one of them incites war yeah weapons of mass destruction on the attack on the actual on the
00:29:43.840american soil the other is okay we're not sure what this was but we handled it and everything
00:29:50.320kind of chills out i don't know how badly trump wants to get out of this war and i think that
00:29:57.080has a lot to do with what happens in the next 12 hours based on this what do you think happens
00:30:02.040i think he's got to go forward you know it's it's it's you know i was uh watching kind of
00:30:09.880what was the news over the last 48 hours on this and just because i was interested interested to
00:30:17.420see what he would do over this weekend because i think this is you know how he likes to do these
00:30:22.980attacks when he gets the most press so if you want to do something now you'd get the most eyes on it
00:30:29.840in North America because we're going into the critical two weekends
00:30:54.900So I was thinking to myself, if he's going to do something
00:30:57.480And he wants to get something that catches eyeballs, which he seems to like to do, whether it's the Christmas invasion of Venezuela or it's something like this.