Our guest blogger is Peter Swire, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and the C. William O’Neill Professor of Law at the Ohio State University.

The front page of the April 8 Wall Street Journal blared: “Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated by Spies.” The article reports that cyberspies from Russia, China, and other countries “have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.”

The same day, I released a report on “Smart Grid, Smart Broadband, Smart Infrastructure: Melding Federal Stimulus Programs to Get More Bang for the Buck.” Among other points, I specifically discusses how better broadband deployment can improve the cybersecurity of the electricity grid.

Parts of the Recovery Act’s stimulus spending can be integrated to save money and improve our long-term infrastructure. One section of the act provides billions of federal dollars to fund a “smart grid” for electricity that connects a far more flexible and efficient grid for long-distance transmission to regional feeder lines and local hubs, and then to the “last mile” to residences and businesses. A different part of the act provides billions in funding to upgrade broadband networks for unserved and underserved areas around the country.

Construction of the electricity grid and the broadband network should go hand in hand. We should follow the principle of “dig once” — when bulldozers are in place to build electricity transmission lines, the crews should be laying fiber where possible and otherwise upgrading the communications network at the same time. This approach will speed the deployment of high-speed broadband to dispersed geographic areas, including to far-flung cell phone towers that are often near power transmission lines.

In addition to non-security goals (e.g., energy conservation), the upgrade and spending in the electric utility grid should include providing a sufficiently trustworthy network for control. The requirements are different enough for this sector that funding for cybersecurity research and implementation should be an integral part of the electricity grid stimulus spending. Read more

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The most intractable enemy the United States faces in Afghanistan isn’t the Taliban — it’s the corruption apparently endemic to all levels of the Afghan government. As the New York Times reported yesterday, President Obama’s plan to send 4,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to train Afghan security forces is endangered by corruption that threatens the entire international enterprise in Central Asia.

As reporter Richard Oppel, Jr. wrote, “better policing may be impossible for Afghanistan unless government officials at all levels stop cannibalizing their civil administration and police force for a quick profit.” Corruption eats away at the counterinsurgency effort as it erodes the legitimacy of all levels of government. The system of corruption perpetuates itself, as mid-level politicians and security officers look to recoup the $50,000 they shell out in bribes to obtain their positions by demanding bribes for their own services. In all, it creates a security and justice system that is unfair, uncertain, and unjust.

As the departing police chief in Ghazni province told Oppel, “this is the reason no one accepts the rule of law, because the government is not going by the rule of law.” If the U.S.-backed government can’t obey its own rules in the face of individual avarice, ordinary Afghans will understandably wonder why they should stick up for the Kabul government in the face of Taliban intimidation. First Sgt. John Strain, the senior NCO of the police training team in Ghazni, put the state of affairs stark perspective: “The corruption here is a bigger threat to a stable government than the Taliban.” Read more