What Happens if China Hacks the US Water Supply? I Went to a Secret War Game to Find Out
A war game simulation involving insurance executives highlights the catastrophic, cascading effects of a coordinated cyberattack on the U.S. water supply. The scenario demonstrates how IT disruption can lead to physical infrastructure failure, hospital evacuations, and supply chain bottlenecks.
Why it matters
It underscores the critical vulnerability of essential public infrastructure to cyber warfare and the potential for widespread societal disruption.
A full 24 hours of in-game time have passed since hackers disrupted 5,000 water utilities across the United States in this imagined scenario. Joshua Corman, the former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency strategist serving as our dungeon master, stands at the front of a conference space in an office tower high above Times Square, narrating the latest updates to the game’s participants, a few dozen insurance executives set up in six teams. All of them have gone disturbingly silent.
The report focuses on the technical and logistical outcomes of a simulation rather than political commentary.
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