The Forest
The Essentials Newsletter, Thirty-ninth Edition
Got ya! This is not another newsletter about wildfires and our forest health. Instead, in this edition, the second anniversary of this newsletter, which began in May 2023, I am pausing to take a step back and look at our critical infrastructure (CI) sectors from the “forest” level. When I think about strategy versus tactics, I like to frame the contrast as the tried and true “forest versus trees” analogy. My perspective is to first think about the forest and then the trees – zooming in and out, depending on the discussion/timeline/thought experiment needed on a particular issue. The fact is that we need both levels of understanding when tackling, well, almost anything. The strategy/forest gives us the “why,” “what” and “when,” while the tactics/trees give is the “how” and the “who.”
If you’ve read previous editions of The Essentials, you know that I think of the 17 critical infrastructure sectors as overlapping Olympic rings, each impacting the other to a greater or lesser extent, depending on how close their rings are, but with none disconnected from the other. We’ve looked at all these sectors historically and compared/contrasted them with the electric sector, which is the modern nexus of the sectors. Without electricity, we would be living in a world that looks a lot like circa 1870 A.D.
Let’s step back and look at those rings again – the “forest” of CI sectors – and think about how they impact almost every element of major policy decisions, particularly national security. But, first, a reminder of the sectors, 16 of which have been officially designated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with the 17th, mining, being my addition (for justification of my thinking, please read the eighth edition of this newsletter, Mining and Electricity, the Chicken and the Egg). Here are the CI sectors, in clusters of their closest brethren, from my perspective:
-Energy (including electricity and oil & gas)
-Mining
-Chemical
-Water and Wastewater Systems
-Communications
-Transportation Systems
-Critical Manufacturing
-Financial Services
-Information Technology
-Nuclear Reactor, Systems and Waste
-Dams Sector
-Defense Industrial Base
-Food and Agriculture
-Emergency Services
-Healthcare and Public Health
-Government Services and Facilities
-Commercial Facilities
Now that our memories are jogged about the breadth of the CI sectors, we are reminded of how our entire economy and way of life hinges on them. Even the “facilities” sectors have their critical roles – warehousing, storing, providing places for classified briefings, serving as gathering places for events, celebrations, even peaceful demonstrations.
In this newsletter, to date, I’ve identified the major, overlapping policy issues impacting these sectors. There are also a number of policies specific to one sector, but that have ancillary impact on another. For example, according to a statement from U.S. Department of the Interior’s Land and Mineral Management Deputy Assistant Secretary Steve Feldgus, in 2022 testimony before the House Natural Resources Committee:
Management of mineral development under the [1872] Mining Law has evolved over time with the need to balance competing uses of public lands. Prior to 1981, there were no regulations in place to regulate prospecting, exploration, and mining activities under the Mining Law on BLM-administered public lands. The BLM’s surface management regulations promulgated under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) in 1981 and revised in 2001 provide a framework to prevent unnecessary or undue degradation of public lands during mining and reclamation under the Mining Law. To ensure that mining operations on public lands occur in an environmentally-sound manner, operations must comply with other state and Federal laws, including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Certain exploration operations, known as notice-level operations, do not require Federal approval and therefore are not subject to the National Environmental Policy Act.
In that paragraph alone, Dr. Feldgus cited eight federal statutes and alluded to other federal and state laws that could impact mining operations on federal lands. To state what might be obvious, myriad mineral resources, especially in the West, are located on federal lands. If mining on federal lands impacts water used for drinking or irrigation, that would be problematic to the water and food/agriculture sectors. Contrastingly, if the patchwork of statutes and their regulatory regimes deter investment in domestic minerals that are crucial inputs to the critical manufacturing sector for uses in the energy, IT, nuclear, communications, defense industrial base, dams, and transportation sectors, that could also be problematic.
There is a “see no evil, hear no evil” perspective from some in the U.S. who seem perfectly fine with pushing mining and other heavy industrial processes offshore to places like China, among others, that lack even a fraction of the environmental oversight we do. Those same people and groups seem content to purchase products extracted or manufactured without sustainability in mind – perpetuating the “not-in-my-backyard” (NIMBY) mindset on a global scale.
The thing is -- just like I need to exercise if I want to eat more than 1,000 calories a day and not gain weight (anyone else over 50?) -- there are always tradeoffs. Always. Even, yes, for our friends in the information technology (IT) sector and for all of us who use, or benefit from, IT. Which is everyone in the U.S., unless you have disconnected so completely that you do not own a machine. If you own a machine, IT has been used to manufacture that machine. So, let’s say the vast majority of people, shall we?
To recap, many IT leaders and companies have pushed for clean energy, elimination of fossil fuels, environmental sustainability, elimination of manmade greenhouse gas emissions, protection of wildlife, etc. But now they face a conundrum as artificial intelligence (AI) use has skyrocketed in just a few years, requiring mind-boggling amounts of data centers to be built around the world, including in the U.S. And what do those data centers need?
Vast amounts of equipment that is made from minerals and chemical processes in critical manufacturing facilities.
Lots of water for cooling, at least for some types of these facilities.
Reliable communications connectivity – fiber optic cable and wireless (see #1 as well for the equipment.)
Lots of land, where I’m guessing wildlife is often a factor.
Access to those data centers (roads/airports).
Tons of reliable energy, which means that wind/solar intermittency must have battery backup (where do those solar panels and batteries come from – you guessed it!) and natural gas and other fuels standing by, as well – even diesel generators. The stats are mind-boggling. Here’s a recent McKinsey report for reference.
Some of you reading this may think I am being a bit snarky, when I have for so long tried to maintain a middle-of-the-road equilibrium in this newsletter. You would be right, but I am not actually snarking so much at the IT companies/data centers/hyper-scalers as I am at all of us. We really want to have our cake and eat it, too. However, this AI/data center situation sharply highlights that we cannot. Just like I can’t have cake anymore if I want to enjoy a nice glass of French Rosé. I have to make a choice – rosé or cake? So, too, must we, collectively, figure out how to strike a better balance between building/operating/maintaining our CI and protecting our natural resources. We have to move quicker and be smarter about it. Our adversaries do not care, at all, but we do care. So, how can we outsmart them? How can we stop focusing on saving each tree and save the forest?
Congress has siloed itself with committee jurisdictions sometimes at odds with each other, an example of how we often operate in the private sector, as well. We break things down into manageable pieces, understandably. Pulling things back up to the “forest”/strategic level must be done, however, so we can solve these. I don’t have all the answers to these questions by any means, but I will come back with some ideas in the next edition.