Militants toppled two transmission pylons causes a cascade of failure that plunged most of Pakistan (140 out 190 m people) into a blackout. Here's some insight into this:
- Apparently, the attackers found a systempunkt. A systempunkt is the node in any network (physical or social) where it is the most vulnerable. An attack on a systempunkt can generate cascades of failure that take down the entire network. Its possible, although unlikely, the attackers knew this was the network's systempunkt when they destroyed it.
- The success of this attack was largely due to the strain on Pakistan's grid. Pakistan's demand for electricity stands an estimate 14,000 MW, but it only produces 7,000 MW due to gross mismanagement, high debt, theft, fuel shortages, regulatory failure, etc. You name it. This shortfall has led to load shedding of up to ~15 hours a day already. As we know, when a complex network is operating at or near its capacity, it is many times more vulnerable to collapse and thereby much easier to attack.
- This attack will prompt more attacks on the grid as other groups attempt to replicate the success it had. The reason is that militant groups in Pakistan (and across the world) use open source development to improve themselves. When an attack this simple and inexpensive yields outsized results, other groups will copy it in an attempt to do the same.
Attacks like these can be very damaging. How so? People don't blame the attackers for blackouts. They blame the government. In fact, the inability of a government to deliver the basics of energy and fuel is more damaging to its legitimacy than problems with security (it routinely led the list of reasons Iraqis were angry at the government).
JR
PS: It's easy to find systempunkts like this in the KSA as well as the USA.