You could say the same thing about the energy grid, our military, etc. Not that you are wrong, but Wall Street melting down is way easier to back out of than a nuclear plant.
Not to challenge your point, that is only true of certain nuclear power plant designs. There are nuclear power plants that cannot melt down, or can be turned off like a switch. BWR limitations aren't true across the spectrum. :)
Agreed, but it would also vary by the nature of the hackers' intent. With the current global economy, taking down Wall Street would create an immediate impact worldwide and would have long term rippling effects. Hacking into and disrupting a power grid could do the same, but is heavily dependent upon location and timing, no? Maybe I just don't know enough about how the power grid works.
Granted, if we're talking about physically destroying infrastructure as opposed to just hacking, then I'd have to agree with you.
The electricity grid is also extremely complicated system that many people don't understand. With any complex system, it grows to beyond the knowledge of the people working in it.
One thing to note is that many of the critical components on the electrical grid is controlled over the network. When I used to build tools for the electricity trading desk, we were handling market bids/asks and scheduling of the power plants.
We had systems that lay out prices that we were willing to turn on and ramp up power plants. If prices hit a certain point, we were committed to delivering that power. We made these decisions based on economics of the power plant (gas plant vs nuclear vs wind) and other factors (such as weather , time of day, whether the Cowboys were playing that day).
Anyways, my point is that all these systems are interconnected and rather complex. It doesn't take much for an error in one place to bring down a major part of the system.
As with any engineering, you're never going to factor away all the breaks. You need to build a system that assume things will break and ensure that it's not catastrophic.
Also, I don't think it's fair to say that Wall Street doesn't understand software. There are some very smart people doing solid engineering there. Neither one of the footnotes that you had in your post support your statement that Wall St doesn't understand software.
