8/28/2022: The Grid, Sharswood
60 Minutes
CBS News
3.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bill Whitaker takes a hard look at the U.S. electric grid – the largest machine in the history of the world, a hodgepodge of public and privately-owned companies cobbled together over generations – so essential to daily life that we literally couldn’t live without it. 60 MINUTES’ investigation into the threats facing the grid, from cyber-attacks to sabotage and physical assaults, are eye-opening and not reassuring. What’s more, no U.S. government agency, not even the Department of Energy, is truly in charge of protecting it. Graham Messick is the producer.
Lesley Stahl visits Fred Miller and his family in the large house in southern Virginia that they recently bought to host family gatherings, only to discover that their own ancestors had once been enslaved on that very property. Miller’s sister and cousins scoured historical records and enlisted a genealogist to find evidence that their great-great-grandparents, Violet and David Miller, were enslaved on the plantation, then-called Sharswood. The dilapidated building still standing behind the main house has been identified by archeologists as living quarters for some of the enslaved men and women there. Buying this home has opened a window into the Miller family’s past that was not discussed within their family, and that many African American families struggle to obtain. This is a double-length segment. Shari Finkelstein is the producer.
Transcript
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| 0:32.9 | On the night of April 16th, 2013, a mysterious incident south of San Jose marked the most serious attack on our power grid in history. |
| 0:47.1 | If they had succeeded, what would have happened? |
| 0:49.0 | Could have brought down all the Silicon Valley. |
| 0:50.9 | We're talking Google, Apple, all these guys. |
| 0:53.6 | Yes, that's correct. Who do you think |
| 0:55.9 | this could have been? I don't know. We don't know if they were a nation state. We don't know if |
| 1:01.4 | they were domestic actors, but it was somebody who did have competent people who could, in fact, |
| 1:08.1 | plan out this kind of very sophisticated attack and execute it. |
| 1:13.6 | The Millers are a large family that enjoy getting together. They purchased this historic house |
| 1:23.5 | in southern Virginia near where they grew up, to have a place for family celebrations. |
| 1:29.3 | This is an original room from the 1800s. |
| 1:32.3 | But no one could have imagined how the history of the home |
| 1:35.3 | and its grounds would change everything they thought they knew |
| 1:39.3 | about their family's history. |
| 1:41.3 | It's like a full circle. |
| 1:43.3 | Like it was meant to happen. To me circle. Like, it was meant to happen. |
| 1:46.4 | To me, it was like, it was meant to happen. |
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