China mulls space-based control system for high-speed rail. Can it be hacked?
AI Summary
China is considering implementing a space-based control system for its high-speed rail network, following a fatal 2011 train disaster caused by a lightning strike. Questions about cybersecurity vulnerabilities and system resilience are central to the discussion.
On a summer evening in 2011, two high-speed trains hurtling through the Chinese countryside met in a fireball of twisted metal and shattered glass. The Wenzhou disaster, as it came to be known, killed 40 people and injured nearly 200. The official inquiry traced the catastrophe to a lightning strike that had fried a trackside circuit, making one train “invisible” to the control centre, which then wrongly cleared the line for the train behind. However, could the “brain” of the railway ever be...