Pasaente Noir at The Ojai Vineyard / Photo by Kim Baile
Losing a vineyard to disease is “extremely painful,” says Adam Tolmach, cofounder of The Ojai Vineyard. In 1981, he planted more than five acres of mostly Syrah on Ventura County land that his grandfather purchased a half-century earlier. His last vintage was in 1995.
“You put your heart and soul into it,” says Tolmach. “I planted every one of the vines and nurtured them. It was like my baby that I was working on. It was very heartbreaking to have it slowly die off.”
The culprit was Pierce’s disease (PD), which is spread by insects known as glassy-winged sharpshooters. It’s one of the few scourges that actually kills vines, rather than just hamper them. A problem in California since the dawn of commercial grape-growing in the 1880s, PD is more prevalent in Southern California. But it’s also known to hammer vines in the north, especially along riparian corridors like those near the Napa River.
Today, I’m joined by Congressman Mike Gallagher, who represents the 8th District in Wisconsin.
In this episode, we delve into critical infrastructure security from the perspective of national security.
Congressman Mike Gallagher:
I mean, in the past, we sort of had the advantage of basic geography, and 1000s of miles of oceans, and friendly neighbors to protect us. But in the cyber domain, those geographic distances are essentially meaningless…..we’ve seen have been kind of a huge wake up call for me and a few other legislators who tend to focus on these issues.
Bryson Bort:
We talk through Rep. Gallagher’s background in military service, public and private sector, which gives him a unique perspective on lawmaking for cybersecurity.
Erica Mitchell:
So my role is as the critical infrastructure key resources research group lead at the Army Cyber Institute, it’s a lot of words. What it basically means is my research group looks at issues within critical infrastructure; so industrial control systems. We’re looking at all 16 critical infrastructure sectors and how cyber attacks in those sectors can influence military operations such as force projection.
Bryson Bort:
Doug Fletcher:
Bryson, yeah, I do. I am actually the chief data scientist here at the Army Cyber Institute. And prior to this, I was also working as the project lead for Jack Voltaic 3.0, which was our Jack Voltaic experiment that we ran in the cities of Charleston and Savannah that looked at the impacts of cyber attacks against commercial critical infrastructure on army force projection.