September 11, 2026
25 years ago today, the world changed forever...
Morning news shows were all live. The timing couldn't have been better. That was, of course, part of the plan.
On the West Coast, where I've lived since the early 1990s, the phone rang. It was my mother.
I recall her first words were: "Turn on your T.V." followed by: "TWO planes hit BOTH Twin Towers..."
I turned on my television and saw the smoke wafting from both towers. I went into the other room and called my mom back (most phones were still "land lines" back then) and said "this is going to change everything."
I knew that hundreds must be dead already. This was terrorism at a virtually unprecedented scale, by a virtually unstoppable method of attack. Everything, everyone, was suddenly vulnerable.
Not that we weren't vulnerable all along, but no one had taken advantage of a free society's innate vulnerabilities so thoroughly and successfully before. And it did, indeed, change everything, starting with giving U.S. Presidents an excuse to do just about anything in the name of the "War on Terror" which would begin soon after the attacks.
But that morning, that bleak day — was just beginning.
I went back into the living room, looked at the tv, and asked my wife, who was staring at the T.V.: "What happened to the second tower?!?"
It was gone.
It had fallen, and now thousands more were dead. Of course I could guess what had most likely happened, only to have it pretty thoroughly confirmed as the second tower also fell without further attacks or secondary explosions: Structural failure due to initial impacts of the strong parts of the airplane (engine turbines, wing spars, landing gear, etc.) along with fire from the airplane fuel and building contents, that burns hot enough and long enough to weaken the steel beams just enough...
And all this low enough on the tower to bring down a large enough portion of the building to collapse the rest...
...while high enough up to make bringing fire-fighting equipment up to that level take a long time — especially as they had to go up the same stairs everyone else was using to evacuate.
It was a carefully planned attack, and New York City paid dearly that day, losing hundreds of its most heroic first responders.
Nearly every American lost someone close that day: A friend or old school chum, a co-worker, a relative, a family member, a spouse, a parent, a son or daughter...
And so began the War on Terror.
We soon learned about the Pentagon plane (which still has many mysteries surrounding it). And Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvainia, which dove for the ground when the passengers bravely tried to take back control. Flight 93 may have been heading for the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station, which is now called the Crane Clean Energy Center and which might be restarted to serve data centers...
And data centers are, more than anything else, being pushed for their usefulness in... fighting a modern war, or (hopefully...) having enough data to prevent its occurrence in the first place.
Or, if you're NOT one of the good guys, AI software running on massive data centers can be used to disrupt other data centers, or other infrastructure such as water desalination plants, pumping stations, filtration systems, communications systems, banking systems, industrial processes... and even for remotely destroying nuclear power plants.
And with zero-day coming (a still-theoretical moment when quantum-computing-AI can crack any known security system), nowhere is safe from infiltration, even places that were — at least in theory — previously safe from just about everything but a thermonuclear war.
Thus, we've ended up with a police state.
Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download:
acehoffman.org
Blog:
acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube:
youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at]
acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner,
The Animated Software Company
