As Ang Cui added more juice to the power grid, overhead electric lines began to glow bright orange. Then, within seconds, the power lines evaporated in a flash of smoke, leaving an entire section of Manhattan in the dark.
No actual buildings or people lost power because, luckily, this was just a simulation – a tabletop diorama of Manhattan complete with tiny copper power lines and the Statue of Liberty relocated to a pared-down Central Park. Cui’s colleagues at Red Balloon Security Inc had unleashed a few lines of malicious code that knocked out a computer designed to protect electrical lines.