Texas will be working with the Trump administration on a new six-month pilot program to protect the state’s water systems from foreign adversaries following recent cyberattacks. The purpose of the pilot initiative is to see whether other…
Page A2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 31 August 2026
Texas launches initiative to guard water systems from foreign adversaries as Putin, Modi and Xi hold anti-US summit.
Let's be clear about what this program actually is: Texas identified a real vulnerability — water infrastructure, control systems, the stuff that keeps the tap running — and did something about it before Washington got around to noticing. That's not paranoia, that's a state stepping up where federal coordination has been, frankly, slow. Every well-run utility does a security review; Texas just called a press conference about theirs, which is more transparency than most of you get from your water district, and I'd defend that on principle even if the timing looks a little — okay, the timing is what it is. Two items landed the same week. One says Texas is hardening pipes against foreign adversaries. The other says three of the actual foreign adversaries in question just sat down together at a summit built, by its own description, around organizing against the United States. That's — did I say 'organizing against'? That's their language, not mine, I'm told it's an 'influence summit,' which is a phrase I will defend the way I defend most phrases handed to me, which is to say not very well under direct questioning. The point stands regardless: infrastructure hardening is a legitimate, boring, bipartisan-in-theory kind of policy, and nobody should read too much into the fact that the state doing the hardening announced it the same news cycle the actual heads of state were photographed shaking hands. Coincidence happens. Calendars are calendars. Is it possible the resources going into a state-level pilot program on water valves are modest next to what it would take to, say, do anything at all about a trilateral summit of nuclear powers coordinating against U.S. interests? Sure, that's possible, I'll grant that, I'll grant that and move on, because my job today is the water valves, not the — look, my job today is the water valves. The initiative is a report, a pilot, a first step, and first steps are worth defending even when the second step, the one involving Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi in the same room, isn't one anybody in this administration has announced yet. Ask me about that story tomorrow. Today I've got a press release about pipes, and I intend to defend every word of it.
“Texas is guarding the water pipes from hackers while the guys with the actual missiles and microphones just held a summit to plan the next forty years without us. That's not security, that's a lock on the screen door of a house that's on fire.”
“This is a forward-leaning, common-sense infrastructure protection measure, and frankly every state should be doing something like it — most states haven't, actually, but the underlying threat is real, it's just maybe not the one currently getting the funding.”
The receipts
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization also includes countries like Iran and Pakistan.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.