Blackout Committee Launches with Two Working Groups

Two working groups established to analyze the blackout

A committee to analyze the power outage. And within it, two working groups. This is the first tangible output from the body tasked with clarifying why the lights went out, according to the announcement shared in the conversation: the Analysis Committee continues reviewing data and has organized into two teams. The majority reaction was not to question the method or deadlines. It was something else.

Napoleon already warned us

"If you want something done, appoint a person responsible. If you want something delayed forever, appoint a commission," Napoleon famously said, and the quote reappears whenever a collegiate body is announced. The variant circulating here is sharper: "If you don't want something known, create an investigation commission." The pattern repeats with every crisis: first the committee, then subcommittees, then the coordinating group for the committee. Some are already calling for a Sub-Committee of the Committee and a Coordinating Group so that the "circus" truly functions.

The underlying suspicion is not that the committee doesn't know, but that it doesn't want to know. The causes and origin are perfectly determined, argues one of the most repeated interventions: technicians and engineers would have it clear, and what is being decided is who gets blamed. The government, in this reading, does not want to take the fall.

Profile of the chosen ones

The second front is composition. The dominant criticism points out that the committee will be a parade of political and humanities profiles rather than specialists. "I assume it will be formed by the same people as the de-escalation committee", opens the message that starts the discussion, leading to recurring jabs: whether experts could distinguish a volt from a watt, or if they were served well enough with basic education. The irony sharpens with the memory of previous committees whose members were never made public, yet were obeyed to the letter.

Against this, a current demands separating the technical plane from the political one. The analysis committee for any technical matter should have near-zero political presence, it is argued, focusing on the European network operators forum, where those who participated in incident management cannot sit. That distinction between who investigates and who managed is, for many, the only one that matters.

Cost and calendar

How much will this cost? The question hovers over the entire issue: fees for participation, allowances for coordination meetings, advisors each member can hire, budget for press and television. The budget of the "circus," in repeated expression. And the schedule, which no one specifies: millions of data points that, with current computers, are processed in seconds, but here require time.

The technical detail that does emerge amidst the noise is another: whether forensic analyses have been conducted on control equipment and their software updates. It is the question that separates real analysis from theater. Meanwhile, the figure cited by a forum user regarding what is at stake: between €1.5 billion and €4.5 billion in compensation.

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In the end, the most repeated conclusion is not technical. It is that in a few days this will be forgotten and football will return.