By Paul Mauldin

It's all over the news – power lines wiped out by fallen trees, massive outages, no air conditioning and a record heat wave. There were plenty of smart meters that notified local utilities that they were losing power but that didn't help much. The problem is not lack of digitized, smart grid-able information. The problem is vulnerable physical infrastructure.

Much of the misery could be avoided by having more underground cable rather than overhead poles and wires. ...