government How the US military used a creepy island to test cyberattacks on the grid — in the middle of a pandemic Plum Island Light is located on the western end of an island that's been home to U.S. experiments (Wikicommons). Share Dec 17, 2020 | CYBERSCOOP The U.S. government officials trying to test the country’s ability to respond to a major cyberattack thought they had pulled out all the stops. Engineers had planned to simulate the kind of security incident that would cause an electrical blackout, after all, and had even planned to hold the event on an isolated island off the coast of New York.