Problem is companies that make smart meters, for all of the utilities only employ really low IQ types for their programmers, there is a LOT of hardcoded backdoors and admin passwords in them that can notbe changed. They simply rely on obscurity for their security.

This is the problem companies are not liable for their crap-tastic security. until they are you will not see them putting in place anything that has any semblance of security.

Tell that to the residents of Flint Michigan. And yes there are STILL lead or high led content steel water mains in almost all major cities. And any home... ANY home older than 1979 has lead paint in it because we dont require it to be removed, just painted over.

"Americans are generally reasonably well versed in US geography, knowing the capitals, major cities, and some of the more notable features of the 50 states "

No they dont. in fact most americans can not name all 50 states let alone the capitals of those states. and sadly right now the loudmouths at the extreme left and right cant even tell you what the contents of the constitution and the bill of rights actually say yet they all whine like unfed babies almost daily about them.

Americans in general are extremely uneducated. It's because our education system is an absolute joke. There is a reason I took my kids out of public school and paid for private school. Because I wanted them to know Algebra, Geometry, and some real science. And its about to get worse with a drooling bible thumper in charge of education.

Most executives will fail at "plug in the monitor"

Want a secret to being a raging success at work? have the balls to make a decision and own it.
So many executives are spineless pussies that refuse to make a decision. Be a underling that makes decisions owns those decisions and takes the credit when you are right and the blame when you are wrong, you will stand out dramatically against the scared pussy-willows of the rest of the corporation that the ones that matter will notice.

And you will piss off the ones that dont matter.

You sir nailed it on the head.

In the USA we coddle the idiots and the stupids. WE tell them they are special and make sure hard things are not hard for them.
Elsewhere the coddling does not happen, they create TV shows that support intellect and thought... instead of the US Where We have basically "ow my balls" , "dancing with ow my balls", and "thinking is hard news channel"

This is the difference. you treat a populace as if they are highbrow they get embarrassed if they dont understand and aspire to learn. If you cater to the lowest common then you get everyone degenerated to that.

and if you worked at a place with a large enough phone system you were able to do this in the 90's. The phone system got the call signaling WAY before the caller heard the telco ring tone. so you would pick up the phone call and then have your phone system handle it. and instead of generating the ring you simply play a song. My company instantly started playing the company jingle and "we are connecting you to your representative, please stand by" it was a cassette tape on a loop. Basically any incoming call was instantly picked up on a signal and put on hold, then the DID the caller dialed would be looked up and then the extension started ringing, when they picked it up the caller was pulled out of hold status.

Yep, UBER wont expect it, but the Drivers will. Oh and you had better tip 30% because 20% is the new normal.

My cats fetch and happily accept a leash on the collar. you can train cats quite easily, it's just that most people are too lazy to even try.

Nope, in fact Intel had the crappiest support and documentation available. Almost nobody used their stuff.

Sorry but asking stupid farmers that decide to farm a freaking desert is not who I will ask.
I'll ask the ones that had brains and picked a fertile and resource strong area to farm instead.

They killed themselves. First they ignored the consumer market, then they had things too expensive. when they finally pulled their heads out of their butts it was too late. Along with them giving governments keys to dig into the security and read texts and email, that was the nail in the coffin for them.

The problem was carriers data speeds and prices were crippling the iphone's abilities. AT&T utterly sucked loading any kind of web page on an iphone 1, jobs realized that he had to also fight the phone carriers as they refused to upgrade their data speeds, so a different direction was taken and it created a whole new industry.

So basically you can credit AT&T and their utterly shitty data speeds and prices for creating the phone app industry.

"Talk to university and vocational education staff around the USA. Tell them what you need."

They have... They want high skilled people that will accept very low wages and not complain about it.

There are skilled people out there, the companies dont want to pay for them.

Want to close the Cybersecurity gap? It is very easy.

STOP BEING CHEAP ASSHOLES AND START PAYING FOR REAL SKILLED IT PROFESSIONALS.

This means the IT department on it's own Makes MORE than the CTO does. Yes the guys that are actively fighting the bad guys deserve a LOT more than the waste of space in the executive seat. Quadruple your IT budget, Start actually buying real fucking equipment and real security suites and software. Hire PROVEN EXPERTS that cost a lot of money.

InfoSEC that is effective is NOT CHEAP. Stop treating IT as the bastard red headed step kids. and start treating them as the Mission Critical staff they really are.

That and kick the CTO and CFO in the nuts, both those assholes deserve a good hard kick in the groin any time they suggest cutting the IT department's budget. If you hire and pay for the best, then you don't have the security problem that the companies that try and half ass it by paying as little as possible.

These executives know this, they just dont want to do it. and until they start making executives personally responsible for data breaches, it will not change. Yes personally responsible, if these assholes can get multi millions then they also deserve to carry all the personal financial risk.