An executive order that forbad private companies from connecting to the Internet would be far more of an executive overreach than anything proposed for cybersecurity by the executive, the Democrats in the Senate, or the Republicans in the House.

Then those private companies shouldn't be in charge of critical infrastructure.

So we should federalize electric companies?

As a former employee of one of the US's largest electric utilities, I can answer this question.

The reason is quite simple. Most power plants are in the middle of nowhere and people with the capability to manage them don't want to live near them, not because of the plants themselves, but because they are in tiny rural towns, which most people understand and appreciate. To make good decisions, the experts, who prefer to live in metropolitan areas (like most people do) need access to the data these generators produce. If the generators weren't on the internet, that'd be impossible.

TLDR: Power stations are on the internet for the same reason everything else is on the internet.

The great thing about remote management interfaces over the internet is that anyone can try to take control over the internet. Whether it's simply a video camera or a power station.

See that pesky internet part.

I really hope ICBMs don't have remote management interfaces over the internet for "convenience".

You also need to monitor or update the software and machinery, so you'll probably want some kind of internal network. But can other things than the control systems connect to that network? Then you're screwed, unless you can absolutely guarantee that e.g. a laptop connected to the same network can't be compromised/transported out of the facility.

Iran's SCADA controllers were not connected to the Internet when they got owned by Stuxnet. They were just connected to a network with a laptop with a USB port.

But Obama's problem seems to be with the Internet. So keep those off the Internet, and then pass whatever legislation and executive orders they want for those networks, and leave the Internet alone.

Of course the reality is this executive order is going to have many "gotchas" hidden in it, to give the executive more power over the Internet, and we probably won't learn about them until it's too late.

Yeah, no disagreement.