Right now, news headlines are filled with information on major national security threats. From UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) to continued personal cybersecurity threats, national security is front and center.
In a recent piece for Forbes, Chuck Brooks, a globally recognized thought leader and subject matter expert in cybersecurity and emerging Technologies, details some major threats to the U.S. Energy Grid and what that would mean for the United States’ overall security. Brooks, an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University’s Graduate Cybersecurity Risk Management Program, writes that the nation’s energy grid system is very vulnerable right now.
“The underlying reality is that from an energy frequency perspective, the aging U.S. Energy Grid infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks, physical incidents, and existential threats,” writes Brooks.
What the U.S. Energy Grid Is
It is important to note just how crucial the energy grid is.
The nation’s system consists of The Eastern Interconnection (the states east of the Rocky Mountains), The Western Interconnection (the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountain states), and The Texas Interconnected system.
Collectively, these systems make up the U.S.’s entire energy infrastructure, fueling everything that makes modern life function. The central nervous system of this grid is made up of 7,300 power plants, close to 160,000 miles of high-voltage power lines, and millions of low-voltage power lines and distribution transformers.
While this system is so crucial, it is aging. The infrastructure has remained stagnant for decades, and Brooks views this as a salient physical security threat if it were ever to be compromised.
Major threats to the grid
He pinpoints three major threats right now:
Cyber threats to the grid: Brooks says that, today, U.S. power companies use SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) networks to control their energy systems. Many of these are aging severely and prone to being manipulated by cyber-attacks. This has a domino effect, directly resulting in damaging physical vulnerabilities. Brooks points to the 2021 ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline as a template for what could happen to the energy grid.
“The attackers disrupted the supply of oil supplies on the U.S. East coast and demonstrated the lack of a cybersecurity framework for both preparation and incident response,” he writes. Given that most U.S. Energy Grid infrastructure consists of components that “operate in a digital environment,” Brooks said systems that aren’t fortified with defenses against online attackers pose a threat to all American citizens.Physical attacks on utilities: Brooks writes that physical attacks “by domestic terrorists” on the U.S. Energy Grid are becoming more of a concrete reality. He said that current government data reveals “physical attacks on the grid rose 77% in 2022.” He points to white supremacist attacks on the northwest power grid electrical substations in Oregon and Washington state in 2022. Similarly, attacks at two energy substations in North Carolina resulted in residents losing power. “In January 2023, a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that domestic violent extremists ‘have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target,’ ” he writes.
Natural threats: Additionally, Brooks cites what he calls “existential threats” — weather events, solar storms, and electronic magnetic pulses (EMPs), which come from solar storms. These naturally occurring physical threats “are top factors for power outages in the United States.” Events like hurricanes and tornados pose major physical threats to communities served by the U.S. Energy Grid.
As climate change increasingly becomes a factor in fueling major weather events, Brooks says the grid has to be regularly fortified and modernized to prepare for more radical changes in natural phenomena. He also cites Dr. Peter Prey, a member of the Congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, who says “a natural EMP catastrophe or nuclear EMP event could black out the national electrical grid for months or years and collapse all the other critical infrastructures…necessary to sustain modern society and the lives of 310 million Americans.”
Updating a crucial system
What all of this underscores is that a strong U.S. Energy Grid is needed for our modern society. While it may sound like a large scale issue that does not directly impact one’s day-to-day life, if the grid was to be compromised in any way by these increasing threats, it would pose a direct danger to one’s physical security and personal safety.