If people with bad intentions crossed the Mexican and Canadian borders to raid American towns, or landed unseen on coastal beaches to launch guerrilla attacks, the country would mobilize to get on a war footing in no time. But Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm admitted earlier this week that those actors are already among us, just not in physical form. We saw a hint of the chaos they can wreak when Colonial Pipeline shut down in a ransomware attack; electric grids are also vulnerable. “We’ve got to up our game,” Granholm said.
The COVID-19 crisis cratered the American economy in a few months, but a coordinated assault on the electric grid could do great damage in a week or less. But pandemic-weary Americans aren’t interested in electric grid vulnerabilities. Neither are members of Congress. President Biden proposed $100 billion in electric transmission system upgrades, but in the first round of negotiations, Republicans showed up with zero dollars for the grid. Those negotiations later fell apart. A new “gang” of five Democratic and five Republican senators has reportedly reached agreement on a mildly bigger “hard” infrastructure package, but there are no details on what it will cover, and no guarantee grid upgrades will be included.
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