America’s electric power network is virtually invisible to the general public. The delivery of electricity, heat or water is usually a seamless operation. The end user adjusts a thermostat, flips a switch, or pulls a faucet handle. No one gives much thought as to how the light turns on or how the water comes out — their only concern is that it does. However, recent global events featuring power failures reveal the urgency with which we must address threats to and deficiencies in our national infrastructure.
A disruption in power — a “grid-down” event — may well cause massive power failures nationwide. The loss of electricity can cause catastrophic loss of life. This is not science fiction. Grid-down events can range from minor to catastrophic and the causes are many — terrorism, cyber-attacks, weather, solar flares, and a phenomenon called Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). In the past decade, there has been a marked increase in man-made and natural events affecting the grid with near catastrophic damage and loss of life:
• In 2023, a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted and destroyed in U.S. airspace. There are currently five known Chinese balloon flights into U.S. territory, including two during the Biden administration and three during Donald Trump’s .
• In 2022, an attack on two North Carolina electric substations left thousands without power. That was not an isolated incident, in 2022, six-hundred emergency incidents were caused by confirmed or suspected attacks on the electric grid.
• In 2015, a cyber-attack on Ukrainian power stations left 230,000 people without power during the middle of winter.
• In 2021, ice storms caused a short-term grid failure in Texas, leaving 2.4 million homes without power, causing shortages of food, water and heat and hundreds of deaths.
But the granddaddy of grid failures occurred in 1859 — the Carrington Event. Humans had just begun covering the world with a grid of telegraph lines when a Coronal Mass Ejection (a fancy name for a special kind of solar storm) caused an electromagnetic pulse — an EMP — that hit the earth and severely disrupted the nascent telegraph grid. Eyewitness accounts of the event are sensational.
Of course, in 1859 we were not wholly dependent on telegraph technology. Life went on largely unchanged. But 2023 is different.
Today’s infrastructure is an intricately interconnected network with a single point of failure — the electric grid. Electricity powers the refineries that produce oil and gas, the pipelines that deliver natural gas to keep our houses warm, the railroads that deliver our food, the freezers that keep food cold, the pumps that move gasoline into the trucks that bring food to our local store and water to our home, the hospitals that care for our sick family members, the wastewater treatment plants that process our sewage, the computers that keep our digital financial system running and our home wi-fi running — virtually every aspect of modern life.
Realizing this critical vulnerability, in 2001, Congress established the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security. In 2008, the Task Force concluded that a single high-altitude EMP event could cause long-term, widespread power outages affecting the entire national grid, resulting in cascading failures of all critical infrastructures and massive loss of life.
The solution is quite simple and inexpensive — shield and protect the infrastructure.
To protect against the effects of an EMP or other grid-down event, it’s necessary to harden critical infrastructure against electromagnetic fields and other events. This can include measures such as shielding electronic devices and systems, installing voltage surge protectors, and having backup power and communication systems in place.
It’s also important to have a plan in place for responding to a grid-down event, such as emergency management and recovery procedures.
A coordinated effort between the government and private sector to minimize damage and recovery is critical. There is a federal mandate for states to create and implement Emergency Management programs.
There are many groups working to advance grid protection. But unless there is a groundswell of public engagement now, decision-makers may be slow to react.
Immediate action is warranted because, regardless of the cause, a grid-down can be devastating. Failure to access food, gas, clean water, banks or heat during a winter storm will likely result in thousands of unnecessary deaths. As the frequency of threats grows, infrastructure failures will continue to result in needless loss of life.
The time for action to save our grid is now.