Political violence has an increasingly common outlet: the electric grid.
Unrest in the U.S. and abroad is driving a “dramatic increase” in malicious cyber activity on the nation’s power system, according to an industry grid watchdog.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war combined with Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the impending U.S. election are compounding the steady increase of threats by domestic and foreign actors, writes Catherine Morehouse.
“The current geopolitical situation has significant ramifications for the North American grid,” said Manny Cancel, senior vice president at NERC. “We know activists continue to use this as a vehicle to get their ideology and other political thoughts across.”
Physical threats against the electric grid have also skyrocketed in recent years, reaching an all-time high in 2023, according to a POLITICO analysis of Energy Department data. That year, the nation’s power providers reported 185 incidents of physical attacks or threats against the grid, twice the number of instances in 2021.
Just last week, someone attempted to destroy a substation in California by shooting at a transformer and shutting off circuit breakers. An FBI official told local news that the attack, had it succeeded, could have proved catastrophic for people relying on electricity for medical purposes.
Security experts attribute the rise in attacks to a growth in domestic extremism and terrorism, enabled by public messaging boards where people share information about how to target vulnerabilities in the power system.
While the majority of threats and attacks have not caused rolling, regionwide blackouts, they can do serious damage. An attack in 2022 at two substations in North Carolina cut the power for 45,000 people for four days. An 87-year-old woman died after her oxygen machine failed.
Grid watchdogs are particularly concerned, however, about hackers linked to U.S. adversaries.
“The major nation-state actors — China, North Korea, Iran and Russia — absolutely possess the capability to disrupt critical infrastructure here in North America,” Cancel said.
