How to Sniper-Proof the Electrical Grid

For years, lawmakers and critics have warned that our aging electrical grid is vulnerable not just to natural disasters, but to physical attack. “Our enemies have the motive, the means, and the capacity to attack our grid with potentially catastrophic consequences,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Bloomberg last year. “The question is whether the utilities have the same determination to protect our country against these threats.” A newly revealed incident is evidence they don't—or even the wherewithal to keep the public informed about said threats. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly a year ago, snipers attacked a power plant operated by PG&E and nearly caused a blackout in parts of California. First, someone cut telephone cables in an underground vault. The Journal describes what happened next: "Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley." None of the shooters have been caught. Officials were able to keep the lights on by routing power around the station, but the man who was serving as the chairmen of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time, Jon Wellinghoff, is so concerned that another attack is immanent that he went public about the breach. Wellinghoff called it "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred." He says that if the attack were copied, and carried out to scale, it could knock out the grid "and black out much of the country." The problem, as he sees it, is that there are 2,000 such substations across the country, and if only a handful of them were knocked out at once, he believes widespread outages would follow. Naturally, Wellinghoff feels that security is inadequate, and is pushing for more protection at transformer sites. It's a familiar call to action that's been sounded in response to the rising specter of a number of grid-threatening events—hacker intrusions, downed power lines during a weather disaster, terrorist attacks aimed directly at power plants, even that mostly laughable EMP scenario—but this time with real life action at its core.
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