When United States military personnel moved into Caracas in the dead of night to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, they were aided by what may be one of the most high-profile cyberattacks in history. As President Donald Trump put it, “The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark, and it was deadly.”
The Maduro raid was near flawlessly executed, but it also highlighted a dangerous weak link in our own national security. The truth is, what happened to the Venezuelan energy system can also happen to us because our own grid remains deeply vulnerable.
Key components such as large transformers are decades old. Transmission lines, substations, and control systems stretch across vast, unprotected distances. And despite spanning a continent, the United States is served by only three major power grids. Hitting one in just the right way could send tens of millions of people back to the Stone Age.
This is no small matter. Attacking energy infrastructure is becoming a standard feature of modern warfare, and not just in Venezuela. Russian drones recently took out Ukrainian power stations in the dead of an Eastern European winter. And in 2022, following its initial invasion, Russian-linked malware nearly took out 12 American power stations.
Even when hostile nations aren’t to blame, America remains at risk. A software bug in 2003 eliminated power for nearly 50 million people in the Northeastern U.S., while natural disasters have increased by fivefold over a 50-year period, threatening American energy security.
For example, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy left 8.2 million households in blackout and in 2021, a deep freeze left more than three million Texans without power and 13.5 million without water because Texas’s gas, coal, nuclear plants, and wind turbines had not been upgraded.
These disasters also showed that when power is lost, our economy grinds to a halt. Our medical facilities struggle, communication is limited, and people die. The impact of prolonged outages will only worsen as our dependence on electricity and the internet to do everything from charge vehicles to purchase groceries to run medical equipment increases.
If all of that does not tempt adversaries to target our grid, the prospect of leapfrogging the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race might. AI depends on data, and data depends on energy. If the grid fails, rivals such as China could make gains while we’re stuck trying to turn the lights back on.
The Trump administration has made some attempts to rectify these problems. Though long overdue, Trump recently ordered the Department of Energy to outline why our status quo is untenable. He also proposed a Golden Dome project, akin to Israel’s Iron Dome, that would prohibit kinetic damage from ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles.
But this is not enough. The president’s executive order made no mention of preventing advanced electromagnetic pulse attacks, which could effectively “turn off” the country. Nor does it address on-the-ground terrorist attacks, cyberattacks, or the impact of extreme weather events.
The only way to fully secure the U.S. energy system against storms and attacks is to improve the capacity of the grid itself.
First, we have to harden the grid by protecting power stations and distribution. This could include physical upgrades such as swapping wood poles for steel to withstand winds, coating wires to resist ice, elevating substations to avoid flooding, installing backup microgrids to mitigate chain reactions, pursuing “undergrounding” to circumvent aerial attacks, and adopting Smart Grids, which use AI and satellites to flag risks and suggest solutions.
Second, we must expand, localize, and diversify the grid. We need to build more power stations to meet AI demands and act as backups. Additionally, AI centers could develop their own “grids,” which would not only relieve pressure on consumers but also insulate this key technology of the future from any coordinated attacks. For instance, Elon Musk’s xAI plant in Tennessee pursues energy self-reliance using gas turbines and Tesla Megapack batteries.
Additionally, we need to pursue energy diversification beyond oil and gas, including through solar power and nuclear options such as advanced small modular reactors that lend themselves toward localized energy production and can be deployed without connecting to the major grid systems.
Thankfully, the private sector is eager to invest in energy and grid innovations. Our main obstacle is excessive government regulations. We need to remove roadblocks in the way of energy production and expedite infrastructure approvals. Bills such as the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, which passed the House last month, can also reform permitting and lower electric costs.
That’s not to say government has no role, especially when it comes to national security. Federal and state governments should provide funding to fortify the grid against attacks, including EMPs, and provide coordinated support against cyberattacks.
WHY TRUMP TRAINED HIS SIGHTS ON VENEZUELA
Knocking out power in Caracas was an impressive military feat but should also set off alarm bells back at home. What happened to the Venezuelan energy system could happen here if the U.S. does not upgrade the grid.
Chet Love is the Managing Partner of Cornerstone Group International. He also served as Director of Policy and Legal Counsel for SolarCity (now Tesla).
