Securing America’s grid against foreign attack

By Harry Krejsa 

The following is an edited version of testimony given before the House Energy & Commerce Committee, Energy Subcommittee on “Securing America’s Energy Infrastructure:  Addressing Cyber and Physical Threats to the Grid.”

I came to Carnegie Mellon from a tour in government spanning both the Trump Pentagon and the Biden White House, where I helped devise a new military doctrine for offensive cyber operations and then led the development of the National Cyber Strategy. That experience left me convinced that the People's Republic of China views our grid as a strategic target — and that the technologies now reshaping our energy system have become a new front in great power competition. 

The Opportunity: The AI Infrastructure Buildout is a Golden Opportunity to Simultaneously Secure Our Grid and Power Our Future. 

Artificial intelligence's explosive growth is driving a historic transformation of America's energy infrastructure. The booming expansion of data centers across the country is creating unprecedented electricity demand, and with it, historic levels of investment in our power grid that no other critical infrastructure sector enjoys. Yet this AI-driven buildout is also arriving at a moment of profound vulnerability. Our aging grid is a hodgepodge of digital tools sitting atop an analog foundation that was never designed for modern levels of connectivity. 

The U.S. government has warned consistently that the PRC is seeking to exploit this tension. Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — China’s military — to be prepared to do just that in a conflict over Taiwan by the year 2027.

In anticipation of such a conflict, Beijing has been investing in cyber capabilities and operations intended to disrupt our critical infrastructure. Our inconsistent mix of older, insecure infrastructure and highly interconnected computer systems is creating “seams” in technology that are too easy for cyber actors to exploit. Exploiting these “seams” during a crisis would have both military and civilian costs. Leaders from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have testified to Congress that PRC cyber actors are seeking to preposition disruptive cyber effects on U.S. infrastructure to stymie Washington's ability to project power abroad while sowing societal chaos at home. FBI leaders have similarly warned that these malicious cyber campaigns are “broad and unrelenting,” and that Beijing’s “plan is to land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try and induce panic and break America’s will to resist.” 

Recent research into cyberattacks against hospitals by criminal ransomware gangs suggests that even simple disruptions to computer services can meaningfully raise patient mortality rates; if paired with disruptions to water or power, it is easy to imagine how human consequences could worsen quickly within and beyond the healthcare system.  

With only 10-20% of our electricity system under federal cybersecurity oversight, a rapidly-diversifying industry ecosystem, and an outdated governance apparatus too fragmented to address systemic vulnerabilities, the status quo is dangerously untenable for both the AI race and our critical services. Yet this crisis presents us with a golden opportunity to pour a stronger foundation for both our public safety and our energy ambitions alike. 

The energy technologies overwhelmingly powering our recent grid expansion are far more digitally-native than what has come before, from on-site cogeneration and battery storage to smart inverters and virtual power plants. These modern systems were designed from the ground up with software at their core, enabling modern cybersecurity features and the ability to update and evolve in response to emerging threats. 

The Urgency: AI Competition is Taking Center Stage in US-China Competition – and Painting A Target On Our Grid 

While federal investments retained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act continue to support the standup of domestic battery manufacturing, advanced nuclear, and enhanced geothermal development, we are still playing catch-up in a game where China already has secured a considerable lead.  The convergence of energy and computer infrastructure around this shared electro tech heritage means that securing our AI future will require not just building more data centers or power plants, but fundamentally reconceptualizing, securing, and—where risk prioritization requires it—reshoring the component technologies that make both possible. 

In my testimony today, I want to make the case that success requires urgent action and national leadership across three lines of effort:

● Unifying strategic priorities for the security, availability, and swift deployability of modern energy technologies; 

● Organizing disparate modern energy and national security stakeholders across the public and private sectors; and Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology 

● Maintaining vigilance over fast-moving developments in both AI architectures and energy systems that could rapidly shift our security posture.  Taking these steps will ensure the public and private sectors are prepared to collaboratively secure the energy foundation for America's future while denying our adversaries the leverage to disrupt it. 

Read the full, unedited testimony here.

Harry Krejsa is the director of Studies at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology. 

_{*The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of EnergyPlatform.News.}