Securing America’s Grid Through Transformers and Workforce Resilience

Cyber threats to America’s electricity grid are real and intensifying, and policymakers discussing grid security often focus solely on them. However, the US electric grid has a far more fragile and underdiscussed vulnerability: large power transformers (LPTs) and the shrinking workforce needed to sustain them. These machines, the backbone of the grid, are few, enormous, and irreplaceable on short timelines. If just a handful were sabotaged, entire regions of the United States could remain without power for months — cascading into the failure of healthcare services, transportation networks, water treatment, and communications systems.

This is not a hypothetical risk. In December 2022, coordinated attacks on substations in Moore County, North Carolina, cut power to 45,000 residents for nearly a week. In February 2023, two men plotted to destroy multiple Baltimore-area substations with the intent of plunging the city into chaos. Such low-cost, low-technology attacks suggest blueprints that adversaries may replicate. Meanwhile, sophisticated actors such as China, Russia, or Iran could target multiple high-voltage transformers simultaneously. Recovery would take not days or weeks but potentially years.

Addressing the national security shortfalls of US critical infrastructure demands a whole-of-government response involving not only the technology sector but also education, law, and robust public–private partnerships.

Read the full essay on Breaking Defense.