It’s Not Just Those Dam Hackers

Bill Gertz has an alarming piece up at today’s Washington Free Beacon on the latest revelations on Chinese hacking of U.S. critical infrastructure programs, this time aimed at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NID).  As Gertz reports:

“U.S. intelligence agencies traced a recent cyber intrusion into a sensitive infrastructure database to the Chinese government or military cyber warriors, according to U.S. officials.”

“The compromise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams (NID) is raising new concerns that China is preparing to conduct a future cyber attack against the national electrical power grid, including the growing percentage of electricity produced by hydroelectric dams.”

While cyber-intrusions/attacks involving the U.S. electrical grid justifiably raise a great deal of concern, such attacks are not the only means by which our grid could be severely compromised.  An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event — whether caused naturally by a solar event or intentionally via nuclear detonation by a rogue actor like North Korea (a country with ties to China that is believed to have this capability) — could cause a devastating collapse of the electric grid.

Yet, while the federal government is focusing heavily on how to prevent cyber-attacks on our critical infrastructure, it is doing far less to harden that infrastructure against EMP.  As the Heritage Foundation observed late last year, the Department of Homeland Security testified in September of 2012 that the DHS remains unprepared for an EMP event or attack.

This is despite the fact that two congressionally-mandated commissions — the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, and the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United State — have both previously warned of the danger of EMP.

It’s time for the federal government to walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to protecting the electrical grid.  The EMP threat urgently needs the kind of attention that the cyber-threat, rightfully, is receiving.