Editor’s Note: Secure the Grid Coalition member Mike Mabee was featured on a 60 Minutes special talking about the U.S. electrical grid on February 27. Mabee spoke on the various threats posed to the U.S. grid, both foreign and domestic, and what, if anything, the federal government is doing to mitigate these risks.
Mike Mabee: The U.S. electric grid is the largest machine in the history of mankind. It is a marvel of modern engineering. No one person owns or controls it. It’s actually 3,000 different companies, both public and private sector, that own or operate little pieces of the electric grid.
Mike Mabee is an Iraq war vet, a former cop and a self-taught grid security expert. By day he works for the government. In his spare time, he uncovers public information electric utilities would rather not see the light of day and publishes them on a website called “Grid Security Now.” He is both fascinated and horrified by the grid.
Mike Mabee: I think everybody needs to be as alarmed as I am. We’ve had disasters in the past but they’ve generally always been regional in scale. What we’ve never had is a national-scale blackout, which is completely possible under some known threats such as the cyber threat, the physical security threat, or even extreme weather. And the U.S. public is completely unprepared to survive without the electric grid for any period of time whatsoever.
So when he moved to Texas two years ago, he prepared for the worst, installing solar, wind and battery power.
Mike Mabee: The whole system’s 48 volts.
Mabee’s family survived last winter’s deadly storm, hundreds of Texans perished.
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