By Frank Gaffney Jr. ——Bio and Archives--February 2, 2015
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American businesses, financial networks, government agencies and infrastructure systems like power grids are at continual risk. They’re targeted not just by lone hackers and criminal syndicates, but by well-funded nation-states like North Korea and Iran. A lack of consequences for when nation states carry out cyberattacks has only emboldened these adversaries to do more harm.Even if no jihadist or other terrorist, hacker or hostile nation tries to disrupt our most critical of critical infrastructures via one technique or another, we still have to “harden” the grid. After all, we are overdue for the sort of intense solar storm that occurs roughly every 150 years. And when it hits, by one estimate issued by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 130 million Americans will be without power for years. Needless to say, most of those affected will perish before the lights come back on. Fortunately, on December 1, 2014 in what may have been the only laudable action to come out of the lame duck session, the House of Representatives took a small, but important, step to address the vulnerability of the U.S. bulk power distribution system. It unanimously approved the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (CIPA), a bill that requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan for protecting the grid against solar weather, cyber attack, EMP and more. Rep. Meehan co-sponsored this legislation, along with its lead sponsors, Reps. Franks and Pete Sessions (R-TX). With the new Congress, the CIPA bill will have to start from scratch – as would any other legislation designed to achieve grid resiliency on the more accelerated basis that is needed in the face of the aforementioned human-induced and naturally occuring threats to the grid. Still, the elevation of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to the chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and his commitment and that of his House counterpart, Rep. Michael McCaul, to swift action on CIPA is heartening. But will it be in time?
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Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is the President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.