"Secure the Grid"

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We were chatting yesterday kind of asan aside about the dangers of foreign adversaries
attacking our electric grid, and Iasserted that just from some reading I've done
and what I've heard, that itis generally true that there's kind of mutually
assured destruction, that we have thesame capability that China and Russia do to

(00:25):
attack the grid. And I heardfrom my friend Doug Ellsworth who's with the
Secure the Grid Coalition, and foundout that that may not necessarily be the
case. And Doug joins us fora few minutes this morning. Doug,
good to have you back, Uri, thank you so much for having me
on today. You bet, whatis the act because you work in this
arena all the time, not onlywith the coalition, but you know here

(00:50):
talking with government officials and so on, what is the actual threat assessment of
our grid being attacked? May Foryears, the industry, the electric power
industry written large, used to usea risk assessment model, which is what
an insurance company might use. Okay, the probability would be based upon frequency

(01:14):
of occurrence and of course the consequenceof you know, an accident or something.
That's what property casualty insures you.Know, use the threat assessment is
different. And you know, recentlya contingent of our members met in Washington,

(01:37):
d C. With some congressmen whoare key committee members, and what
defends our country? And they said, isn't aren't all of these problems low
probability? And they didn't understand thatthey had just made without formally doing it.
They had just made us and givena threat assessment. The metric that's

(02:00):
used for a threat assessment would beour adversary's intentions our advers times, would
say times to make it, youknow, for our illustration, times our
adversaries capabilities, times the consequence ofthose actions. And we can refine it

(02:22):
even more if we add two intentionstimes capabilities times consequence, the factors of
vulnerability and whatever deterrent we might haveagainst an adversary, you know, taking
those you know, drastic actions.During the Cold War, the deterred that
kept us, you know, froma catastrophic nuclear weapons exchange with our enemies

(02:45):
was a doctrine known as mutually assureddestruction, which you mentioned, basically a
suicide pack, which deterred an adversaryfrom for strike against us by you know,
a responsive retaliation of the same magnitude. You're saying, that's not not
the case with the grid, notthe same metric that's right. Today.

(03:06):
The problem is one of attribution,the inability to identify who might have mounted
an attack against us soon enough toyou know, therefore retaliate with a proportionate
response. There really isn't there reallyisn't There therefore a very poor deterrent.

(03:27):
We can't have an intelligent conversation aboutdeterrent at any level without having an honest
conversation about the extent of our vulnerabilities. And that honest conversation is lacking in
federal oversight, both legislative arenas andin the regular tools. And with some
exceptional Gary, I can give youexample, but that will save that for

(03:52):
another day. I've personally witnessed thisand been on the receiving end of the
negli that our federal you know,federal agencies have put in front of us
with the incentive from the industry largewith some exception. Uh, there there

(04:12):
are some exceptions, but there's fartoo little and they have too little of
a poise. Who can you identwho can you identify doug in our in
our federal government, in our Congress, or anybody in a position of authority
who is taking this seriously. RonJohnson, Wisconsin. Yes, so I

(04:36):
think he needs to jump up anddown and holler about this a lot more,
because he's a pretty prominent guy,and I know, I know that
he has the air of Donald Trump. Should Donald Trump get back in office.
Yep, I got are providing himwith solutions. He is, uh,
you know, he's asked us forsolutions. We're the ones who educated

(04:59):
it initially through you know, ourman Tom Popping, who had a connection
with him through a classmate when hewas in college. And you know those
Alma maters really really helped to opendoors. You might be interested in this
because it's not just the federal level. I got an email from Hugh.

(05:23):
He said he was active in RIM'sthe Risk and Insurance Management Society some years
back and at a local chapter meetingthey heard from oppd's risk manager, and
of course our principal interest was itspreparation for widespread outages. And he said
the guy droned on about violent weatherand solar flares and stuff, and he
said, Hugh says, a bitannoyed. I stated, look, any

(05:46):
of us who take this seriously arespecifically concerned with what you can do if
when the shycoms or other state actorsuse EMP weapons it hacks local point sabotage,
et cetera, to shut down thecountry. His face went blank,
and after a bit he answered,well, we've been waiting for the belitarian

(06:06):
FEMA to issue official guidance about thoseareas. Yeah, that's the common but
the common thing, the common responsethat we get is from from industry writ
large once again, is we're lookinginto that, we're looking into it.
Well, what do you The properresponse whenever you hear that stalling technique or

(06:30):
that tactic is what do you hopeto find? What do you hope to
see that might have been missed bysix decades of intensive Department of Defense research
and experimentation. And Gary, someof that experimentation was done with real nuclear
weapons detonated in you know, aboveour atmosphere. So we we the that

(06:59):
will draw a blank face. Yeah, you know that. The banks,
they're incredibly unbelievable. Keep up thegood fight, Doug. Always good to
have you on. Thank you,Gary, appreciate all the time you bet.
Doug Elsworth done such a great job. Thank you. We continue to
bring up the issue. Hopefully it'llbe helpful. Doug Ellsworth from the Secure
of the Grid coalition