Homeland Security / CNBC Interview Print Page One August 15 I was interviewed on CNBC concerning the homeland-security implications of the massive electricity blackout in the midwestern and northeastern U.S. Excerpts of the interview were broadcast nationally at least twice that afternoon and evening. I made three key points: 1. Strategists have long understood that electrical-power grids are the Achilles heel of advanced industrial societies. In fact, the Army Air Forces' first strategic bombing plan for World War Two (AWPD-1, July 1940) designated power grids as the highest-priority target in Nazi Germany. It was assumed that any degradation of Nazi electrical generation or transmission capacity would have a multiplier effect across the German war economy. 2. The appeal of power grids as targets to terrorists is threefold -- they provide an indispensable service, they are intrinsically fragile, and they are spread out in ways that make them very difficult to defend. Efforts to protect them may have the paradoxical near-term effect of shutting down power to millions of users, so minimal action -- perhaps a mere threat -- can give terrorists considerable leverage. 3. All of these vulnerabilities are exacerbated in a deregulated marketplace where economic forces pressure electricity providers to eliminate redundancy and minimize investment to maintain profitability. What looks like back-up capability to homeland-defense planners seems more like under-utilized capacity to investors. There is thus an intrinsic tension between profitability and resilience in the electrical generation and transmission industry. Copyright © Lexington Institute. All rights reserved. |