This reality carries urgent implications for the United States. In the United States, this risk is compounded by decades of cyber penetration and the widespread use of foreign sourced hardware and software within the grid, creating opportunities not only for persistent long-term cyber reconnaissance, intelligence collection, and the systematic probing of grid control systems but for latent, remotely triggered disruption by foreign adversaries like Russia. For example, the late George Cotter – a 40-year veteran of the National Security Agency (NSA) issued the following warning to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in September 2019: “The Russian Ministry of Defense GU has had unimpeded access to the BPS (U.S. Bulk Power System) since at least 2012. It has collected all the infrastructure information it needs to attack the BCS for access to Distribution systems serving major urban and National Security facilities; (most of the latter mere extensions of Distribution facilities.) It has developed from those collections potent attack systems, thoroughly tested in the Ukraine.” Cotter further concluded that the U.S. bulk power system “hasn’t suffered any outage” due to cyberattack is “totally due to Russian restraint.” The lesson for America is not abstract, nor is it theoretical. It is being written in real time in Ukraine, in the suffering of millions of civilians whose only vulnerability is their dependence on electricity to live. The United States must take this lesson seriously. Protecting the electric grid is not simply an engineering challenge or an industry concern – it is a matter of civil defense, national resilience, and the protection of human life. Putin’s “Holodomor” operation against Ukraine underscores why grid protection and preparedness in the U.S. must become a national priority – and before Russia’s “restraint” runs out. https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/putins-operation-holodomor/