Power grid security

Former CIA Chief Cites Grid Vulnerability to EMP Attack

The U.S. is not doing enough to guard against attacks on critical infrastructure at the hands of rogue nations, said former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey at a cybersecurity conference here Wednesday.

Combative states such as North Korea and Iran could detonate a nuclear device in orbit above the U.S., unleashing an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, capable of knocking out the electric grid, Mr. Woolsey said in an interview with CIO Journal at the Cyber Security Summit sponsored in part by Nation-E, a technology security company.

Traditional policies of deterrence are ineffective against such “malevolent threats” because for these actors, “death is desirable rather than shunned,” said Mr. Woolsey, who served as CIA director for two years during the Clinton Administration.