Mark Freedman
Suddenly, the lights go out. So does the heat. It’s not a localized disruption – all of DC is down. So are New York, Denver, and parts of Hawaii and Texas. It lasts for hours, then days. It becomes clear this was intentional, a massive cyber-attack by China. Businesses can’t function. Wall Street halts trading. Mass looting breaks out. Societal panic sets in.
While the scenario may sound extreme, the threat is very real. Many across the defense and national security community and pockets of private industry use shorthand to refer to it: Volt Typhoon (VT). It is the name of a Chinese hacking group tasked with sabotaging U.S. critical infrastructure to keep America distracted and cowed during a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan. The scenario is changing how members of both the government and private sector think about war, energy, and their respective roles maintaining a safe, secure, and economically prosperous United States.
A catastrophic VT attack is still hypothetical, but its precursors are all too real. During Russia’s three-year war in Ukraine, we’ve witnessed repeated cyberattacks on civilian energy infrastructure, often coordinated with missile strikes to maximize impact on the Ukrainian populace. Here at home, the Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack of 2021 provided a tiny preview of what VT could look like. Spikes in gas prices. Fuel shortages up and down the east coast. Bubbling alarm.
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