In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri knocked out power to multiple U.S. military installations in Texas. Fort Hood alone spent nearly its entire annual electricity budget in days just to stay operational. The crisis revealed something we rarely say out loud: the most powerful military in the world depends on a power system it does not control.
From a defense perspective, grid security is national security. Every critical sector — military capability, economic competitiveness, technological leadership — depends on reliable electricity. Yet the system delivering that power is fragmented, underfunded, and increasingly vulnerable.
From an economic perspective, energy represents roughly five percent of U.S. GDP. But that five percent underpins everything else. Finance, defense, government, and healthcare are all entirely dependent on the grid. Grid failure is not just a sector-specific risk. It is a national security problem.
The modern grid’s vulnerability is partially a function of its fragmentation. More than 3,000 separate entities own and operate generation, transmission, and distribution.
The modern grid’s vulnerability is partially a function of its fragmentation. More than 3,000 separate entities own and operate generation, transmission, and distribution. This balkanized system was acceptable for 20th-century demand. It does not work for 21st-century threats: sophisticated cyberattacks, extreme storms, and soaring demand from artificial intelligence and manufacturing. Federal policy must be part of the solution, but it has similarly not kept pace. As a result, the United States faces three connected crises.
The first crisis is one of military vulnerability. The Department of War relies on the commercial grid for approximately 99 percent of its power requirements. The remaining one percent of on-base generation cannot sustain critical operations during prolonged outages. To expand on the experience of Uri, several of Texas’s 15 military installations lost power. Critical military operations were relocated to secondary facilities, consuming resources and reducing operational capacity — an empirical demonstration that the most powerful military on earth is operationally vulnerable when the grid fails. The storm also revealed the consequences of inadequate transmission capacity. Studies post-Uri conclude that expanded interregional transmission could have acted as a lifeline, allowing gigawatts of additional supply to flow into Texas, keeping the heat and power on for hundreds of thousands to millions of customers and avoiding part of the loss of life, property, and military readiness.
The second crisis relates to economic and technological dominance. The country that can build and power artificial intelligence infrastructure at scale will define the next era. As of late 2025, 241 gigawatts of U.S. data center projects remain in development pipelines, but only one-third are under active development. Grid constraints are strangling infrastructure before it is built. Wood Mackenzie analysts warn that most of these projects “will never get built” under current grid limitations. While AI has dominated the focus in Washington, SAFE calls for prioritizing not just data center loads, but all defense-critical and energy intensive industries — including semiconductor fabrication, aluminum and steel production, automotive manufacturing — in addition to supporting the buildout of AI data centers. We need more power, and soon, to keep up in great power competition. Speed to power is no longer an economic preference. It is a national security requirement.
The third crisis involves escalating cyber threats compounded by uncoordinated defenses. The Department of Energy reports that malicious attacks on the grid continue to grow in frequency and sophistication. Recent studies indicate that coordinated cyber-physical attacks on grid‑ ‑connected inverters and associated controls could induce local voltage and frequency instability and, under certain conditions, contribute to cascading disruptions across parts of the bulk power system. Yet federal cybersecurity enforcement lacks the resources to address these threats.
The Department of Energy reports that malicious attacks on the grid continue to grow in frequency and sophistication. Yet federal cybersecurity enforcement lacks the resources to address these threats.
All three crises flow from different manifestations of the same underlying challenge: policy structures unable to create action at the speed and scale that modern defense, strategic technology, and threats require.
What Congress Must Do
First and most obviously, Congress must reform permitting. The federal government should establish authority over high-voltage transmission projects critical to national security. Neighboring regions should be required to conduct joint interregional planning instead of acting in isolation — the grid is stronger and more resilient when regions are connected to allow power to flow between them, and transmission is the key. There are simple fixes that would help address this challenge in the near-term: Congress should clarify that advanced transmission technologies deployed on existing lines do not trigger new permitting requirements. Most importantly, Congress should incentivize states to streamline their own procedures, tying access to federal funding to measurable improvements in permitting pace. The goal is simple: move from five to ten-year timelines to a year or two at most.
Congress must fund federal grid cybersecurity enforcement. Just as permitting delays stall critical projects, under resourced cybersecurity enforcement leaves the grid exposed. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has the technical framework. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has the authority. But the Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Program lacks the resources to audit and investigate systematically. Congress must appropriate dedicated funding to enable proactive enforcement, not sporadic spot-checks. The goal is the same: move from reactive to protective.
The United States needs more power, and better infrastructure to move it. Industry is more than equipped to address these challenges, but only if Washington can empower it. The country that delivers power fastest wins. Congress must act to make America that country.
Danielle Russo is Executive Director of the Center for Grid Security at SAFE, an action-oriented, nonpartisan organization committed to transportation, energy, and supply chain policies that advance the economic and national security of the United States and global allies.