1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

America’s electric grid has a dangerous weakness: critical transformers are hard to replace, yet transformers and substations remain vulnerable to attack, including by drones. Congress should act now to reduce the risk that sabotage, cyberattack, extreme weather, solar activity, or equipment failure could cause a prolonged regional or nationwide blackout. A MAJOR GRID FAILURE COULD THREATEN BASIC SERVICES ACROSS THE COUNTRY The August 18, 2026 New York Times Magazine article describes how failure of key grid equipment could cascade far beyond the point of damage. Such an outage would threaten hospitals, water systems, communications, fuel distribution, banking, food supplies, transportation, emergency services, and public safety. LONG TRANSFORMER REPLACEMENT TIMES COULD TURN AN ATTACK INTO A YEARS-LONG CRISIS Large power transformers are not readily replaceable. The Department of Energy warns of long procurement times and supply-chain constraints. With some large transformers taking three to four years to obtain, widespread destruction could make recovery extraordinarily difficult and prolonged. That possibility makes transformer protection and replacement capacity matters of national security. DRONES CAN BYPASS TRADITIONAL DEFENSES AROUND CRITICAL GRID INFRASTRUCTURE Small unmanned aircraft can bypass fences and other conventional defenses. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warns that drones pose cyber and physical risks to critical infrastructure. This is an all-hazards national-security problem. The next grid emergency could result from attack, extreme weather, geomagnetic disturbance, equipment failure, or something unforeseen. CONGRESS MUST REDUCE THESE RISKS BEFORE DISASTER STRIKES A blackout of this scale could be catastrophic. We should not wait for disaster to discover which protections, spare equipment, authorities, and recovery plans should already be in place. I urge you to use Congress’s powers to: (1) HARDEN CRITICAL FACILITIES. Support legislation requiring stronger risk-based protection for transformers, substations, and control centers whose loss could cause cascading outages. (2) COUNTER DRONES. Provide clear authority, standards, and funding to detect and defend critical electric infrastructure against hostile drones. (3) BUILD STRATEGIC RESERVES. Expand inventories of transformers, mobile substations, and other hard-to-replace equipment and ensure rapid deployment. (4) EXPAND DOMESTIC PRODUCTION. Treat domestic transformer manufacturing and key-component production as national-security priorities. (5) REQUIRE BLACKOUT PLANNING. Conduct national exercises involving prolonged outages caused by physical attack, cyberattack, extreme weather, or supply-chain disruption. (6) EXERCISE OVERSIGHT. Hold hearings and require reports on replacement times, spare inventories, security gaps, drone defenses, domestic production, and reliability standards. Thank you.