On a cold December night in 2022, coordinated attacks on two electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina, left nearly 45,000 people without power for five days. Among them were thousands of military families — including mine — who lived in the county and worked at nearby Fort Bragg, many from the special operations community. The attack, carried out with gunfire, brought daily life to a standstill. One person, who depended on an oxygen machine, died because of the power outage.
The substation attack underscored a long-feared reality: America’s aging electrical transformer fleet — the backbone of both civilian life and military readiness — can be disabled quickly, cheaply, and with devastating effect.
Transformers are essential for the utilization, distribution, and transmission of alternating electric power. They are a critical and vulnerable component within most substations. Transformers quietly increase or decrease voltage level at every link from power plant to wall outlet. There are tens of millions of transformers across the United States, from the small canisters perched atop neighborhood utility poles to the mammoth interstate transmission transformers weighing hundreds of tons. Many have been in operation for decades. These older transformers struggle to reliably handle surging power demands from new technologies and are more vulnerable to both physical attacks and cyber intrusions. An estimated 80 million U.S. transformers are over 40 years old. To be sure, America’s transformer fleet wasn’t built for an era of rapidly increasing demand, sophisticated adversaries, persistent cyber threats, and extreme weather events. Largely unguarded and exposed, the fleet is distressingly vulnerable to attack and disruption. This vulnerability is quietly one of America’s most overlooked national security challenges.
To address this challenge, the United States should invest in domestic transformer manufacturing, create a national reserve of emergency units, cut self-imposed regulation, and make substations more resilient. These measures would ensure faster recovery from disruptions and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign suppliers. Coupled with sustained federal leadership and targeted regulatory flexibility, this approach can help transform the electric grid from a brittle target to a strong backbone of national resilience.
Defining the Problem
The Moore County attack in 2022 was not an isolated case. In 2013, saboteurs opened fire on the Metcalf transmission substation near San Jose, California, nearly taking down Silicon Valley’s power. A federal analysis later concluded that disabling just nine critical substations in coordination could trigger a nationwide blackout lasting weeks or even months. The same report warned that outages could persist for up to 18 months in worst-case scenarios. Yet defending each of the 55,000 substations across the country is unrealistic. Physically hardening the substations that house the most critical transformers would require expensive infrastructure upgrades, continuous surveillance, and security staffing — resources that simply aren’t available nationwide.
America’s transformer vulnerability can be exploited by foreign adversaries. China and Iran have reportedly developed capabilities to target U.S. electric infrastructure before and during a conflict. For instance, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center has discovered backdoor electronics in a Chinese-made high-voltage transformer, raising alarms that foreign-supplied equipment could enable remote sabotage of critical grid components. Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s power grid by targeting Soviet-era autotransformers, the hulking pieces of equipment that interconnect the system.
The United States faces a severe supply crunch for large power transformers, critical for maintaining a stable electric grid. Replacing these units is neither easy nor fast. Delivery times for new high-voltage transformers — each capable of supporting a city about the size of Pittsburgh — have more than doubled since 2021, now stretching to over 120 weeks. For the largest units, wait times can exceed four years. Limited domestic production capacity and global shortfalls of specialty electrical steel exacerbate the problem. Making matters worse, new tariffs aimed at bolstering domestic steel manufacturing have further tightened supplies and raised transformer costs, especially from key producers such as Mexico, Canada, and China.
Meanwhile, the U.S. grid faces unprecedented strain. Digitalization, driven by AI, hyperscale data centers, and increased electrification, is overwhelming an already aging infrastructure. Data centers alone are projected to consume over 9 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, with overall electricity demand forecasted to surge by 25 percent by 2030 and nearly 80 percent by 2050. Together with more frequent extreme and unpredictable weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires, the impact of increasing loads is pushing aging transformers toward higher failure rates precisely as supply chains become constrained. Some utility companies report project delays of two years or more due to transformer shortages, creating significant risks to national security unless action is taken.
A National Security Imperative
Transformer vulnerability is no longer a hypothetical concern — it is a present and pressing national security imperative.
The U.S. intelligence community assesses that adversaries, like China, Russia, and Iran, are not just planning attacks on critical infrastructure. They are preparing for them. Large power transformers sit at the intersection of homeland security, economic continuity, and military readiness. In a high-end conflict, even limited strikes against the grid could cause cascading regional failures that paralyze deployment logistics, disrupt command and control, and sow public panic. Russia has repeatedly bombarded Ukraine’s grid. China’s cyber operations have already scoped out U.S. utility networks, suggesting pre-positioning for potential sabotage. These vulnerabilities are not limited to foreign actors.
Domestic extremists have also identified the grid as a soft target. The Department of Homeland Security has warned of increasing emphasis by terrorists and other extremist actors on attacking substations, specifically due to the potential of causing societal chaos with relatively little effort and know-how. Recent events underscore this danger: In 2023, federal agents foiled a neo-Nazi plan to disable substations near Baltimore. Unlike cyberattacks, physical attacks require little technical expertise and can be carried out with readily available semi-automatic weapons. America is thus facing threats from all angles: State actors, criminal organizations, and domestic extremists all recognize this weak link.
Transformers are not just infrastructure but enablers of national power projection. Attacks on high-voltage nodes can delay military mobilization, sever communications links, and grind urban and industrial life to a halt. Transformers would be prime targets for an enemy seeking to sow chaos and impede U.S. military deployments, as virtually all domestic U.S. military installations rely on commercially supplied power.
Confronted with this reality, one option might be to fortify critical substations. This is impractical. A more realistic solution given the Trump administration’s stated interest in deregulation and market-oriented strategies is to build resilience to absorb disruptions instead of preventing them. There are thousands of substations scattered across remote stretches of the United States. Many of them are unmanned and physically enormous. It is thus time to shift from trying to prevent all failures, to ensuring failures are manageable and recoverable.
Progress and Policy Pivot
By the end of 2024, the Biden administration had made some strides on improving grid resilience. These included the signing of National Security Memorandum‑22 and dedicated funding for research on flexible, innovative transformer technologies to help ease supply chain bottlenecks. Additionally, the 2025 National Resilience Strategy helped institutionalize resilience planning and shared responsibility across sectors, particularly in energy, communications, and emergency services. The Department of Energy invoked the Defense Production Act to jump-start transformer manufacturing and supported industry through regulatory flexibility. However, a recent Government Accountability Office report noted that the Department of Energy has yet to establish clear goals or timelines for measurable factory ramp-ups. A well-intended foundation had been laid by the Biden administration, yet the follow-though was lacking. Ultimately, the administration, of which I was a part, failed to produce on the promises it made regarding transformer production and resilience.
The second Trump administration has already chipped away at the few gains the Biden administration made in resilience policy. A March 2025 executive order — while framed around reforming Federal Emergency Management Agency responsibilities — signals a shift toward withdrawing the federal government from emergency preparedness, including grid resilience, and instead giving that task to the states. This is a mistake. The U.S. electric grid is inherently interconnected and nationwide. As one expert poignantly told 60 Minutes, “there’s nobody in charge” of national grid resilience. Without federal coordination, states may only protect their own interests, overlooking shared vulnerabilities. The grid does not stop at state borders, and a failure in one region can cascade nationally. Ensuring systemic resilience requires exactly the kind of collective action the federal government is meant to lead. Even well-intentioned state initiatives cannot substitute for national standards, funding, and coordination. At a moment of rising threats and constrained supply chains, deliberately shrinking the federal government’s role is not a prudent strategy. It is risky and shortsighted.
Recommendations
For a Trump administration focused on industrial revival and deregulation, there are several practical steps that can be taken to bolster U.S. economic, energy, and national security.
First, jump-start domestic transformer production. Congress should extend tax credits like 45X, offer grants or loan guarantees for new production lines, and fund apprenticeships. But incentives alone won’t suffice. The administration should mandate that within five years, a share of transformers used in Defense Critical Electric Infrastructure are sourced domestically or from U.S. allies. During World War II, America mobilized astonishing industrial capacity. That same urgency is needed now.
Second, build a transformer reserve — both virtual and physical. The administration could direct the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to pilot the procurement of a handful of emergency transformer units, while the Department of Energy secures standby contracts under the Defense Production Act. Congress can appropriate a few hundred million dollars for this initiative, a fraction of the cost of a major blackout.
Third, modernize the grid with resilience requirements. While the funding levels and spending priorities under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are now in jeopardy, the dollars that remain should be tied to ensuring transformers are not just efficient, but resilient. Proposals like the CIRCUIT Act aim to support domestic transformer production and resilience through targeted tax credits, signaling continued bipartisan interest in grid modernization. Resilience measures, such as remote shutoff sensors, hookups for mobile units, and solid-state transformer deployments to critical substations, should be mandatory for transformers being subsidized.
Fourth, ease regulations in a crisis. The administration could allow temporary waivers of tariffs or domestic content requirements to speed up access to global stock — ensuring utility firms can buy critical spares now, not months from now. The Department of Energy’s new transformer efficiency rules, while crucial for achieving long-term energy transition goals, could also be paused for a limited subset of emergency-use units without derailing manufacturers’ broader production lines. Regulatory relief is a hallmark of Trump-era policymaking and would be a politically viable lever to address this national security vulnerability quickly. While counterintuitive, this is likely the most realistic path to addressing the transformer shortage with speed.
A National Inflection Point
America is at a pivotal moment. Recent government efforts have finally put U.S. transformer security on the national agenda — through strategies, funding, and growing consensus that delays are no longer acceptable. Failing to act decisively risks handing strategic advantages to adversaries who are actively targeting U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerabilities. Success in this endeavor means nothing happens: Transformers hum, the grid holds, and the lights stay on. That quiet victory is worth pursuing, because the alternative is far louder: blackouts, societal chaos, and strategic vulnerability. The tools exist. What’s needed now is follow-through — from policymakers, industry, and states — to make sure the U.S. power grid can take a hit and recover.
Jesse Humpal, Ph.D., is an Air Force officer who serves in the Chief of Staff of the Air Force’s Strategic Studies Group. Previously, he was the Director for Resilience on the National Security Council staff in the Biden administration.
The views are the author’s alone and do not reflect the position of any U.S. government entity.
Image: Wikideas1 via Wikimedia Commons
