A former Trump administration official warned of potential attacks on the nation’s power infrastructure that it is not prepared to handle.
With a critical presidential election just weeks away, Kash Patel, a former U.S. National Security Council official under then-President Donald Trump, raised an alarm over the power grids in the U.S. and the vulnerabilities that are not being adequately addressed, warning of “a 9/11-style attack” that the current administration s not prepared for.
“The people doing the work can’t collect the intel that you need to secure this nation against things like attacks on electric grids because they’re not allowed to look there,” he said, speaking with the host of the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast.
(Video Credit: Shawn Ryan Show)
“How vulnerable is it to outside attacks?” asked former Navy SEAL/CIA Contractor Shawn Ryan.
“Big. It’s big because once they hit it, we can’t fix it fast. Look, we just saw Paris during the Olympics get blacked out. It wasn’t a coincidence after the opening ceremonies. And again, I think President Trump has talked about this,” Patel replied.
“You need to overhaul the infrastructure around these systems to safeguard us from what I view as one of the easier threats our adversaries can deploy against America. These are also harder to trace. So that’s the other thing,” he continued.
“The sourcing would be much harder on that than, say, a kinetic operation like a 9/11-style attack,” said Patel, an attorney who served as chief of staff to the acting United States secretary of defense in the Trump administration.
Patel warned that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – among others – could take advantage of the weak areas that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have left exposed and not prioritized.
He noted that there is a “continuity plan” to keep the government operating “and for enough personnel to be around to make sure we can do all those things and supposedly defend the nation and keep the commander-in-chief and his cabinet secure.”
“But there’s no contingency plan to say, if you wipe out the electricity west of the Mississippi, how are we going to turn it back on? It doesn’t exist,” Patel explained.
He expressed that it is not a far-flung possibility but more of a reality and that “this isn’t something you’re fixing overnight.”
“You’ve got to get Congress to buy in and budget for this, allow the agencies and departments to go in and make this a priority, and allow companies to come in and rebuild the infrastructure and fix it. Same with our nuclear programs. It’s the same deal,” he said.
“So, we’re screwed?” Ryan asked.
“I think we have an ability. That’s why I think this election is so important—not just for everything we’ve talked about up to this point but in terms of national security and defense, which is my wheelhouse,” Patel replied.
“We have an opportunity to come in and reprioritize all the things that you and I have just been talking about so that the American people are safeguarded because they’ve been neglected for too long. These have not been priorities of the current administration and some of the previous administrations,” he added.
Patel stated that the intelligence community “is playing catch-up” but there is currently “no will in D.C. to fix and upgrade any of this stuff.”
“Something’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already,” he said in a chilling warning.
“So, I’ve always said they’re going to come at us in some fashion during this election cycle,” he added. “I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like or if we’re going to know right away.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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