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Could the US grid be brought down by Chinese hackers? To find out, I talked with Patrick Miller, who helped write the cybersecurity rules for the bulk power system and became the first person with federal authority to enforce them. We get into what's actually been hacked, why those "rogue devices" in Chinese inverters are less sinister than they sound, and why squirrels still do more damage than hackers.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
02:47 – What state utility commissioners get wrong about cyber risk
04:50 – Real attacks on the grid so far: Ukraine, Poland, and the US
06:57 – IT versus OT, and why grid devices are hard to protect
10:30 – The NERC CIP standards: scope, requirements, enforcement
17:40 – Distributed resources outside the CIP perimeter
20:54 – Dropping the threshold to 20 MVA, and federal jurisdiction
29:12 – Chinese inverters and the commodity board
36:09 – Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, and China's intent
39:26 – Data centers as a new attack surface
43:19 – The trade-off between security and speed
47:44 – Cyber-informed engineering and analog safeguards
54:05 – AI on offense and defense
1:02:21 – Squirrels, balloons, and physical threats
1:04:24 – CISA cuts, CIRCIA, and harmonizing the rules
