Rifle-Toting Terrorists Pose Great Threat to Power Grid

An attack on the power grid by terrorists -- even ones armed with relatively simple weapons -- is among the greatest threats to the reliability of the nation’s power system, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said.

“There are ways that a very few number of actors with very rudimentary equipment could take down large portions of our grid,” FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff said today at a Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington. “I don’t think we have the level of physical security we need.”