Republicans enjoy pretending to be “tough on terrorism”. But, as with most things they pretend to be, they are not. If they actually were, they’d have sprung into action long ago to deal with the massive infrastructure vulnerability of our antiquated nationwide power grid.

As the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) warned some time ago, as per a secret memo recently revealed by Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Smith [subscription req’d], the entire nationwide grid could be brought down by an attack on as few as 9 of the nation’s 55,000 electrical substations during a heat wave. Knock out a transformer manufacturer at the same time and the power — nationwide — would stay collapsed “for at least 18 months, probably longer“.

The former chairman of FERC has suggested a solution, which may (partially) explain Republican interest in ignoring the matter entirely: distributed solar power.

Of course, after Smith’s report, the U.S. government is not angry at the lack of action to protect against the vulnerability. They are mad at Smith for reporting it, even though she withheld key details.

The entire issue became even more critical recently, after last April’s “mysterious and sophisticated sniper attack” on a substation in San Jose, CA.

Desi Doyen of The BRAD BLOG’s Green News Report explained the entire mess while guest hosting last Friday’s The Young Turks…