New TPPF Research: Texas Must Protect Its Critical Infrastructure
AUSTIN — Texas’s power grid, water systems, fuel supply, and communications networks are vulnerable to natural disasters, attacks by hostile nations, and terrorism. If key parts fail, recovery could take years. That is the warning in a new Texas Public Policy Foundation paper by the Honorable Chuck DeVore, Protecting Texas Critical Infrastructure.
The federal government largely abandoned civil defense decades ago. The paper warns that in a national emergency, FEMA will not be able to come to Texas’s aid. Meanwhile, Chinese state-sponsored hackers have already gotten into U.S. energy, water, and communications networks. The large power transformers the grid depends on take more than two years to replace, and most imported ones come from China.
As Texas confronts the threat of terrorism, including the potential for attacks inspired by extremist ideologies, protecting the infrastructure that millions of Texans depend on is a critical part of the state’s homeland security strategy.
“Texas cannot prevent every cyberattack, terrorist plot, or hostile-state action, and certainly cannot prevent hurricanes and winter storms, but we can ensure that no single event can produce catastrophic failure resulting in mass casualties,” said Chuck DeVore, Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Washington walked away from civil defense more than 30 years ago. Texas has taken important first steps, but now we need spare transformers on hand, real field exercises that test our response, and laws that treat plotting to attack the grid as the serious crime it is.”
The report recommends that Texas raise penalties for plotting attacks on infrastructure, strengthen intelligence sharing through the DPS Fusion Center, and set risk-based hardening standards for infrastructure owners. It also calls for state-managed reserves of transformers and medical supplies, along with regular full-scale field exercises led by TDEM or the National Guard.