Lights Out: What Hurricanes Reveal about Cyberattacks and Blackouts

It is time to critically reassess the fear that a hostile state will launch a cyberattack on energy infrastructure to plunge a society into darkness and civil unrest. Not only has it never happened, but the component parts of the chain required in such a scenario are fragile. A lot must go wrong for an effort of that kind to achieve even partial success. This article offers an original contribution by examining the risk of cyberattack against the energy grid as a driver of civil unrest. In the absence of direct historical precedents, the analysis draws on adjacent cases from blackouts unrelated to cyberattacks to assess the potential societal impact of mass outages. While energy infrastructure remains a frequent target for cyberattacks, the existing security architecture has largely held, provided it continues to adapt. Persistent fear surrounding this threat may therefore misdirect resources and attention from more pressing security challenges.