Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System

[u/tetaniclemur]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-a-national-emergency-to-secure-americas-bulk-power-system/

[u/count023]

not me, i'm confused why he's talking about the US national power grid as if it's a threat to the midterms. Not really seeing how this helps him rn.

[u/No_Celery_5373 → u/count023]

It's a wild but somewhat educated guess for me ~ Doug Ford has made comments about threatening to cut off the power supply to the US, and Canada's stubbornness in not agreeing to a sovereignty destroying trade deal, I'm presuming this one is a direct threat to Canadians at this time that "shutting the lights off" like Ford wanted to do would be considered a national security issue.

[u/Winston905 → u/No_Celery_5373]

its more to do with the iranian hack on industrial equipment. PLC control hooked up to networks and look out. hydro one is just as vulnerable. remember 20 + years ago when iran was trying to purify their uranium and they kept on blowing up centrifuges. this was a usa hack on them. it was a learning lesson for iranian hackers. recent take over of water systems in the usa.

[u/LightningMcLovin → u/Winston905]

Iran is not capable of making something like Stuxnet.

[u/No_Celery_5373 → u/Winston905]

Interesting. I'm not an IT person or hacker, but I am an industrial technician and PLCs don't typically have great security, I program them pretty frequently. The ones I've worked with can be re-flashed with eprom chips with pretty much no safety checks on them. I understood that they're supposed to only be connected to Intranet and never Internet. Are they doing that and the Iranians are finding ways in?

I know that the Iranians had a centrifuge that was sabotaged digitally and it was only ever connected to intranet, so someone had physically found a way in by either getting in, or getting a worm onto something that a technician brought in.

To me, it doesn't seem like a good idea to have PLCs connected to anything anyone can access remotely. The most security I've worked with so far is one that had a static 4 digit password.

[u/sj4nes → u/No_Celery_5373]

Kim Zetter’s Countdown to Zero Day is said to be the book-length investigation of the Stuxnet hack. I just added it to my TO_READ pile.

[u/AnonAwaaaaay → u/No_Celery_5373]

I wonder how much this will effect California considering it's such a huge economy. 

[u/No_Celery_5373 → u/AnonAwaaaaay]

I've tried to look up statistics and it just says "significant importer" which could just mean 5%. California is likely to be okay. Maine is 64% and probably feel a lot of pain. I hope that we can all find a way to stand down before it gets worse, but it will not be at the expense of our nation.

[u/AnonAwaaaaay → u/No_Celery_5373]

Thanks! 

Yeah. Hopefully Canada realies our dumbass in Chief will light the house on fire to win a point and instead decides to not fuck the entire nation because us being weakened causes hegemonic issues elsewhere in the world that can lead to evil ass nations like Russia and China destabilizing shit on us.

[u/CAredditBoss → u/AnonAwaaaaay]

Bigly

Unfortunately, this drives a massive wedge from California and into Canada.

Buckle up

[u/Motorbarge → u/No_Celery_5373]

He's getting ready to invade Canada to take over the power grid. Knowing Trump as we do, he will send the army in to secure the facilities without waiting for more.

Republicans love war and we don't have the army to fight this off. Of course, they will kill a few dozen Canadians for good measure.

[u/Emnk → u/count023]

I don't really know. I do know that we've been needing to upgrade our grid's security for a long time. With us attacking Iran I could see them trying to respond by attacking the energy grid remotely.

Beyond that I don't really understand this either but I'm sure it allows for some sort of fuckery.

[u/DasFunke → u/Emnk]

If only there was a bill that was passed…something about infrastructure…sometime recently…

[u/Laringar → u/DasFunke]

Hey, it's Infrastructure Weak again!

[u/Antique_Eye_3200 → u/Emnk]

Any national emergency grants additional powers, no?

[u/Meet_the_Meat → u/count023]

it will allow him to direct federal money to his friends and family, and deny funds to his enemies. That's all it ever is with him.

[u/Aghast_Cornichon → u/Meet_the_Meat]

Reading the declaration itself, this one seems only about 30% grift and 15% self-aggrandizing Biden-blaming fluff.

Better than most !

[u/jsmith_92 → u/count023]

Shots in the dark

[u/ImWatchingTelevision → u/count023]

Tinfoil hat - CIA director goes to Moscow to finalize the plan of attack to be implemented by GRU cyber teams around US election time that drops power to certain regions of the US. "You do this for us, we'll help you finish Ukraine." They'll try to make it look like Canada did it or some bullshit. Then the admin will go, "See? We told you we were vulnerable!" Kicks the emergency level up a notch and says we can't possibly have elections under these circumstances (which he can't do, but what's ever stopped him). Or, none of that is true and it's just another money grab scheme.

[u/PolicyWonka → u/count023]

The executive order does not mention elections at all.

[u/Eatpineapplerightnow → u/count023]

Me too. It does have the benefit of normalizing these declarations I guess

[u/flareblitz91 → u/[deleted]]

No, you cannot.

[u/SpaceElevatorMusic → u/[deleted]]

That has nothing to do with this.

[u/000066 → u/SpaceElevatorMusic]

Oops yep, was following the previous commenter