Trump declares national emergency over 'extraordinary' threat in America's power grid

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-emergency/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/declaring-a-national-emergency-to-secure-the-united-states-bulk-power-system/

176 points · 59 comments · view on lemmy.world

59 Comments

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub · 74 pts · 1d
Arancello@aussie.zone · 60 pts · 1d (10 replies)

hmm. 35% of electricity comes from Canada. Threatens Canada with invasion and economic war. Wonders why the lights go out.

invertedspear@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 23h (9 replies)

Do you have a source for that number. Because this source says it’s like 2%: https://www.poweradvisoryllc.com/reports/impact-of-tariffs-on-electricity-exports-from-canada-to-the-united-states

burido@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 19h

Looks like it only applies in some states in the US: https://www.greenmatters.com/news/what-states-get-power-from-canada

datmarrow@lemmy.zip · -19 pts · 21h (7 replies)

You say 2%, they say 35%, split the difference?

LucidNightmare@anarchist.nexus · 9 pts · 15h (4 replies)

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but sharing LLM answers will get people to not take you seriously at all here.

Generally, it is better to just look this stuff up yourself.

datmarrow@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 14h (3 replies)

Ooh that’s why the massive downvotes. Sorry that wasn’t in the FAQs. Can I ask why?

PS. Is here “Politics” or Lemmy?

LucidNightmare@anarchist.nexus · 7 pts · 14h (2 replies)

Realistically, most of Lemmy. But especially when trying to back your point up.

LLMs are known to provide false information. This is why there is a placeholder text near an LLM “answer” that says roundabouts “AI can often make mistakes”.

Now, what you consider a mistake is entirely up to you. For me, and it seems quite a lot of Lemmy, a coin flip on information that it is providing you is not good enough, and will never be good enough, to prove yours or anyone else’s points.

Now, if you use an actually good LLM provider that gives you its sources (and even better, percentages of those sources), it’s all information you would’ve found yourself if you just took 5-10 minutes to read something.

I guess getting the LLMs sources and THEN reading through them would be “better”, but then you just used up 2-3 gallons of water for nothing.

Basically, use your own brain as much as possible. LLMs are not trustworthy, and they also waste HUGE amounts of resources for something so mundane.

P.S. Downvotes/Upvotes don’t mean anything here. They are pretty much opinions at this point from what I’ve seen.

datmarrow@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 13h (1 reply)

I respect that position and if the community is consistent with this philosophy I look forward to engaging. Im honestly a little embarrassed with how often I default to GPT, but doing research almost feels more cumbersome now. I typically start with LLMs and check their sources rather than raw source hunting.

alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 10h

Yeah they killed search to sell more ads and there's a ton of garbage AI generated sites that poison the results.

KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 15h (1 reply)

ChatGPT told me I had psychic powers and probably am related to aliens from Venus.

...just sayin'.

datmarrow@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 14h

What did you ask lol

NihilsineNefas@slrpnk.net · 54 pts · 1d (1 reply)

I wonder what's causing all this extra power drain.

Im sure it can't have anything to do with all the surveillance data centers being built to watch the masses every second of the day.

ramble81@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 18h

Just saw a FB thread where people were arguing the DCs are okay because they sourced a lot of generators to run on, and they use DEF fluid so they’re clean. I didn’t have the care to argue with them how badly that is actually polluting.

artyom@piefed.social · 51 pts · 1d (5 replies)

Its a good thing he spent all that money making sure no one could build wind power...

Mirshe@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 1d (3 replies)

And solar.

I_Jedi@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 23h

Ah, but don't you see? If he didn't stop the solar panels, they would've stolen the Earth's entire magnetic moment. And then, they would've stolen the Earth's electromagnetism, which means the loss of all light. This would've spread to the Sun itself, destroying the entire universe.

artyom@piefed.social · 1 pts · 23h (1 reply)

I don't know anything about that but I believe you.

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 22h

donnie the dotard is great at trying to roll back anything good for America. Conservatives ruin everything.

Trump administration quietly canceled the nation’s largest solar project

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/14/climate/trump-solar-project-nevada-electricity

Trump rollbacks hit $83 billion in solar and wind power projects

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-rollbacks-hit-83-billion-in-solar-and-wind-power-projects/ar-AA27U767

He and the idiot conservatives in the WH with their Big Idiotic Bill killed tax credit on residential solar:

https://www.energysage.com/news/congress-passes-bill-ending-residential-solar-tax-credit/

areakode@riskeratspizza.com · 5 pts · 1d

They were wasting all the electricity making wind! /s

Monument@piefed.world · 35 pts · 23h (2 replies)

This is so fucking stupid.

This problem has been known for years. YEARS.

EV Charger Hacking Poses a ‘Catastrophic’ Risk — Wired Magazine, July 5, 2023

You know how they have effectively and efficiently handled problems like this in the past?
Well they don’t gut the fucking government, hamstringing the agencies responsible for ensuring the safety of these devices and of our cybersecurity as a whole, refuse to create rules over the equipment and infrastructure that protects our infrastructure, and then publicize that it’s a problem before any meaningful change has been made so that every fucking script kiddie and malcontent with AI tokens can try their hand at taking down a region’s power grid, let alone the state actors who have the resources to do it anyway.
They keep it quiet. Pass boring-ass rules and don’t say shit until they’re sure the threat has passed or has been sufficiently remediated.

Terrible fucking governance. They’re literally publicizing a way to conduct a terror attack against the U.S. before they have a plan to handle it.


^Which^ ^might^ ^be^ ^the^ ^point.^


AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 20h (1 reply)

If Trump is, in fact, a foreign asset, and compromised actor, would he be doing anything differently?

Monument@piefed.world · 9 pts · 20h

You read between the lines, my friend.

Eternal192@anarchist.nexus · 29 pts · 1d (2 replies)

It's been a national emergency ever since he slimed his way back into office.

bunnybunny@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 1d (1 reply)

Slimed? He got voted into office because a third of Americans are plain stupid and another third is too lazy to go vote

MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net · 4 pts · 19h

Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

Gates9@sh.itjust.works · 25 pts · 12h

I am old enough to remember when Obama proposed a series of initiatives to update the power grid, most of which were blocked by republicans on account of naughty naughty socialism.

SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.de · 23 pts · 12h (2 replies)

The actual threat is hyperscale datacenters.

As for this, just a grift to find a way to funnel more money to his buddies so they don't have to pay to fix their systems and/or pocket money from taxpayers.

Every one of these is always a grift.

NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10h (1 reply)

It's either that or he just signalled to the world the majority of the PLCs managing the US critical infrastructure are internet facing, requiring little/no effort to infiltrate it.

SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 6h

That would suggest intelligence.

Almacca@aussie.zone · 22 pts · 1d
BuckFutter@timeyak.com · 19 pts · 1d (4 replies)

So how many national emergencies is this now? Seems like we have a new one every week…

orclev@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d

It's the same one ever week and it's the national emergency named Donald Trump.

Typotyper@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 15h (1 reply)

So you stop asking for the epstien files

BuckFutter@timeyak.com · 1 pts · 15h

A new distraction every week/day/hour. You gotta hand it to them, it’s working on the smooth brain idiots.

SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 12h

As many as necessary to misdirect taxpayer money to the rich.

GenitalHurricane@fedinsfw.app · 16 pts · 22h (1 reply)

hoppeduponcoffee@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 21h

While I’d love to see the unredacted copy, the GOP would just deny the fact that he raped kids and continue to enable him. There would be likely zero consequences with the rigged judicial system and presidential immunity.

AA5B@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 13h

Fucking stupid. The real danger to the grid is conservatives not letting us invest in infrastructure improvements

pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 8h (1 reply)

So fucking stupid bro. Do some fucking renewable energy then. Create jobs, energy independent, combat climate change

theand@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2h

Its renewables fault. If Biden hadn't invested in renewables we could have the money spent on clean coal.

We could have bought all that bleach that wasn't used to make people healthy during the pandemic (also Bifen's fault - very bad!) and used it to wash all the coal to make it clean (very good for the environment).

That's why we are building datacentres so fast so you can have clean coal really quickly.

I will stop now as nanny tells me its potty time.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION ON THIS MATTER!

SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org · 9 pts · 15h (1 reply)

So now he's gonna bomb some data centers?

Wataba@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 12h

Dont give me hope.

Widukin@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 23h

Epstein Files™ when?

green_goglin@thelemmy.club · 8 pts · 1d

Dookie Donnie does dumb shit — again.

RaoulDuke25@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 13h

Texas knows. We blame Abbott and the rest of the fuck head Republicans.

Soulphite@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 1d (1 reply)

trump is a dumb pedophile. I love that the editor chose dozy donvict pic for the article.

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 22h

Those kinds of pics should be used for every article about donnie the dotard.

Snowies@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 4h (1 reply)

Normalizing declaring national emergencies perhaps?

Archimedes@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2h

Setting up the scapegoat for the inevitable collapse of the power-grid due to the data center build out.

You can't be angry at the government if it was Canada's fault. Now you have to support the invasion of Canada by candlelight or be considered an un-American communist sympathizer.

Damn Canadians!

CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 22h

I thought all those "infrastructure weeks" that donnie the dotard kept announcing would have restored all of the infrastructure, including the power grid?

What happened? Did Obama, Hillary, Biden and Kamala sneak in there and blow up all his beautiful infrastructure?

kandoh@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 12h

Something something Roman citizen something something bridge never gets fixed

humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 10h

From headline, I thought he was backing away at AI datacenter first power delivery policy. My mistake. Just delay power expansions, and make sure rate payers pay for most expensive option.

humanspiral@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 10h

This is supposedly targetting China

Approximately 450 large Chinese power transformers (rated above 10,000 kVA) have been imported into the U.S. grid since 2006. Critically, over 360 of these are Large Power Transformers (LPTs) exceeding 100,000 kVA

There are significant orders from utilities to China for new Transformers. The US has a 2.5 year queue overall for transformer delivery, which would lengthen considerably, and the existing Chinese transformers would also need to be replaced.

The order is also designed to make utility solar more expensive, and delayed, for their inverter costs.

stickyprimer@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 14h

If the full text of this is “no Huawei anything anywhere in the grid” then I’m all for it.

ZK686@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 12h (3 replies)

Let me guess, Lemmy and Reddit are excited because out power grid might get attacked? Because you know, screw Trump!!!

cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 11h

You know, I can tell Lemmy is actually hitting a critical mass of users when I see text book disinformation posts like this starting to crop up in the politics sub. Makes me feel happy. Also, get fucked, nobody cares.

SGforce@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 11h

Why didn't you post this as a reply to one, then?

benjirenji@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 4h

Some may argue it is already under attack and has been by an unrelenting defunding campaign. This now is just the success of this attack.