Dive Brief:

• Michael Hayden, the one-time director of the Central intelligence Agency, says there is no way to defend against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could cripple the nation's electricity grid.
• “I don’t mean to be so flippant, but there really aren’t any solutions to this, so I would just leave it at that,” Hayden said at a conference in Washington sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
• An EMP event could be malicious, such as a nuclear explosion over the U.S., or it could be a benign act of nature, such as an exceedingly large solar flare.

Dive Insight: 

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz believes the more credible threat to the nation's grid is a cyber attack and that is where the Obama administration's focus is.