The FBI and intelligence officials have been providing limited warnings about the growing terrorist and other threats to the U.S., but usually prefer to avoid alarming the populace or making elected officials look bad, so they understate the risks. Former officials are giving far more detailed and honest threat warnings.
In recent years tens of thousands of illegal Chinese immigrants, many young males, entered the U.S. illegally. Many are believed to be Chinese agents.[1] Via other sources we know that the FBI has warned that China has safehouses for their agents in every state.[2]
We can’t know their numbers, but it is likely several thousand. Some evidence of their presence is the 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage in the United States since 2000[3]—but this does not capture the likely far more numerous cases of undetected espionage or agents that are not risking discovery by engaging in espionage, but working in a “normal†job, waiting for future assignment.
A recent FBI Director called the number of Russian spies in the U.S. “way too big†despite efforts to find them, but the FBI does not provide an estimate of their number.[4]
There is an estimate of the number of ISIS members in the U.S.: over 1,000, in all 50 states. Since 2014, more than 250 individuals have been charged with ISIS-related activities.[5]
Sarah Adams, a former CIA counter-terrorism analyst, who continues to access vast open-source material, recently warned that Al Qaeda (now led by the late Osama Bin Ladens sons) is in the operational phase of a plan to attack the U.S., both our Embassies abroad and coordinated attacks inside the U.S. itself. According to Adams, Al Qaeda has trained about 1,000 operatives to carry out attacks. A large portion of Al Qaeda agents infiltrated through our largely open northern and southern borders, but they also use legal methods of immigration. More details are available by watching the Dec. 12th episode of the Shawn Ryan show:
We don’t have any reliable information on the number of Iranian and North Korean agents in the U.S., likely relatively few. Would they coordinate with Russia and Chinese agents? Unlikely due to security concerns, but if there is a major attack on the U.S. by foreign agents that severely damages our electric grid (the likely target), they will probably tasked to take advantage of U.S. disruption and widespread loss of law and order, to undertake attacks.
With so many Chinese agents in the U.S., their domestic attacks may go far beyond small terrorist attacks. With advances in destructive technology and fatal vulnerabilities in the U.S. agents could launch major coordinated attacks that inflict extensive destruction to the U.S. Even better for China, they could launch these attacks not just with complete surprise, but without direct and convincing evidence that it was China that executed the attacks.
There are several Chinese air drone companies operating in the U.S. We suspect that many Chinese agents are working in these air taxi drone “front companies,†conducting surveillance operations under cover of a legitimate commercial company’s development operations. If caught, the company explains that they were doing R&D work. Companies understandably keep their R&D work confidential.
China is probably the leader in air taxi drone technology. China was the first country to approve autonomous flying taxis, and with their relaxed regulatory environment have a huge advantage over U.S. and west European firms. According to a Nov 2024 Bloomberg News report “the U.S. is losing the Air Taxi Race to China,†with China “barreling ahead with approval for automated electric aircraft while the FAA mires American companies in red tape.â€[6]
Photo: EHang air taxi, Chinese company, https://www.ehang.com/ehangaav/
We believe the aggressive drone reconnaissance of U.S. military bases in recent years and the surge in unusual and very large drones sighted in the northeast (excluding the false reports) is most likely foreign surveillance being done by foreign agents under the “cover†of air taxi drone companies. Drones are ideal vehicles to place small charges to destroy advanced aircraft on the ground (that cost millions of dollars each, and are very few in number as a result)—or attack huge transformers to take out our electric grid. A massive drone attack on military bases and/or the electric grid would take extensive reconnaissance and mapping for a large fleet of drones to execute a big attack.
The flexibility of our electric grid, which allows power plants to reroute instantly so lights stay on also enables line failures to quickly spiral out of control, causing widespread blackouts, a “cascading failure.†When a transformer blows up, it can send a big flash of very high voltage power down connected power lines, destroying other transformers. An EMP attack or big solar flare would likely cause more destroyed transformers, but well-designed, massive physical/cyber-attacks on the grid with cascading damage might yield the same level of grid destruction and loss of life. China has enough agents in country and the cyber and drone capability to at least cripple our grid and military power for months, and if successful on a large scale, years.
Photo source: Daelim Transformer website
When a solar flare, EMP, cyber, or physical attack (or combination of attacks) destroys a lot of transformers and takes down the electric grid it will take at least a year, likely two or more to replace the huge transformers (largely not built in the U.S.) and get power back. Without power, it’s not just economic production that shuts down. Municipal water systems can’t function without electricity for pumps, so urban and suburban residents, the vast majority of our population, have 3 days to find alternative, safe drinking water or they start dying. U.S. military bases (with very limited exceptions, largely our strategic nuclear forces), cannot operate without the civilian electric grid.
The co-chair of the commission charged by Congress to study electric grid vulnerability was asked during Congressional testimony, “what happens to society when the grid is down for . . . a year or two, because we cannot get these transformers?†The co-chair of the Commission, a former Navy Admiral and CIA Director, James Woolsey replied, “there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption. One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die. The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population would die. We are talking about total devastation.â€[7]
If you have any doubts about how vulnerable our electric grid is, watch this professional, award winning documentary:
China’s insistence that they will take Taiwan and hatred of the U.S. supporting Taiwan’s independence and providing military assistance is absolutely clear. China likely will risk nuclear war in a confrontation with us over Taiwan—but they could knock the U.S. out of supporting Taiwan with far less risk of retaliation and damage by using their agents, drones, and cyber attacks to destroy our electric grid. If not the electric grid, a smaller and easier target is poisoning municipal water systems by agents on the ground (likely with truck size loads of poison).  In addition to military base reconnaissance, much of the drone activity being reported is at electric energy stations and along waterways and reservoirs that provide water to major U.S. cities.
While the electric grid is huge and there are millions of transformers and electric nodes and stations in our grid, there are some especially critical nodes, such as the 700 extremely high voltage (EHV) transformers that carry electric power (most of it) over long distances. There are nodes that connect with many other parts of the grid and enable power surges to spread to other transformers. With big, air-taxi size “mothership†drones dispatching lots of smaller drones carrying small explosives that can land on exactly the most vulnerable part of a huge transformer, and hundreds of agents on the ground shooting at or planting explosives to take out transformers, the task of destroying the U.S. electric grid for years, killing the majority of our population and taking our conventional military forces out of action is very doable—and deniable.
Above photo from “Grid Down Power Up†documentary on our fragile electric grid; https://griddownpowerup.com/
There have been several attacks on electric gird substations and transformers in the U.S. over the past decade, some of which appear to have been professionally executed group attacks for training or planning. There have also been attacks, physical and cyber, on electric systems in several countries around the world, including the U.S. Russia has demonstrated its ability to disable electric systems with cyber-attacks, and in 2023, a VP of the North American Electric Reliability Corp testified Congress warning of the “alarming†cybersecurity threat posed by China. China has executed a campaign of cyberattacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure sectors in recent years—with no repercussions. In 2023, Politico reported that Russia got “dangerously close†to knocking out a significant part of the U.S. electric supply through a cyber-attack, again with no response from the U.S.
Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and likely terrorist groups like ISIS have agents who operate in the U.S., blending in by working in normal jobs, sometimes in “front companies†they control. A March 2021 report from the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned about insiders working in electric companies that could sabotage the grid, but there are few power companies with an insider-risk program and dedicated staff to detect and prevent such sabotage.[8]
Some utility companies did take steps to improve security of the most critical transformers and nodes, after the 2013 Metcalf attack on transformers at an electric grid station. The addition of autonomous drones, that can fly right to the ideal spot to detonate, might be a reaction to these physical security improvements.
The low level cyber-attacks/intrusions by at least China and Russia on the U.S. electric grid were clearly done to develop and test capability to destroy our grid. Some of the physical attacks on our grid were likely enemy agents. Due to government incompetence or deception, we do not know if recent large scale drone reconnaissance, big drones releasing smaller drones, is also evidence of enemy agents developing and testing capability to attack our vulnerable grid, but only an idiot would assume this is unlikely. Our assessment is that China is wisely preparing the capability to destroy our electric grid without providing obvious evidence that they launched the attacks. Cyber and physical attacks (from agents on the ground and drones in the air) can disable a large part or the vast majority of our electric grid, enabling China to seize Taiwan and replace the U.S. as the world’s top superpower.
If Chinese or Russian agents conduct the attacks, China or Russia  would deny it—and likely convince much or most of the world that any evidence the U.S. did present nor do we benefit from launching strategic nuclear strikes to punish them after we’ve lost our grid—virtually guaranteeing retaliatory nuclear attacks by them, adding nuclear devastation to our country at a time when hundreds of thousands or millions are dying daily in the aftermath of a grid down disaster.
While we do not have direct evidence or intelligence to support this assessment, the nature of undercover agent work, and the fact that our electric system is the clear, obvious “Achilles’ Heel†of not just our population, but our conventional military power, it is likely that foreign agents and terrorists will target the grid as the obvious, easy way to disable our military and kill most of our citizens. We are confident that some foreign agents have been placed in electric utility companies and believe that Chinese agents are hiding/operating in Chinese air taxi drone companies.
In a Feb 2024 report, a former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned about drones “used by adversaries for vandalism, sabotage, espionage, or terrorism.†They noted that “drones from unknown operators have flown over substations and other critical infrastructure. Although there have been no incidents involving explosive payloads, it’s just a matter of time before that happens.â€[9]
Note the key word: “former†Dept Homeland Security official. Government agencies and officials consistently lie to the public about threats, constrained by top elected officials who want to promote the myth that Big Government is taking care of you, nothing to worry about as long as they are re-elected. The former Director of the Center for Disease Control disputes the current CDC stance on H5N1 is “low risk,†warning that it will inevitably be a horrible pandemic. The CDC will not issue an honest warning on H5N1 until the pandemic has started and it’s too late to prepare.
The former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at DHS noted “the close connection of Chinese drone companies to Beijing and its military . . . [and] risk that these drones are mapping U.S. infrastructure and sending details back to China.â€[10]
We cannot predict whether it will be Chinese, Russian, Iranian, Al Qaeda, or ISIS agents conducting attacks in the U.S. in 2025, or whether they are isolated attacks or a big attack on the electric grid, but the available evidence and state of the world suggests a strong probability of enemy agent attacks sometime this year.
[1] https://homeland.house.gov/2024/04/18/startling-stats-factsheet-encounters-of-chinese-nationals-surpass-all-fiscal-year-2023-at-the-southwest-border/
[2] 2024 02 07 Press Conference With Sheriff Richard K. Jones of Butler County, Ohio (youtube.com)
[3] Center for Strategic International Studies, “Survey of Chinese Espionage in the United States Since 2000,†https://www.csis.org/programs/strategic-technologies-program/survey-chinese-espionage-united-states-2000
[4] Julia Shapero, “Number of Russian spies in US remains ‘way too big,’ says FBI director,†The Hill, Sep 8, 2023, https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/4194044-fbi-wray-russian-spies-us/
[5] Seamus Hughes, “New Orleans Terror Attack: An Overview of ISIS Support in America,†National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, Jan 1, 2025
[6] Thomas Black, Bloomberg News report, “The U.S. is losing the Air Taxi Race to China,†12 Nov 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-12/air-taxis-china-will-beat-the-us-without-quicker-faa-action?embedded-checkout=true
[7] “Protecting The Electric Grid From The Potential Threats Of Solar Storms And Electromagnetic Pulse,†Hearing before the Committee On Homeland Security And Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, July 22, 2015; https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-114shrg22225/html/CHRG-114shrg22225.htm
[8] https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/news/20210319-Insider-Threat-Mitigation-for-US-Critical-Infrastru-March-2021.pdf
[9] https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/monthly-issues/security-technology/archive/2024/february/girding-the-grid/
[10] https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/monthly-issues/security-technology/archive/2024/february/girding-the-grid/
