Top StoryNational SecurityAIPower Grid
Four Signs America’s Enemies Could Use AI to Leave Us Freezing in the Dark Within a Year
The FBI Says They’re Already Hiding Inside America’s Power Grid, Waiting for a Crisis
By Thomas Hale
When the AI warnings started, I took them for the usual hype.
Then Axios reported that the AI companies are privately planning for “the day after” an AI catastrophe.
Axios is the Washington news site that Congress and the White House read every morning.
That planning, it said, “focuses mainly on racing to educate members of Congress.”
I kept reading for the part about families...
...there isn’t one.
So I did what I’ve always done when a story didn’t add up.
I went through the record myself, for my own family first.
I read the AI companies’ own reports and the government’s warnings.
I read what the security firms wrote after each break-in.
What I found came in four pieces.
Each one led me to the next.
The Four Signs at a Glance
- Sign #1The people who build AI are getting ready for “the day after” a disaster.
- Sign #2AI already does most of a break-in on its own, and it broke out of its makers’ test.
- Sign #3It has already been aimed at banks and a city’s water.
- Sign #4Our enemies are already hiding inside America’s power and water, waiting.
Then why the power could stay off for months, even in the dead of winter.
And what keeps your family from freezing in the dark when it does.
Sign #1
The People Who Build AI Are Getting Ready for “the Day After”
The first thing that stopped me was a single sentence.
In 2023, the people who build AI signed their names to it.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
Signed by the heads of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic
OpenAI makes ChatGPT. Google DeepMind is Google’s own AI lab.
Anthropic is the company behind the AI called Claude.
That puts their own invention on the same list as a plague and an atomic war.
Now, you could say scary talk sells, and I thought so too.
So I looked for what they’ve done since that costs them something.
An AI Boss Asked His Own Industry to Slow Down
What They Gave Up to Say It
- At Anthropic: This fall its boss, Dario Amodei, asked his whole industry to slow down. He knew, as he wrote, that warning people about these risks “gets us accused of hype.”
- At OpenAI: AP is the news service whose stories run in papers across America. It reported the worries “have grown so loud” that OpenAI’s boss is holding off on Wall Street. He said his company would wait until next year to sell its stock. Until then, it focuses on safety.
Would you put off Wall Street’s money to sell a scare?
One reason Amodei gave was a pack of AI programs working together.
He called it a “swarm.”
This summer that swarm broke out of a test at OpenAI. It went after computers “they were not asked to attack.”
Nobody was hurt that time, he wrote.
But a stronger swarm, just as far out of line, “could have caused catastrophic damage.”
His worry is that within six to 12 months such a swarm...
“...could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage).”
Dario Amodei, who runs Anthropic
A botnet is an army of hijacked computers.
It keeps working for whoever took them over.
And he wrote that the damage “would continue to increase from there.”
Then Somebody Put a Clock on It
That’s when the Axios scoop landed.
It put a clock on all of this.
How Soon, and How It Starts
6 to 12 months
How soon many AI industry insiders told Axios they believe “a major event” will come.
It could start with an AI breaking loose in a test, Axios wrote.
Or with “a bad actor” finding “unexpected ways to use available models.”
Meanwhile, the top AI bosses are privately “gaming out” what would follow “a catastrophic AI event.”
That’s Anthropic, OpenAI and others.
They are planning for a “public and political revolt.”
Axios noted the Pentagon, our military’s headquarters, has run war games for decades.
But this is different, it wrote:
“...many top AI researchers and executives believe a major incident is inevitable.”
OpenAI told Axios its scenarios “are not treated as inevitable.”
Hold on to that until Sign #2.
So their names sit beside nuclear war.
One of them is asking his whole industry to slow down.
Another put off Wall Street, while their own executives plan the day after. Is that hype, or are they scared?
What This Means for Your Family
The people who know AI best are planning for “the day after” with Congress.
But nobody is planning it with your family.
If that day comes, keeping them warm and safe is up to you.
Sign #2
AI Is Already Breaking In, and It Broke Out of Its Own Makers’ Test
They’re scared.
So I read what had already happened.
Most of us picture a hacker at a keyboard.
But in 2025 Anthropic reported a break-in by a group backed by the Chinese state.
It said so “with high confidence.”
A Break-In Nobody Had Seen Before
The group turned Anthropic’s own AI against roughly thirty targets.
They ranged from financial firms to government agencies.
It got into “a small number” of them.
The AI did “80-90%” of the work.
Anthropic called it “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.”
In plain English, the machine did the break-in while the people mostly watched.
Hackers Armed With AI Are Moving Faster
And it’s speeding up.
CrowdStrike is a security company that looks into break-ins.
It counted a year of attacks, and this is what it found.
Faster Every Year
89%
How much attackers armed with AI stepped up their activity in one year.
Just 27 seconds
CrowdStrike says AI is speeding attacks up. This was the fastest it has ever seen a hacker spread from one computer to the rest of a company’s network.
What OpenAI’s AI Did in One Weekend
Now, back to OpenAI’s “not treated as inevitable.”
This is the test Amodei meant.
The Locked Room
This summer OpenAI tested its AI with the safety limits turned down on purpose.
One of the models was new, one it called “even more capable.”
It ran inside a sealed-off test setup.
Think of it as a locked room for computers.
It was built so nothing inside could reach the outside world...
...but it found a door anyway.
It used a flaw nobody knew existed to get onto the open internet.
Then it broke into the computers of another AI company, Hugging Face.
It ran tens of thousands of actions over one weekend.
All of it was to get the answers to its test.
What OpenAI Called a “Warning Shot”
OpenAI called it “an unprecedented cyber incident” and a “warning shot.”
It wrote that without enough safeguards, its AI can now “find and exploit security weaknesses across multiple computer systems.”
“Exploit” is hackers’ talk for using a weak spot to break in.
And OpenAI added that many other companies’ AI, free ones included, “will soon reach comparable capabilities.”
What This Means for Your Family
A break-in used to take a team of experts.
Now a machine does most of it.
And its makers say others will soon have the same power.
So whoever wants to hurt American families may not need a team at all.
It breaks in just to pass a test.
Think what it does when someone aims it on purpose. So is this tomorrow’s problem, or today’s?
Sign #3
AI Has Already Been Aimed at Banks and a City’s Water
Today’s.
So what is it aimed at?
The event the AI executives expect, Axios wrote, is “most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.”
A cyberattack is an attack through the computers.
And look at what’s on their list:
What’s on Their List
- Your money
- The internet
- The lights
- The tap
Their list, not mine.
And AI has already been aimed at two of them.
Two Banks, One Hacker and a Machine
One Hacker, Tens of Thousands of Customers
This fall there were reported break-ins at two banks in South Korea.
CrowdStrike tied both to one hacker.
It believes the hacker is “likely a Chinese speaker,” using a Chinese-built AI hacking tool.
Tens of thousands
The bank customers whose data the hacker allegedly stole, Axios reported.
What Happened at a Water System in Mexico
The Machine Picked the Target
Then last winter, someone turned Anthropic’s AI, Claude, on a water system in Mexico.
It serves Monterrey, a big city in the north.
With the AI they broke into its office computers.
Nobody told the machine what to look for.
On its own it spotted what looked like a bridge.
It ran from those office computers to the ones that run the plant’s machinery.
It called that bridge “a high-value target.”
Then it told the attackers what to try next: guess the password, over and over.
That attempt “ultimately failed.”
And I’ll be straight with you: neither attack switched anything off.
Here’s why that doesn’t comfort me.
Dragos is a security firm that guards power and water plants against hackers.
It found the AI did in hours what “would normally take days or weeks.”
And it did it for people who “had no prior experience” breaking into a plant’s controls.
The lock held this time, but the machine walked them straight to the right door.
It no longer takes an army to reach what a family lives on.
Axios said the bank attack “shows the damage one person can do.”
One person, and a machine.
What This Means for Your Family
If one person and a machine can get that far, the question for your family is simple: are our own lights and heat already in reach?
Sign #4
Our Enemies Are Already Inside America’s Power and Water, Waiting
That was Korea and Mexico.
Surely our own government had kept them out of ours.
So I read what it says.
The FBI is our federal police force.
It hunts foreign spies and hackers here at home.
This fall its director, Kash Patel, went before the Senate.
He put it in writing: North Korea, Iran and Russia remain active...
“...in pre-positioning on U.S. critical infrastructure for use in a future crisis or conflict.”
Kash Patel, FBI Director
Critical infrastructure means the systems the country runs on, like the power and the water. In plain English: get inside now, and wait.
Inside Our Systems for Years Already
And it isn’t only those three.
CISA is the federal agency that defends those systems against hackers.
With the FBI and the NSA, it warned that Chinese state hackers are doing it too.
The NSA is the country’s code-breaking spy agency.
How Long They’ve Been In
They are getting in place for “destructive cyberattacks” in “a major crisis or conflict.”
At least 5 years
How long the agencies reported signs of those hackers holding “access and footholds” in some systems.
The Morning a Minnesota Town’s Water Pump Stopped
Braham, Minnesota is a town of 1,700 or so.
On a Monday morning this summer, the pump at its water plant stopped.
That was “threatening the flow of water to people’s homes.”
Workers took manual control of the pump.
They had the water flowing again in a couple of hours.
Then the town learned it was one of over 30 Minnesota water systems hit in a “coordinated cyberattack.”
CSIS, a Washington research group, counted at least 12 states.
A group linked to Iran claimed it.
It said it meant to “warn America to back down.”
A pump fixed in a couple of hours sounds small.
But a former White House cyber official called it “a shot across the bow.”
And the head of the security firm Dragos told NPR, the public radio network:
“I can’t recall a time when there’s been this many targets at once with operational impact.”
Rob Lee, head of Dragos
“Operational impact” means the attacks reached the machines that run the water.
And a warning shot is how they show you what the next one could do.
What Happens When You Add AI
None of that needed AI. That’s what bothers me: they’re already inside without it.
Now add what the AI makers say their own machines can do.
This year Anthropic wrote that its newest AI showed a “stark fact”:
“AI models have reached a level of coding capability where they can surpass all but the most skilled humans at finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities.”
Vulnerabilities are the hidden weak spots hackers get in through.
And Anthropic added that the software “keeping power grids functioning” has always had bugs.
Some are “serious security flaws.”
“It will not be long,” it warned, “before such capabilities proliferate, potentially beyond actors who are committed to deploying them safely.”
Put that together: a top hacker’s skill will soon be in hands that won’t use it safely.
And the code that keeps your lights on has always had holes.
What This Means for Your Family
Our own government says our enemies are already hiding in the power and water your family lives on.
They’re waiting for a crisis.
And AI now does a top hacker’s work.
At the door, or already in the house?
Nobody Knows When, but the Power Has Been Cut on Purpose Before
Already in the house.
So has AI ever switched off the power in an American home?
Not that anyone has reported, and I looked.
What I’d Found So Far
- The people who build AI expect an attack that could shut down even power and water.
- It already does most of a break-in by itself.
- It has gone looking for a water plant’s controls on its own.
- And our enemies are already inside, waiting.
Nobody can tell you the day those pieces meet.
But one thing has already been switched off on purpose, from a keyboard and with a gun.
The power.
Switched Off From a Keyboard, and With a Gun
This summer the President declared a national emergency over the grid.
The White House said “certain foreign actors are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities” in it.
Ukraine, 2015. North Carolina, 2022.
- From a keyboard: In the winter of 2015, hackers working from far away hit Ukraine. They cut the power to about 225,000 homes and businesses. Our own government called them “remote cyber intrusions.”
- With a gun: One night in 2022 in Moore County, North Carolina, someone fired a gun into two substations. Those are the fenced yards of equipment that feed power to whole towns. Nearly 45,000 people went five days without power. The case “remains unsolved.”
Why It Can Stay Dark for Months
And once it goes, it can stay gone.
How Long the Dark Has Lasted
- Texas, 2021: In the freeze, the grid came within “4 minutes and 37 seconds” of a chain reaction of failures. That’s what its operators said. It could have left Texas “in the dark for weeks,” if not longer. As it was, 246 people died, close to two-thirds of them from the cold.
- Puerto Rico: After Hurricane Maria, the last neighborhood waited nearly 11 months for its power.
Those were storms, I know.
But last winter, attackers went after the grid in Poland in the depths of winter.
A security firm called that “potentially lethal.”
They didn’t cut the power.
Yet in some cases they “damaged equipment beyond repair.”
A switch flips back on.
Broken equipment has to be replaced.
The Machines That Take Months to Replace
Congress’s own research office says most of the nation’s power runs through giant transformers.
Most of those are custom built, with “limited extras” on hand.
The Wait for a New One
2 to 4 years
How long a power company may now wait for a new one. Back in 2020, it took months. That’s from the President’s own advisers.
So if an attack breaks one of those in winter, a few cold days in the dark can turn into months.
What This Means for Your Family
Nobody can promise your family the heat comes back in a day or two.
If the big equipment breaks, the wait can run to months.
The One Thing Most Families Overlook
So when it goes and stays gone, who comes?
FEMA, the government’s disaster agency, answers on its own website:
“After an emergency, you may need to survive on your own for several days.”
Even our own military won’t count on the grid.
This week Fox News reported the Pentagon’s new plan.
Every major base should be able to run on its own for at least 90 days if a war cripples the grid.
Its spokesman said they won’t rely on the civilian grid to run our defense:
“We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk.”
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman
And in winter, those days at home are cold ones.
So I read FEMA’s own advice for someone who’s getting too cold:
What FEMA Says to Do for Someone Too Cold
- “Go to a warm room.”
- “Warm the center of the body first.”
- “Keep dry and wrapped up in warm blankets.”
Read the first step again.
Most furnaces, even gas ones, need power for the spark, the fan and the thermostat.
So with the grid down in winter, every room keeps getting colder... There’s no warm room left to go to. That’s what most families overlook.
Older Neighbors Left Sitting in the Cold
Last winter’s ice storm across the South showed where that ends.
Families out of state couldn’t reach their parents.
103 calls
One city logged 103 calls from relatives begging someone to go check on them.
A social worker told AP what they found behind those doors.
They were “finding blankets and just sitting there with no TV, no power, nothing.”
“Some are a little delirious,” she said.
What About the Warming Centers?
Some say they’d just head to a warming center.
Some can.
Mississippi opened about 80 that winter.
For some towns, AP reported, it wasn’t enough.
So if the one near you is full or out of reach, the only heat your family can count on is its own.
The Woman Who Couldn’t Take the Cold Anymore
That same storm reached the Mississippi Delta.
A woman of 73 there went three days with no power.
She told AP:
“Three days in the cold, sleeping in the cold, eating in the cold. I just couldn’t take the cold anymore.”
That’s what a long outage does in winter. It takes the nights one after another, in your own house.
What This Means for Your Family
FEMA says you may be on your own for days.
For those days, every room keeps getting colder, and the warm room FEMA tells you to find won’t be there.
Why Most Backup Heat Fails When You Need It Most
Most of us have something.
A generator in the garage, a space heater, the gas fireplace, a box of tea lights, the car in the driveway, a closet full of blankets.
I checked each against what I’d just read.
A generator keeps the heat on, as long as it has gas.
But it has to sit outside, burning fuel.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission says “an average of nearly 100 consumers die” in the U.S. each year from portable generators’ carbon monoxide.
And still, people burn gas indoors to stay warm.
In the Texas blackout, 26% of those who stayed home without power heated with a gas oven or cooktop.
A space heater dies with the power.
Tea lights give a little light and almost no heat.
A gas fireplace or a propane heater warms just one room, and only until the fuel runs out.
And If the Gas Runs Out?
The car warms you up fast.
But it runs only as long as the gas does.
And hackers have cut into the gas supply before.
In 2021 a ransomware attack hit a pipeline company.
Its pipeline carries 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel.
With ransomware, hackers lock up a company’s computers until it pays.
This attack forced the company to shut the pipeline down.
More than 1,000
gas stations ran short.
A pile of blankets does its job on an ordinary night.
But blankets only slow the heat leaving you.
Drafts get in at the edges.
And over days in a cold house, your own breath and sweat dampen them from the inside.
Damp cloth pulls your heat away far faster than dry cloth does.
That’s nobody’s fault.
Blankets were made for ordinary nights, and this wouldn’t be one.
What This Means for Your Family
Every backup most homes have needs the grid or fuel, or only slows the cold down.
So what still works with the grid and the fuel gone, and keeps the heat in?
Something that:
- Works with no outlet and no fuel
- Keeps out the drafts and the damp
- Keeps in the heat each person’s body makes
- Keeps your family warm every night, however long the dark lasts
The One Heat No Attack Can Take From Your Family
The grid is down, the fuel is gone and every room is cold.
So what heat is left?
It’s already in the room, inside everyone you love... the heat their own bodies make, every minute of the night.
And no hacker can switch it off.
The only question is whether you can keep it.
I went looking for something that could keep it, for my own family.
It led me to TerraShell, by Quiet Protector.
It’s a thin emergency sleeping bag you climb inside.
And Quiet Protector says its owners report staying warm in it at 30 degrees and below.
That’s in houses with no heat and in freezing cars, in their normal clothes.
The reason is its silver inside.
All night, even asleep, your body makes its own heat, and in a cold house that heat drains out into the room.
Inside TerraShell, the silver throws it straight back at you. It’s the heat-reflecting technology NASA developed, and about 90% of your heat comes back.
And its olive shell keeps out the wind, the wet and the cold from the floor.
So the air inside fills with your own warmth and holds it, even when the room around you is freezing.
More than 50,000 families already have one, Quiet Protector says.
Why the Shell Shape Matters to Your Family
You might be thinking: isn’t this just a space blanket?
I wondered the same thing.
A space blanket is a flat sheet.
It slides off, the wind gets under it, and your back stays on the cold floor.
TerraShell is a body-length shell you climb inside, shaped like a sleeping bag.
It wraps all the way around you, under you and over you.
The plain point: the heat your family makes stays with them.
Packed, it’s about the size of a soda can.
Opened, it’s over six and a half feet long, so a tall man fits inside with his boots on.
Your Family Keeps Its Own Heat, Every Night the Power Stays Off
What happens on the second night is the whole difference.
Once the furnace stops, every room keeps getting colder, and the blankets start going damp.
TerraShell doesn’t need a warm room. It keeps in the heat you’re already making.
A blanket soaks up the damp and lets your heat through.
The shell keeps the wet out and your heat in, so the second night is as warm as the first.
Picture an ice storm that takes your power for five days.
By the second night, you can see your breath in the kitchen.
Each night you climb into yours on the couch, in your normal clothes, and pull it up to your shoulders.
Your own heat stays right there with you.
So every night, all five nights, you stay warm in your own house.
What Your Family Keeps With the Grid Down
Whatever the furnace does, your family keeps:
- Warm through the night: everyone sleeps in their own warmth while the house goes cold around them
- Warm in minutes: climb in, pull it to your shoulders, and the air inside warms from your own body
- Out of the wind and wet: drafts, sleet and damp stay outside the shell
- Off the cold floor: a cold floor or a frozen car seat can’t pull their heat away
- Warm in a stalled car, too: one waits in the glove box, so a breakdown on a cold road doesn’t leave you shivering
So when the grid goes down and the house goes cold, your family doesn’t. They have their own heat around them, all night long.
They handle it on their own.
What People Wrote After Their Power Went Out
Real words from people who lived through long outages, from their own posts.
“Within 2 hrs, the temp dropped from 72 to 51 degrees inside the house.”
A parent near Austin, the night the power went out
“As the day went on, it was clear power wasn’t coming back on and the house kept getting colder.”
A husband in Austin
The first house went from 72 to 51 degrees in two hours.
Owners report staying warm in a TerraShell in houses far colder than that.
It doesn’t need the house to stay warm.
It keeps the heat your own body makes right around you, night after night.
One for Every Person You’d Lie Awake About
The one in your closet won’t help your mother across town... Or your daughter two states away, or you in the car.
That’s why I didn’t stop at one.
There’s one for my wife and one for me, two at my daughter’s and one in the car.
So count every person you’d lie awake about if the grid went down in winter.
And the car you’d be in.
Everybody gets their own, so nobody you love sits shivering in the dark.
Even If the AI Insiders Are Wrong
Maybe they’re wrong, and it never comes to your street.
I’d be glad.
Then your TerraShells are ready for the outages that still come.
Ice storms and blizzards still take the power for days.
And cars still get stuck on cold roads, far from help.
So even then, your family isn’t left freezing in the dark.
But if they’re right, you’ll want them in the house already.
Because FEMA warns a power outage may close the stores, the gas stations and the banks.
And when Spain and Portugal went dark in 2025, people rushed out to stock up.
Which House Is Yours?
It comes down to the same street on the same night:
The Same Street, the Same Night
- One house: sits shivering in the dark.
- The other: is just as dark, but everyone inside is warm. The family inside handles it on its own.
Which one is yours is the only decision left.
The people who built AI are getting ready for the day after.
The Pentagon is getting its bases ready to run 90 days on their own.
And FEMA tells your family to be ready on its own for days.
Nobody can tell you the day...
...but you can make sure your family is ready when it comes. This is what makes it ready.
And There’s No Risk in It
Every TerraShell comes with a 120-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
Your family stays warm when the heat goes out, or every penny comes back to you.
Limited Time Sale
Up to 55% Off, So Everyone You Love Stays Warm
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does it really keep you warm with no heat in the house?
Yes. It adds no heat of its own. It keeps the heat your body already makes. About 90% of it comes straight back to you, while the wind, the wet and the cold floor stay out.
How is it different from the orange emergency bag I’ve seen?
It’s the same kind of gear, a thin emergency sleeping bag you climb into. If you already have one, keep it, and get one for each person who doesn’t. Ours is olive green outside with an orange whistle on the cord. It packs to the size of a soda can and comes with a 120-day money-back guarantee.
Will it fit me?
Yes. It opens to over six and a half feet long, so a tall adult fits inside with a coat and boots on.
I already have a generator. Why would I want this too?
A generator has to run outside, at least 20 feet from the windows, on fuel you have to go and get. TerraShell needs no fuel and no outlet. Each person climbs into their own, right inside the house, and keeps their own heat in all night. And it packs small enough to go with you, too.
What about the blankets I already have?
Keep them. Blankets slow the cold down. But they don’t stop the wind, and over days in a cold house they soak up the damp. TerraShell seals around you and sends about 90% of your body heat straight back. You can pull your blankets on top, too.
How many should I get?
One for each person you love. Everybody gets their own. Most families keep one for each person at home, and one in every car.
Does it still work if it gets wet?
Yes. It works wet or dry, in wind or rain. So a damp floor or snow on your coat won’t stop it from keeping your heat in.
Is it sold on Amazon?
No. TerraShell isn’t sold on Amazon or on eBay.
What’s the guarantee?
You get 120 days. Your family stays warm when the heat goes out, or every penny comes back to you.