"The U.S. could suffer a coast-to-coast blackout if saboteurs knocked out just nine of the country's 55,000 electric-transmission substations on a scorching summer day," Rebecca Smith wrote.

Indeed, as Natural News and other sites and publications have been reporting, there is increasing concern among U.S. policymakers, Congress and others that the nation's electric power grid is at risk of being crippled, either by direct cyber attack or by through the physical destruction of key transmission sites.