Comment by bonchicbongenre

The answer: yes, they could've. I had a professor who previously had been part of a US gov group that had been tasked with preparing for an attack on the electrical grid, all the way back in the tail end of the cold war. His impression of the security of the US grid was that it was completely unsecured. He told me that they had no chance of solving the problem then, and that he expects the same is still the case. His worst fear is a large EMP attack, not locally cutting powerlines, but the danger still stands