Fear vs Physics: Diagnosing Grid Chaos
Emma Stewart
DEF CON 33 · Day 1 · Main Stage
Emma Stewart, Chief Grid Scientist at Idaho National Lab, delivered a compelling talk titled "Fear vs Physics: Diagnosing Grid Chaos" at DEF CON, challenging the prevalent tendency within the cybersecurity community to immediately attribute major power grid outages to cyberattacks. With two decades of experience in power systems across multiple countries, including extensive work in incident response for the electric grid, Stewart expressed profound frustration with the pervasive **Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)** that often overshadows the actual, physics-based causes of grid disturbances. Her presentation served as a critical educational intervention, aiming to re-center the conversation around the fundamental engineering principles that govern grid stability and failure.
AI review
Stewart walks into DEF CON and tells the crowd it's been crying wolf — and she's right, and she has the engineering credentials and incident data to prove it. The Iberian Peninsula case study is a textbook-quality dissection of cascading grid failure that most security researchers couldn't reconstruct from first principles, delivered by someone who actually does this work operationally.