The Pentagon Is Rebuilding the Arsenal. Who Is Securing the Grid?

Real Clear Defense | Andrew Latham

President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on August 26, 2026, to secure the American bulk-power system by restricting foreign-produced grid equipment. This executive action addresses supply-chain vulnerabilities but fails to resolve the broader mobilization challenge of delivering sufficient electricity to critical defense manufacturing plants during a wartime surge.

A Center for Strategic and International Studies report reveals that while aggregate national energy supply is sufficient, severe regional concentration risks threaten key defense supply chains. For instance, over half of domestic titanium capacity and primary aluminum production reside within the PJM Interconnection grid, which faces elevated capacity shortfall risks by 2029. Texas hosts 60 percent of semiconductor fabrication capacity under similar exposure. Power grids are tightening. During Winter Storm Uri in 2021, semiconductor fabs were forced to shut down to preserve residential power. To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the Pentagon could utilize Title III of the Defense Production Act to designate and secure critical industrial nodes before a crisis occurs.

Comment

The division of regulatory authority between the Department of Energy and the Pentagon creates a structural blind spot in American industrial capacity. While the Pentagon focuses on factory-gate production metrics for systems like the THAAD interceptor, the external electrical infrastructure remains outside its direct purview. This jurisdictional gap leaves critical supply chain nodes, such as the titanium processing facilities within the PJM Interconnection, exposed to regional power shortfalls. Consequently, the physical capacity to scale up THAAD production is fundamentally constrained by PJM Interconnection grid reliability rather than Lockheed Martin's factory floor space.

This vulnerability is exacerbated by the lengthy PJM Interconnection queues that delay new power generation projects from online integration. In the PJM Interconnection region, these timelines have extended to eight years, directly competing with the rapid expansion timelines of commercial data centres. Utilising Title III of the Defence Production Act to designate these industrial nodes as defence critical electric infrastructure offers a regulatory bypass, yet the lack of a unified geographical map of these dependencies prevents targeted deployment of this authority. Without this mapping, federal interventions remain reactive, leaving the production of high-purity aluminium at facilities like Arconic vulnerable to seasonal grid disruptions.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If the PJM Interconnection queue continues to delay new power generation capacity until 2032, does the application of Title III of the Defence Production Act remain a viable mechanism for securing defence industrial capacity, or does it merely redistribute existing scarcity?

The pattern suggests that invoking Title III without expanding physical generation capacity would merely shift the burden of power shortfalls onto civilian sectors rather than solving the underlying deficit. My assessment is that regulatory bypasses cannot overcome the physical reality of an eight-year interconnection queue in the PJM Interconnection region. Consequently, federal interventions are likely to remain limited to reactive mitigation during peak-load crises rather than enabling sustained wartime industrial mobilization.

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