(TNS) — When Idaho Rep. Ted Hill was in the Navy, he specialized in “red-teaming” — simulating real-world attacks on American forces.
Role-playing as a Chinese military commander, he tested American forces’ weak points, working to identify vulnerabilities the U.S. military needed to address.
“I became an expert on how to win the war against America,” Hill, now a Republican state lawmaker representing Eagle, told the Idaho Statesman.
And cyberattacks, he said, were one of his primary weapons.
So when cyberattacks in July against at least 100 water systems across the U.S. were attributed to an Iran-linked group — shutting down a pump station in Georgia and locking operators out of facilities in Minnesota — it only confirmed Hill’s fears.
Though Iran has conducted cyberattacks against water facilities before, the number of targets of this summer’s attack represented an escalation, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The attacks should be a wake-up call, its analysts wrote, “to take stock of how vulnerable U.S. critical infrastructure is to adversaries.”
Idaho systems weren’t targeted in this summer’s attacks, but they could be next time, Hill said. And the state needs to up its game. Though large cities have the resources to guard against such an attack, rural communities are at risk, Hill said.
“We are extremely vulnerable,” he said.
‘Awareness has gone way up’
It was in Minnesota that the attacks first came to light at the end of July. Nearly 40 water utility systems in the state were hit, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As weeks passed, attacks on systems in other states — including Oregon and, authorities suspect, Utah — came to light, the center found by reviewing local media sources.
The damage was fairly minor. The worst impacts were felt in Georgia, where hackers’ successful shutdown of a pump station led to a drop in water pressure, which increased the risk of contamination of drinking water, the center reported.
But the attack highlighted the challenges of the U.S.’s “dispersed” approach to managing drinking water: The country has over 150,000 water systems, many managed at the local level, the center found. Smaller communities often lack the funding or knowhow to stay on top of highly complex and rapidly evolving cyber threats.
A smaller, rural community’s water system “may have one person, if they’re lucky, who’s running the entire information technology function,” said Jamie Daniel, Boise’s chief information security officer.
“The money and the distribution of cybersecurity professionals are usually allocated to bigger cities,” such as Boise or Pocatello, Hill said. That leaves smaller communities vulnerable to being held “hostage.”
Boise, for its part, has been focused on its own systems’ preparedness for an attack for a long time, Daniel said. But at an industry level, this summer’s attacks were alarming.
“Awareness has gone way up,” she told the Statesman.
Cyberattacks: No longer a ‘someday’ problem
The answer, Hill said, is a central “cyber fusion center”: a hub for cybersecurity resources, funding and knowledge that can route money and expertise to smaller communities. A center like this can help federal agencies, state offices and companies coordinate their use of resources and form a response plan.
“You can have a whole bunch of battalions and soldiers all over,” he said. But “if someone’s not organizing, they’re kind of useless.”
Idaho does have a center like this: its Cyber Resilience Operation Center, headquartered in Boise. The center is still getting off the ground, according to an August news release from the state Office of Information Technology Services. It has four full-time employees — along with part-time workers — who monitor for cyber threats.
By June 2027, it will transition to “fully manned, 24/7 operations,” according to the release. It’s also building out regional teams in Moscow and Twin Falls.
Still, to meet the threat level, the center will need more money, Hill said. During the 2026 legislative session, he tried to secure that funding — but couldn’t even get a bill drafted out of the working group he was in, he said.
“This is such an important topic that people ignore, because it’s just kind of a pain, until it happens,” he said.
He hopes the attacks this summer will change the conversation. Daniel says they already have.
“I think more utilities are starting to treat the situation as though they need to assume they’re a target,” Daniel said, “rather than thinking of it as a ‘someday’ problem.”
© 2026 The Idaho Statesman. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
