The United States needs to move to protect nuclear plants and the power grid against future attacks and may need to reorganize the way government agencies work together.

"The community can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation. Our report gives the government a blueprint."

"We now face a much more sophisticated threat." ... The power grid is vulnerable. "We could also lose a large part of the electrical distribution, electrical transmission system. In a worst-case scenario you would get a cascading failure," causing regional outages lasting weeks or months. ... Another glaring need is for trusted spokespeople to be put into place.

The Office of Homeland Security should establish a new security institute made up of experts who could spot shortcomings in critical systems around the country and find ways to reduce or eliminate those problems. This effort should include "red teaming" exercises ...