Before recent high-profile hacks raised the specter of AI possibly " killing all humans ," our energy systems were already disturbingly vulnerable to cyberattack - and the risk is growing.

"We were always prey. We were just kind of surviving at the appetite of our predators," Joshua Corman, executive in residence for public safety and resilience at the Institute for Security and Technology (IST), told me last year . At the time, I was preoccupied with a Department of Homeland Security warning that Iranian actors and sympathizers could target the US with cyberattacks.

Last week, I called Corman up to chat about recent incidents of rogue AI a …