Morning Jolt: The Large-Scale Near-Miss Cyberattack You Never Heard About

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WITH JIM GERAGHTY

May 18 2026

The Large-Scale Near-Miss Cyberattack You Never Heard About

On the menu today: Late last year, hackers nearly took down a significant chunk of Poland’s power grid — and my guess is you heard nothing about it. Meanwhile, the Pentagon makes a last-minute cancellation of a rotation of 4,000 U.S. troops into Poland. A few words on why I gallivant to these far-flung places and report from them. And a couple of wealthy guys think the U.S. won’t need to worry about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan soon. Read on.

Don’t Leave Poland in the Lurch

Warsaw, Poland — The good news is that the large-scale Russian cyberattack against Poland’s energy infrastructure at the end of last year was stopped by firewalls and other cyber defenses.

The bad news, as Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Bosacki tells me, is that the threat from that attack was “very, very serious” — he put a lot of emphasis on that second “very” — and had it succeeded, it would have knocked out electricity and heat for large portions of Poland during the middle of winter for God knows how long.

According to the ...

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