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As some of the organizations that run essential services in the U.S. lose faith in the federal government’s willingness and ability to help them, a few of the biggest critical infrastructure operators are taking matters into their own hands to improve coordination — and prepare for a major crisis.
In February, a coalition of corporate titans from the worlds of banking, finance, communications and energy launched the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure (ACI), vowing to take the lead in helping infrastructure sectors work more closely together to understand and mitigate the shared cybersecurity risks they face. Its nine founding members are JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, AT&T, Lumen Technologies, AIG, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Consolidated Edison, Southern Company and Xcel Energy.
Reading between the lines, the message was clear: The critical infrastructure community, increasingly alarmed at the Trump administration’s retreat from decades-long partnerships, is trying to fill the growing void of coordination and leadership.
Government budget cuts and personnel losses have made it much harder for agencies to support and advise infrastructure operators, and the White House has encouraged states to take over historically federal responsibilities for protecting local utilities. Amid those changes, infrastructure firms like the ones that founded the ACI say the private sector must step up.
