A cloud tenant using nothing but ordinary GPU access can push a data center's power draw up and down fast enough to threaten the grid it runs on, with no exploit and no break-in.
That is the claim behind Bit2Watt, described by three Zhejiang University researchers in a paper accepted to CHES 2026, the IACR's hardware-security conference, and the evidence splits in two: they measured the power modulation on real GPUs and simulated the grid destabilization it could cause.
The technique inverts the usual grid-attack model: no compromised sensors, no malware on control systems, no stolen operator credentials, just a workload built to misbehave on purpose.
It works because a GPU's power draw follows whatever it is computing. Saturate the tensor cores and current spikes; drop to idle, and it collapses. Toggle between those states on a schedule and you get a controllable power oscillation at the wall socket.
The authors frame it as a blunt question: can "purely computational actions, executed as legitimate workloads, be weaponized to destabilize power infrastructure"? The rest of the paper is their answer.
