Washington is replacing voluntary energy security with active sovereignty—treating grids and resources as battlefields and energy firms as instruments of power.

The House’s Energy Subcommittee hearing titled “Protecting America’s Energy Infrastructure” appeared to be a standard review of bipartisan bills aimed at hardening the electric grid against cyber threats. But what else did the hearing signal?

Beneath the legislative technicalities, the hearing marked the quiet death of the “resilience” era and the birth of a new, far more aggressive US energy doctrine: active sovereignty.

For two decades, American energy security was defined by “independence”: a defensive posture built on the shale revolution and voluntary public-private partnerships. The government’s role was to support the market and encourage companies to share threat data. That era is over.

The events of January 2026 reveal that Washington is moving to a war footing. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is becoming an operational arm of national defense, wielding a new strategy of “Shield and Sword.”

The Shield: From Voluntary Sharing to Joint Operations

Domestically, the administration is hardening the “Shield.” The centerpiece of this effort is the Energy Threat Analysis Center (ETAC) Act of 2026.

Historically, grid security relied on the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), a voluntary, industry-led model. While valuable, this model suffers from latency and classification barriers. The new ETAC changes the calculus: it creates a “joint operating environment” where cleared analysts from private utilities sit side-by-side with intelligence officers from DOE, the US Department of Homeland Security, and the US intelligence community.

This is about information sharing and the integration of the US intelligence apparatus into the daily operations of the power grid. By institutionalizing this relationship, the government is signaling that the grid is now a battlespace, and the private sector is its deputized defender. The “Shield” also extends to the vulnerable “soft underbelly” of the grid, with new legislation specifically subsidizing cyber defenses for rural cooperatives and municipal utilities that lack the resources to fight nation-state actors.

The Sword: The Neo-Mercantilist Pivot

While the Shield hardens defenses at home, the “Sword” is being swung abroad. The new doctrine asserts that the United States must actively control those strategic resources that are material to its interests by denying them to its adversaries. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the recent intervention in Venezuela. Following the military capture of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, the United States did not simply hand the keys back to the market. Instead, the DOE brokered a deal to market Venezuelan crude oil directly through global commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura.

When pressed during the hearing on the nature of this deal, Acting Undersecretary of Energy Alex Fitzsimmons gave a telling response: “The parties are the people of Venezuela, the government, and the US energy industry.”

This is a profound shift. The US government is bypassing traditional diplomatic channels to establish a corporate-state hybrid model, effectively managing foreign reservoirs as if they were domestic strategic reserves. Coupled with reports of a US “Association Agreement” to secure critical minerals in Greenland, a pattern emerges: the creation of a hemispheric resource fortress, securing fuel in the South and minerals in the North.

The Risks of the New Paradigm

This shift to “Active Sovereignty” is not without peril. The “Shield” depends entirely on trust. During the hearing, lawmakers clashed over the cancellation of nearly $8 billion in energy grants, with admissions that political geography played a role. If the DOE is viewed as a partisan actor, the trust required for the ETAC to function will evaporate, potentially “Balkanizing” the grid’s defense along political lines.

Furthermore, the “Sword” carries immense geopolitical risk. Turning energy trade into an explicit tool of statecraft—using military force to open markets for specific traders—revives charges of neo-mercantilism.

The era of passive market observation is over. Energy companies, whether they operate pipelines in Texas or trade desks in Geneva, must recognize that they are being drafted into a new grand strategy. The US government is no longer just setting the rules; it is calling the plays.

About the Authors: Dominick Blue and Max Pyziur

Dominick Blue is a distinguished fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC), a Washington DC-based think-tank focused on the intersection of energy, economics, and security policy issues. He is also a director at Global Infrastructure Solutions (GISI). Previously, he served for nine years in the US Marine Corps.

Max Pyziur is the research director for Downstream, Transportation Fuels, Electricity, and Natural Gas Programs at the Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRINC). Previously, he held senior analytical roles at PIRA Energy and CPM Group, both commodities market consultancies. He received his MBA from Washington University in St. Louis and his BA in music theory from St. Louis University.

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