America's Next Major Attack Will Exploit GPS/Positioning Dependence, Not Physical Infrastructure
Source: "The next attack on America could paralyze the systems that keep us moving | Fox News." September 16, 2026. www.foxnews.com
The Gist
The author argues that America's next major attack on home soil probably won't blow up buildings like 9/11 did — instead, it will target the invisible GPS signals that trucks, farms, power grids, hospitals, and the military all secretly depend on. Because interfering with GPS is cheap, hard to trace, and already being tested by rivals like China and Russia, a coordinated jamming attack could cause massive economic damage and chaos without a single explosion.
Conclusion
The United States must urgently prepare for a new category of homeland attack that targets the foundational assumption of reliable positioning (GPS) rather than physically destroying infrastructure, because such an attack could paralyze transportation, logistics, emergency response, and military mobility without a single building being destroyed.
Premises
- Post-9/11 security investments focused on aviation security, intelligence, and counterterrorism, but adversaries adapt and target overlooked vulnerabilities rather than repeating past attack methods.
- Modern civilian and military systems (transportation, agriculture, emergency response, logistics, military maneuver) are built on the largely invisible assumption that GPS positioning is always available and trustworthy.
- GPS interference, spoofing, and electronic warfare have become recurring, documented features of modern conflict rather than isolated incidents, including confirmed Russian satellite-linked GNSS disruptions in Europe.
- China is actively developing and fielding counterspace capabilities (anti-satellite weapons, electronic warfare, jamming/spoofing tech) specifically designed to disrupt U.S. space-enabled systems, revealing an explicit adversary playbook.
- The vulnerability lies not in GPS technology itself but in blanket dependence on an external positioning system across battlefield, highway, and urban contexts alike.
- COVID-19 demonstrated how quickly uncertainty about essential goods can destabilize public behavior and expose supply chain fragility, foreshadowing the societal impact of a positioning disruption.
- A NIST-commissioned study estimates a nationwide GPS outage would cost the U.S. economy $1 billion per day, with harder-to-quantify cascading effects on emergency response and public confidence.
- The U.S. is simultaneously investing heavily in autonomous systems, robotics, and AI-enabled military capabilities that themselves depend on reliable positioning, creating a strategic blind spot if that foundational assumption is not secured first.
Assumptions
- Adversaries (particularly China and Russia) intend to and are capable of executing large-scale, coordinated GPS disruption against the U.S. homeland, not just in isolated conflict zones abroad.
- Techniques proven effective in overseas conflict zones would transfer directly and effectively to domestic U.S. infrastructure at scale.
- Current U.S. investment in next-generation military capabilities has not adequately addressed positioning resilience or alternatives to GPS dependence.
- Economic and social disruption from a 'non-kinetic' attack is comparable in severity/threat category to physical terrorism, justifying similar urgency.
- The public and policymakers currently underappreciate this vulnerability, implying a gap between actual risk and current preparedness/attention.