Ted Koppel spent decades behind the news desk, giving television viewers the latest updates on the day’s breaking news. Now turned novelist, Koppel has a warning about our reliance on electronic communications and the technologies that power our daily lives.

In his new work of fiction, “Lights Out,” Koppel imagines the U.S. following a major cyberattack on the nation’s electrical power grid. In an interview with CBS News, Koppel said that experts he spoke to for the book suggested that many factions who might be interested in conducting such an attack, including foreign agents and independent hackers, may already have the access needed to mount an attack.

For example, the National Security Agency’s chief scientist told Koppel that Russian and Chinese intelligence agents already have the needed access, and Iran may be getting close.

The country’s power grid is connected so that if one region has an outage, it can borrow power supplies from elsewhere and minimize the damage. But such interconnectedness also makes the entire grid more vulnerable to a critical attack by hackers.

The grid is also insecure because it relies heavily on the internet. An online security expert said that the possibility of an enemy attack through the internet is not farfetched, noting that enemies of the U.S. already have the capability to launch such an attack.

Koppel says that the office of Homeland Security is charged with dealing with such threats, but in his interviews with all of the former chiefs of that agency, none could point to a plan that the government has in place. In talking with the current Homeland Security Secretary, Koppel says he also got no answer when he asked about the government’s security plan.

Both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security refused to speak on camera for the CBS News story. Homeland Security did provide a statement that noted that the agency works with other federal departments to coordinate in securing the nation’s electricity grid.

Historically, large power outages are not uncommon. In 1965, people throughout the Northeast were left without power for almost thirteen hours when that entire section of the grid went down. New York City’s 1977 power outage resulted in widespread looting during the darkness.