Podcast Summary: A Wrinkle in Time: GPS Jamming in Ukraine

Podcast: Click Here (Recorded Future News)
Episode Date: March 24, 2026
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Featured Guests: Jen White (Host, NPR 1A), Joe Marshall (Cisco Talos), Taras Vasilev (Ukrenergo), Anastasia Lapatina (Lawfare)

Overview

This episode examines an underappreciated vulnerability in Ukraine’s battle to keep its power on during war: the central role of precise GPS timing in modern power grids—and how GPS jamming (by both Russia and Ukraine) has threatened to take down Ukrainian electricity without a missile strike. The story reveals the system’s fragility, the necessity of resilience, and tells the tale of a clever technical workaround born of U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation. Later, the panel discusses daily life under constant blackouts in Ukraine and considers the broader implications of infrastructure as a front line of modern conflict.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Importance (and Vulnerability) of GPS Timing in Power Grids

• Electricity as Strategy, Not Collateral
  Modern warfare isn’t just about blowing up infrastructure; disabling it by interfering with timing can be even more effective. (01:30–04:00)

• GPS as a “Nervous System”

  “You’d think during a war you focus on the physical things, but modern power grids rely now just as much on information as they do concrete and steel... And the way that most countries do that... is by using this incredibly precise clock inside GPS satellites.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (02:44–02:56)

• Invisible Risks When GPS timing disappears—due to interference, jamming, or solar storms—the grid “gets confused” and safely shuts itself down to avoid chaos.

  “If the system gets confused, what it does is, ‘I’m confused, I better shut down,’ because it thinks if it doesn’t, something catastrophic can happen.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (03:11–03:17)

• Ubiquity of GPS Dependence GPS precision was so accurate and convenient that entire infrastructures—banking, power, communications—adopted it, often without plans for disruption. (03:40–04:22)

• How Jamming Works & Its Breadth Accidental and deliberate GPS outages are surprisingly common worldwide (e.g., shipping interference, Iranian/Chinese defense jamming, solar flares disrupting Airbus systems). (04:25–05:05)

The Ukrainian Power Grid Under Siege

• Difference Between Physical & Information Attacks

  “The timing problem is invisible and really unpredictable. And it affects everything all at once, not just one substation. So it's like trying to run a marathon where someone keeps changing all the clocks all the way along the route.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (05:29–05:55)

• GPS Jamming as Tactical Warfare
  Russia jams GPS to disrupt missiles and navigation, but the collateral effect is that Ukraine’s substations lose coordination (17:00–18:00).

• Resilience, Not Just Defense
  The Ukraine example shows physical fixes aren’t enough; resilience to information disruptions is crucial for modern infrastructure. (06:40–08:55)

  “If you manipulate the timing, you can disrupt critical infrastructure without touching a single piece of hardware or without even writing a single line of malicious code.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (06:40–06:56)

The MacGyver Solution: How Tech Saved Ukraine’s Grid

• The Palo Alto Steakhouse Meeting
  Joe Marshall (Cisco Talos) meets Ukrainian energy grid managers by chance at dinner. They share harrowing stories about rebuilding transformers and then a new challenge: GPS jamming. (13:48–16:12)

• Discovery of the Timing Problem

  “I never even heard of this problem before.”
  — Joe Marshall (16:58)

  Ukrainian substations use GPS-based time to coordinate thousands of kilometers of transmission lines; when jamming happens, the substations lose their ability to synchronize and shut down. (17:44–19:38)

• Explaining the Scale: “A 25,000 km Marching Band”

  “Joe says to think of all the messages that need to be relayed and received... like one of those marching bands in the Rose Bowl parade.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (19:38–20:00)

• The Impact of Each Air Alarm When air-raid sirens go off, GPS jamming often follows; the transmission substations cannot communicate and large swaths of the grid drop out, unrelated to physical damage. (24:59–25:31)

• From Hack to Fix: The Backup Clock
  Joe's team realizes the solution is a reliable, local source of time-keeping to fill gaps when satellites are jammed—not a high-tech anti-jam system, but a rugged “clock” already built into industrial-grade Ethernet switches. (26:57–28:09)

  “Basically, the hack that we have done... when satellites are not available for whatever reason—solar flare, warfare, whatever—our device steps in and says to the power equipment: ‘Don’t panic, don’t panic. Here’s a backup clock.’”
  — Joe Marshall (27:35–27:55)

• Rapid Deployment and Results
  These modified switches are now all over Ukraine’s grid, preventing catastrophic outages every time the GPS is jammed. (28:33–30:01)

  “They are all over Ukraine right now, helping to keep the lights on for the Ukrainians. They have other problems, obviously, but we kind of solved this one.”
  — Joe Marshall (28:46–28:55)

  Taras, the Ukrainian grid manager, calls the solution a “godsend.”

  “Before the switches went online, Ukrainian power went out every time there was an air alarm.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (29:27–29:50)

On the Ground: Daily Life and Broader Context (With Anastasia Lapatina from Kyiv)

• Blackouts as Background

  “The attacks happen so often these days that they’re sort of kind of background noise unless there are some sort of horrific casualties that happen as a result of them.”
  — Anastasia Lapatina (34:36–35:22)

  • Schedules are so disrupted that residents buy personal batteries, power banks, and Starlink units to cope (35:40–36:40).
  • But, not all Ukrainians can afford such measures; some, especially closer to frontline, go much of the day without electricity.

• Efforts to Keep Ukraine Warm The government spends billions on gas imports and backup generators to supply critical infrastructure (hospitals, schools) as Russia escalates attacks on both the electricity and gas systems (37:27–38:45).

• A Destructive Dance Both sides, Ukraine and Russia, attack energy infrastructure, but Russia’s tactics have grown more destructive and sophisticated with increased drone and missile capacity, targeting critical nodes for cascading blackouts (42:45–44:36).

• Why Target Russian Energy? Ukrainian strikes aim to disrupt Russian frontline logistics, bring the war’s impact to ordinary Russian citizens, and weaken the Russian war machine by damaging oil production and refineries (44:47–46:49).

• Corruption and Energy Scandals Recent revelations about corruption and theft among Ukrainian energy officials have frustrated citizens enduring long blackouts and raised questions about the government’s crisis preparedness (46:49–48:06).

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• The Invisible Threat

  “We need to think about the grid as almost a single organism, something that can be disrupted not just by breaking one point, but being able to... disrupt the coordination that organism has.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (09:14–09:36)

• On Resilience vs. Defense

  “Because what we’re learning is that in modern warfare, resilience matters just as much as defense.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (01:47–01:54)

• On American Inaction

  “There are lots of ideas, but they haven’t done it... Washington hasn’t been motivated enough.”
  — Dina Temple-Raston (07:44–08:14)

• A Hack, Not a Fancy Solution

  “I think innovate would be the better word. We have hacked a switch.”
  — Joe Marshall (28:04–28:09)

• Realities of War for Civilians

  “Today I have 12 and a half hours without electricity, and they're spread out in chunks throughout the day... Not all Ukrainians can afford these luxuries we have here in Kyiv.”
  — Anastasia Lapatina (36:37–37:08)

• On the Russian Strategy

  “The Russian overall strategy... has gotten better too. They're being very methodical and they're trying to knock out the infrastructure very, very strategically.”
  — Anastasia Lapatina (43:10–43:40)

• On U.S. Peace Policy

  “I think the goal of the Trump administration is to end the war as soon as possible, wrap this whole thing up, and sort of move on to other priorities. And it feels to me that they don't particularly care what that end to the war looks like.”
  — Anastasia Lapatina (41:26–42:25)

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:30–04:00 — How GPS timing underpins global infrastructure, and how its disruption can topple power grids
• 05:29–06:14 — The unique, invisible danger of GPS timing manipulation
• 13:48–21:15 — The steakhouse meeting, Ukrainian grid’s physical and timing challenges, and Russian jamming’s daily impact
• 26:57–28:09 — The technical hack: using rugged network switches as local time sources
• 34:36–37:16 — Real life in Kyiv: Blackouts as the “backdrop” of existence
• 42:45–44:36 — Russia’s evolving, increasingly effective attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure

Takeaways

• Modern infrastructure is only as strong as its invisible “nervous system”—and resilience to disruptions like GPS jamming is critical.
• Creativity and collaboration in crisis (as with the Cisco “hack”) can make a huge difference—even in war.
• Civilian adaptability is impressive but there remains deep inequity and frustration as the infrastructure struggle drags on.
• The conflict in Ukraine offers a preview of new frontiers in warfare, where data—especially time—is as consequential as explosives.

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, conflict, and human resilience—offering fresh insight into the silent, digital battles now shaping the fate of nations.