The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is developing a tool to help identify hidden organizational influence over U.S. critical infrastructure, addressing risks that can emerge through foreign investments, acquisitions, board appointments and other business relationships rather than conventional cyberattacks or natural disasters. The tool, called Technology, Organization and Person of Interest Graph Extraction, Analysis and Reporting (TOPGEAR), maps relationships among organizations, people and physical and digital infrastructure assets to help analysts identify potential vulnerabilities that traditional infrastructure assessments may overlook.
“The next major threat to U.S. critical infrastructure may not come from a cyberattack or natural disaster. It could arrive with a handshake and a signed contract,” Lisa Wilmore, communications specialist for national and homeland security at the INL, wrote in a blog post last week. “A foreign company buys land near a power substation. Another secures a seat on the board of an aggregator. No malware, no breach. Investments, acquisitions or board appointments may appear routine but can cumulatively shift who holds influence over the systems that keep the nation running.”
She added that foreign business influence is a blind spot in traditional cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection. For decades, cybersecurity strategies have focused on firewalls, software patches and network defense.
Led by INL distinguished researcher Gabriel Weaver, TOPGEAR continuously collects data from sources including U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings and the Energy Information Administration, with third-party proprietary sources used when needed to refine timelines and risk patterns. The platform organizes the information into social, infrastructure and cross-layer influence networks, allowing analysts to trace how a person or organization could affect a specific asset such as a substation or data center.
“The novelty lies in the third layer,” Wilmore explained. “It enables analysts to trace influence paths from a human actor to a physical asset, such as a substation or data center, in a way no single system previously supported.”
She also pointed out that the team is developing algorithms to examine these networks for suspicious or emerging patterns, update risk profiles, and highlight concentrations of concern within regions or sectors. TOPGEAR’s visualizations, including detailed maps and influence reports, help decision‑makers understand the extent of regional dependencies on companies and how those companies connect.
TOPGEAR was refined in collaboration with the Naval Postgraduate School, where Weaver and Daniel Eisenberg applied socio-technical network analysis from an adversarial perspective, a feature that set the tool apart.
“It was initially funded through INL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development program, which empowers national labs to pursue high-risk, high-reward research,” according to Wilmore.
The project brought together expertise in cybersecurity, data science, and national security. Its impact has extended beyond INL, drawing support from multiple offices across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), including the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) and the Office of Electricity (OE), as well as the Department of Homeland Security, helping ensure the work translates into real-world operations. OE is sponsoring TOPGEAR’s technical assistance engagements with state energy offices.
Last year, the TOPGEAR team joined DOE’s Energy I‑Corps program, completing 76 market analyses to understand industry needs and accelerate technology transfer. Currently, state energy offices already use TOPGEAR, and its commercial potential continues to grow.
As global supply chains grow more interconnected and artificial intelligence accelerates business decision‑making, the need to understand hidden influence within critical infrastructure has never been greater. TOPGEAR offers a way to align economic growth with national resilience, ensuring progress doesn’t come at the expense of security.
“You can’t defend what you can’t see,” Weaver said. “We’re working to illuminate a broader variety of potential threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure.”
