Chinese robots. The Internet is lousy with them.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. concerns about the potential for cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure extended to the American electrical power grid on Wednesday and experts pointed the finger anew at Chinese hackers, among others.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters the power grid is vulnerable to potentially disabling computer attacks, while declining to comment on reports that an intrusion had taken place.

“The vulnerability is something that the Department of Homeland Security and the energy sector have known about for years,” she said. “We acknowledge that … in this world, in an increasingly cyber world, these are increasing risks.”

Napolitano spoke after the Wall Street Journal reported that cyberspies had penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system. The Journal said the intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but could try during a crisis or war.

The United States for several years has accused the Chinese and Russians, among others, of using cyber-attacks to try to steal American trade secrets, military secrets and government secrets.

The Chinese have been particularly active, a former U.S. security official told Reuters. “They are all over the place,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They’re getting into university systems, contractor systems, hacking government systems. There’s no reason to think that the electrical system would be immune as well.”

It’s true; there are Chinese web bots crawling all over the web, looking for vulnerabilities in any system connected to the outside world. Before we upgraded our servers at LGF, the bandwidth consumption of these bots would sometimes slow the site to a crawl, or even crash the server. This no longer happens, but perusing the logs shows thousands of hits from Chinese bots every day.

This is a very serious problem; no one really knows how many systems have been compromised by the Chinese, but it’s a safe bet that there are a lot of disasters on the horizon, if and when they start doing more than simply probing defenses.