Trump Blames Minnesota Water Hacks On Walz, While Evidence Points To Iran

President Donald Trump on Friday blamed a spate of recent hacks impacting water utilities in Minnesota on Gov. Tim Walz — contradicting preliminary findings from U.S. and industry officials who suspect Iran is behind an expanding campaign of digital disruption.

“I blame it on Minnesota because they are grossly incompetent,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday, adding that Walz is “corrupt” and “Iran has bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota." Asked later if he could rule out Iranian responsibility, Trump said, “ I don't think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think Minnesota ought to get its act together.”

Trump’s dig at the Democratic-led state came just hours after the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency said they are responding to an unspecified number of cyberattacks at water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states. On Thursday, the government’s civilian cyber defense agency, CISA, warned of a “significant increase” in digital attacks on the technology used broadly by U.S. water utilities.

While no U.S. agency has formally accused Iran of orchestrating the attacks, many federal, state and water industry officials suspect Tehran-linked cyber groups are responsible for the hacking campaign. CISA issued a report last week detailing a similar set of attacks it has tracked since April, which it linked to Iran.

Minnesota’s state IT agency disclosed this Tuesday that at least 30 community water systems in the state had been breached in what it described as a “coordinated attack,” but it did not name Iran as the perpetrator.

In a statement on X responding to Trump’s comments earlier in the day, Walz suggested Iranian hackers were targeting Minnesota and other states in retaliation for U.S. military strikes in Iran — and that therefore Trump was to blame.

“This is what modern warfare looks like, and it further illustrates there’s no plan to win a war with Iran,” Walz wrote.

Since the start of his second term, Trump has repeatedly singled out Minnesota and Walz, who ran against him on the 2024 Presidential ticket alongside former Vice President Kamala Harris. Some of the Trump administration’s most aggressive immigration enforcement actions have unfolded in Minnesota, where federal agents killed two U.S. citizens last winter. The White House has also launched a broad crackdown on alleged Medicaid fraud in the state, upending Minnesota's healthcare systems.

As Trump keyed in on Minnesota, his intelligence and cybersecurity officials spent the last 48 hours scrambling to get water utilities across the U.S. to improve their defenses.

The FBI and EPA said in their Friday advisory that some affected utilities across the country had reported “loss of pressure and flooding,” and that the pressure disruption could “potentially allow untreated groundwater to seep into pipes.”

In its advisory, CISA said some targeted utilities have been forced to resort to manual operations or issue “boil water notices” — a public safety measure to ensure drinking water is safe from bacteria.

Both advisories urged organizations to take the vulnerable technology — programmable logic controllers — offline and install basic safeguards before restoring them.

Spokespeople for the FBI, EPA and CISA did not respond to a request for comment on whether they had evidence supporting Trump's claim that Minnesota officials were culpable for the attacks there.

Mark Montgomery, an expert on water sector cybersecurity at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said Iran would be able to exploit defenses in the water and wastewater sectors because they are so porous to begin with. Many small and rural facilities don’t have the budgets to employ a dedicated cyber professional, and both Democratic and Republican administrations haven’t invested enough to boost the EPA's cybersecurity efforts, he argued.

“This is a problem that extends across 50 states and four territories,” said Montgomery.

Still, there are signs Iranian hackers have gotten more deft and aggressive at targeting those systems since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, kicking off a war that has recently seen waves of escalation from both sides.

Iranian hackers claimed last month to have targeted water systems in California in what they said was a response to U.S. missile strikes that damaged water facilities in Iran.

Joe Slowik, director of threat research for AI-powered risk detection platform Dataminr, said he is concerned Iran is becoming more aggressive in targeting civilian systems in the U.S.

“We have never really seen Iranian-linked threat actors engage in industrial targeting in this fashion before,” said Slowik, who has been tracking the campaign for several months.