For years, radicals and industry insiders pushed a ridiculous narrative about wind turbines which I exposed in the documentary “Blown Away: Exposing the Wind Scam.” These massive windmill projects are exorbitantly expensive, harmful to the environment, produce little power, and ruin gorgeous natural vistas, from the deserts to the oceans.
Some of the most egregious abuses involve the offshore wind farms that mar some of America’s most pristine seascapes. These projects cost taxpayers billions in subsidies and do grave harm to marine ecosystems. These ocean projects also lead directly to job losses in commercial fisheries, higher electricity rates, and energy output that remains intermittent and unreliable.
These offshore farms also put our national security at risk. Permitted aggressively during the Obama and Biden administrations, these developments pose genuine dangers to U.S. strategic readiness. President Trump should make his Executive Order on Offshore Wind permanent and halt the entire enterprise and commit to canceling these leases outright.
Offshore wind turbines interfere with long-range surveillance systems, particularly the PAVE PAWS network—the Precision Acquisition Vehicle Entry Phased Array Warning System. Located on both coasts, its radar arrays track ballistic missile launches, space objects, and foreign military activity. These systems depend on clear, stable electromagnetic environments. Massive steel turbines—hundreds of feet tall, rotating at variable speeds, and clustered across wide swaths of ocean—create moving radar reflections and clutter that degrade detection and tracking.
The Department of Defense has repeatedly warned that offshore wind can interfere with radar by scattering signals, generating Doppler confusion, and creating false targets. Officials may try to downplay these concerns for political reasons, but the physics do not bend to political narratives. A single utility-scale wind farm poses risks; dozens permitted to be built along the coastline in direct line of sight of early-warning systems pose a systemic threat.
Supporters claim such interference can be engineered away, but no proven technical solution exists. For decades, the Pentagon restricted turbine development near radar sites for precisely this reason. What changed was not the science—it was the pure and simple: green politics.
This vulnerability is magnified by the fact that many of these offshore wind leases are owned or majority-controlled by foreign corporations, including Ørsted, a Danish state-backed enterprise. Foreign ownership does not imply malicious intent, but it does raise an unavoidable question: should the federal government grant long-term access to strategically sensitive maritime territory—used for Navy training lanes, flight paths, submarine navigation, and radar coverage—to companies whose obligations lie outside the United States, all on the taxpayer dime?
Under the Biden administration, these foreign-controlled developers not only received extraordinarily favorable terms, but also last-minute lease rewrites widely viewed as bailouts for struggling bidders. Construction delays, cost overruns, and supply-chain failures threatened project viability. Instead of treating these failures as evidence that offshore wind is economically unstable, the administration renegotiated obligations - effectively shifting financial risk from developers to American taxpayers and coastal communities.
These Biden tactics were irresponsible and must be reversed. His radical administration targeted hydrocarbons and nuclear power, lavishing taxpayer largesse designed to privilege a politically favored green new deal energy source regardless of strategic cost or national-security exposure.
The Trump administration should cancel these leases entirely - not merely pause or revise them. Cancellation of projects underway is justified on national-security grounds, economic prudence, and regulatory integrity. The Outer Continental Shelf belongs to the American people, and its use must serve American interests. When federal policy weakens defense capabilities, hands influence over strategic coastal zones to foreign entities and requires billions in US dollars in ongoing subsidy to remain viable, cancellation is not extreme, it is necessary.
Critics will claim that ending offshore wind is anti-environmental or anti-innovation. But protecting the homeland is non-negotiable. Energy policy must not compromise missile detection, military training, maritime surveillance, or the integrity of U.S. territorial waters. If offshore wind cannot coexist with America’s defense architecture, then offshore wind must yield, not the other way around.
We have the power to stop this madness. Preserve our oceans and defend our national security, as the very foundational task of government. The nation cannot afford to trade away early-warning capacity and coastal security for unreliable, heavily subsidized electricity. President Trump committed to American sovereignty and safety should make this clear from day one: offshore wind leases that jeopardize national security will be rescinded.
It is time to restore clarity—to our radar, to our coasts, and to our national priorities.
Steve Cortes is president of the League of American Workers. He directs political campaigns on media, polling, and Hispanic outreach, including Trump 2016/2020 and Vance 2022 US Senate. He is a former broadcaster for Fox News and CNN.
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