WASHINGTON — As he wraps up a year as rookie chairman of a little known House subcommittee, Rep. James R. Langevin is about to take the gavel in a new arena that could attract some attention in the year to come.

A Washington think tank that specializes in security issues has tapped the Rhode Island Democrat to help lead a commission that will examine holes in the nation’s defenses against “cyberterrorism” — computer hacking and other such attacks that, according to Langevin, might one day shut down power grids, sow chaos in the economy or worse.

It will be “difficult, if not impossible,” to shield every weakness in U.S. computer systems, Langevin said as creation of the blue-ribbon panel was announced. But he declared it his goal to “pinpoint the most glaring vulnerabilities” so that the nation can set about “trying to manage, reduce and eliminate, if possible, the vulnerabilities that are out there.”

The nonpartisan, 31-member group will be called the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency. It will begin meeting next week, with the goal of producing a report and recommendations before the next president takes office in 2009.

Another leader of the new panel, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, compared its mission to the prevention of “a digital Pearl Harbor.” Langevin and McCaul will act as cochairmen of the panel, along with former Adm. Bobby Inman, the onetime chief of the National Security Agency, and Scott Charney, a Microsoft vice president expert in computer security issues.

While breaches of “cyber security” are not known to have done the nation extensive harm, Langevin and his colleagues cited a number of computer security breakdowns that add up, in their view, to a daunting potential for damage.

•The Department of Homeland Security endured more than 800 “cyber security incidents” over a recent two-year period, the worst of which was the alleged failure of a big contractor to deliver properly on a multimillion-dollar agreement to provide certain protections of DHS computers, according to Langevin.

•In a simulation of an enemy cyber-attack early this year, researchers hacked into computers at the Idaho National Laboratory and induced a turbine to work so hard that it was damaged.

In news accounts at the time, officials downplayed the prospect that a sustained series of such attacks could threaten the nation’s electrical system. But McCaul warned this week, “With the click of a mouse, our power grids could be destroyed,” potentially crippling the economy.

•The Pentagon acknowledged last spring that it had temporarily shut down a portion of its non-classified e-mail service after determining that unknown parties had hacked into the system.

Electronic espionage and sabotage have been features of the computer world practically since the Defense Department projects that eventually helped to create the Internet, said James Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the think tank that is sponsoring the new commission.

“But attackers are getting better and smarter,” Lewis said, “and they’re getting better and smarter faster than we are.”

As chairman of a House subcommittee on emerging threats, Langevin said his method has been to amass information about the potential dangers from weapons of mass destruction, cyberterrorism and the like and then to confront federal officials with any shortcomings in the defenses against such threats.

Langevin saw some parallels between this panel and the one that probed the causes of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and laid out lessons learned from the event. But Langevin noted that the cyber security commission lacks subpoena power and any mandate to look back at any catastrophic attacks. He portrayed the new panel as likely to focus on “identifying” risks and creating potential ways to minimize or prevent them.

The new commission might also raise Langevin’s profile along the way.

As a supporter of looser federal limits on stem cell research, Langevin has distinguished himself from his peers by speaking from experience. The accident that paralyzed Langevin in his youth has made him feel in a keen and personal way the hopes that many sick and injured people harbor for the medical breakthroughs that the research.

Langevin also has firsthand knowledge about how hard it can be to make a national policy imprint as one member of the large and unruly House of Representatives. As a former Rhode Island secretary of state when he was elected in 2000, Langevin envisioned a role in eliminating shortcomings in the nation’s election vote-counting systems. He is one of many legislators who have invested much energy in plans to overhaul the medical system but have little too show for it. Neither initiative has produced landmark legislation.

This year, however, Langevin earned the coveted title, “Mr. Chairman,” when his seniority and party affiliation put him in charge of one of the subcommittees of the House Committee on Homeland Security. It is a new and lightly trodden field; the committee was created to watch over and write policy and budget blueprints for the Department of Homeland Security. The cabinet-level agency was created by an act of Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Langevin heads the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cyber Security and Science and Technology.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com