Electric power grids are being stressed by integration of intermittent renewable resources and significant adoption of distributed energy resources. The complexity of the grid is growing rapidly as we attempt to support technical, business, and societal goals for which power grids were not originally designed. Today, we largely take stability of the grid for granted. Stability could significantly degrade or collapse because of new dynamics introduced to the grid, and because the emerging extreme complexity makes traditional control analysis intractable, so that grid behavior is more unpredictable than in the past. This paper describes emerging issues in grid control and provides reasons why the present path of grid control evolution is problematic and presents an ultra-large scale framework for grid control that can solve today’s problems and those expected over the next 30 years. Failure to address these issues in the short term will result in rapidly escalating system deployment and maintenance costs, potential stranded assets related to replacement of the “ad hoc” systems, along with substantial operational risks that are unacceptable under current utility and regulatory practices.