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I personally believe that this is a real risk and it should (but won't) be taken seriously.
We have not had a significant CME event that hit the Earth since long before electric power transmission was widespread - let alone unprotected satellites orbiting the planet.
CME happens all the time as a normal part of the Sun's functioning. We will surely be hit directly and repeatedly over time, and I would be very surprised if the next such event doesn't knock out all the satellites that are unfortunate enough to be between the sun and the earth when it arrives.
The power grid of the USA and all sun-facing locations will be substantially damaged or destroyed and normal Internet operations will similarly have their wiring and hardware degraded or rendered inoperable.
More likely is a glancing blow from a CME, though, or a less powerful CME will arrive before a "big one." The damage could be less substantial and serve as a serious warning, giving us time to harden our infrastructure.
It is also one of those events that is, from my perspective at least, impossible to time. The sun ejects mass in CMEs very often - but it does it in all directions. That means it is not like an earthquake fault line that ruptures when the pressure has built up to the point where it snaps. This kind of action is somewhat predictable because pressure builds slowly over time, and we can estimate the maximum amount of pressure the fault can tolerate. In that way, we can estimate when a next earthquake along the fault is likely (they come every 300 years, for example, so maybe 200 years or maybe 400 years, but never just 10 years apart or 1000 years...)
With CME, you could get two hits in two months, or you could get no hits in 1000 years. They may average 100 years apart or so, but there is no relationship between when one happens to when the next one may happen.
So, maybe a 1% chance per year? It would suck, but it doesn't keep me up at night. (ugh, now I have to knock on wood lol)
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