By James Scott, Sr. Fellow @ The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
The government’s perception management machine, sadly, plays hand puppet to the multi billion dollar military industrial complex lobby. Therefore the public’s attention is perpetually bombarded with visuals of a 17 year old ISIS member training on an elementary school jungle gym, rolling around in the sand sporting a ski mask and shooting a WWII style, rust coated rifle. Displaced fear mongering for purposes of capitalization is the name of the game when it comes to federal spending on defense.
Politicians don’t talk about it, the media won’t touch it and the public is unaware of it. But the biggest threat to the American public, by far, is the almighty Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP). An EMP event would instantly set us back to the pre-industrial age and eliminate our critical infrastructures. Everything we depend on: electric, water plants, banking, nuclear energy facilities, dialysis machines, Internet and all communications would cease functionality thus ending the American way of life.
An EMP, also referred to as a ‘transient electromagnetic disturbance’ is a robust burst of electromagnetic energy and is a phenomenon that can occur both naturally (lightning, electrostatic discharge, meteoric) and via man-made (power line surges, gasoline engine ignition, nuclear electromagnetic pulse: NEMP and HEMP) events. The question is not “Will it happen?”, rather “When will it happen?” The federal government has been so busy with cyber surveillance of Americans that it has ignored the very basics and most obvious threats to Americans.
During the 1990’s Russia admitted to sharing its discoveries of multiple weaknesses in America’s critical infrastructure and EMP technology with North Korea. China and Iran are also well versed in our limited defenses to EMP warfare. All it takes is a nuclear weapon launched by sea vessel or from our southern neighbors (a region that lacks early warning systems) and our archaic energy grid will be annihilated. A nuclear weapon ignited at high altitude is the most efficient way to eliminate our energy grid, telecommunications networks and all critical infrastructure. It is important to note that North Korea has a nuclear bomb size satellite rotating the planet and crawls the American sky from the south and at the precise altitude for an EMP attack.
(In a future report we will examine the cybersecurity breach realities that threaten our critical infrastructure due to mandatory back doors and subpoenaed encryption keys demanded of our Nation’s technology vendors by Federal Courts. We will discuss intentional weaknesses and voids enforced by the FISA Court, Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act and section 2015 of the Patriot Act. The issue with these items, as the reader will see, is not only a dragnet surveillance issue, but a crippling critical infrastructure epidemic.)
America possesses the world’s largest energy distribution system and has been repeatedly referred to as a third rate, developing nation style grid. Threat and vulnerability assessments have been completed as a way of auditing substations, transmission stations and distribution stations. Each time these assessments have demonstrated massive gaps enabling novice terrorist and sabotage breach threats full access which could lead to nonreboundable catastrophe yet the untrained armchair jockeys at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have refused to take action. The argument is that the suggestion results from the briefings are too costly therefore these findings collect dust in a forgotten filing cabinet in an underused document warehouse.
Defective management is compounded by current events detrimental to the security of the U.S. grid such as Pakistan and Iran standing nuclear ready, the China-Russia pact to not hack each other (demonstrative of two economic and military superpowers aligning to minimize the impact of America’s current position)as well as neglected South American allies who are rapidly becoming adversaries. Fragile boarders, federally enforced weakening of vendor encryption capabilities, unprotected southern skies due to lack of early warning systems all have an effect on the deteriorating security of our energy grid and critical infrastructure. Bureaucratic agencies and do nothing politicians who neglect this paramount responsibility dance around the topic due to lack of comprehension and lack of insider alliances that could cure this diseased sector of the legislative landscape.
The most realistic probability for EMP by way of asymmetric warfare would be one of America’s countless enemies, attaching an unsophisticated nuclear bomb to a satellite that rounds the south pole with remote detonation in orbit above the United States. This process is eerily within the modest technological capabilities of even those deemed to be the most primitive of enemy nation states. The neophyte sophistication and limited accuracy needed for such a devastating offensive is as simple as the historical Hiroshima and Nagasaki retaliation for Pearl Harbor.
Taking out the energy grid automatically eliminates functionality of all other critical infrastructures that are dependent on the grid. Iran and North Korea, both in economic dyer straights from sanctions have verbally and historically demonstrated they are equally willing to undertake such an initiative. To argue the case one step further; take away the technological capability of satellites, a weapon for this purpose could be launched from a meager weather balloon.
In all fairness pre 911 Congress did establish a dog and pony show called the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack. This commission was to assess the likelihood of state and non state actors who could acquire nuclear capabilities and facilitate an EMP assault within the next 15 years, our Nation’s EMP attack vulnerabilities in the civilian infrastructure as a matter of emergency readiness, our recovery capabilities and cost analysis for civilian and military systems to be used against such an attack.
Though the commission found that the U.S. was quite vulnerable to a full blown EMP attack, to date Congress has not passed comprehensive legislation to address this devastating reality with the exception of a few military adjustments which by far lack the potency necessary to combat this realistic probability of comprehensive annihilation of the American landscape.
The research is out there just waiting to be put to use. Possibility has become probability yet the legislative community has failed to make this asymmetric warfare part of the discussion of national security planning. All it takes is a nuclear detonation, 300 miles above Kansas to obliterate power transformers throughout the United States.
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