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Ex-CIA Director: We're Not Doing Nearly Enough To Protect Against the EMP Threat
An anonymous reader writes: Last week saw the release of an open letter written to President Obama by a committee of notable political, security and defense experts — which includes past and present members of Congress, ambassadors, CIA directors, and others — on the country's concerning level of vulnerability to a natural or man-made Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously. Not only would that immediately throw the social order into chaos, but the timeline to repair and restart the grid in most estimated scenarios would take months to a year or more.
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
Actually, in the case of a single or small number of nuclear blasts, or a low-atmo nuclear detonation, restoring the power grid is one of the first problems you have.
If you're dealing with total war with a major power, it's pretty much the end of the world anyway. But if you're dealing with a couple of nukes from a newly nuclear nation or as part of a proportional response in a conflict between major powers (game theory in a world where nobody is stupid enough to destroy the world), you have a lot of refugees to deal with and a lot of infrastructure to keep going.
Do you have military needs that take priority? Of course. But you still have civilian needs that you need to provide for and which give your economy the strength to fight a war.
The power grid is very interconnected to provide redundancy. If possible, the major interconnects should *all* be required to be hardened against EMP. I don't know offhand how hard that is, but losing the power grid through New York and DC is a lot better than losing every power plant in the country...
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
That's why I find this quite sinister. It looks like they are just blatantly misleading the public to get more funding. If they said they are concerned about someone using a nuclear weapon to take out the power grid, everyone would quickly point out that the problem is not protecting the power grid, but that someone has a nuclear weapon. By making it all fuzzy and saying there are natural causes too, they create a new dissociated threat that most people can't really understand. Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen, they can spend endless amounts 'protecting' the grid and we'll never know whether it actually works.
It's just the modern equivalent of selling magic stones that protect you from monsters. I hope these guys are just thick though, and not actually intelligent people knowingly misleading everyone so they can buy flash cars and houses.
EMP comes from high atmospheric detonation, not low. It's a result of nuclear bomb's energy interacting with upper layers of atmosphere. It doesn't occur in low altitude detonations.
On your last point, I don't think you quite understand just how much your suggestion would cost. There are far more significant and realistic threats to grid than EMP from nuclear blast, such as environmental disasters (remember tsunami that caused Fukushima's grid to fail, resulting in meltdown?) and in many cases and protection against those is still often considered too expensive.
It is actually, you naive little insect.
Let me explain this to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Maintaining the fault tolerance of the retaliation ensures MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
And that preserves the deterrence of the strike.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
That means the EMP never happens in the first place.
Thus the commercial and private systems are largely protected because things that don't happen can't hurt them.
How can anyone in the 21st century not understand nuclear deterrence?
The mindless headless chicken ignorance of some people will probably always amaze me.
And he presumed to call ME the neanderthal? No, child. You're the one that doesn't understand.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Solar flares. We know they will happen, we know big ones will happen.
What? And drag them back to the 6th century where they would be more happy?
As to the banks... possibly. The issue is rebuilding will be harder if we disagree about who owns what. A free for all with surviving resources will lead to chaos and that will require a command economy if you don't preserve ownership.
And that means... basically whatever remains will turn into something sort of like WW2 England or the soviet union in that everything will be rationed and the government will decide who owns things.
I'd prefer to try and preserve the existing system as it has a lot fewer cons. But to each his own on that one.
As to retaliation, to the contrary that is extremely important.
First, it is retaliation that keeps the enemy from striking you in the first place. If the enemy doesn't think you'll retaliate it makes them more likely to hit you in the first place. So you have to do that.
Second, those fuckers just glassed your cities and if you don't return the favor they're going to be in a world where your people are mostly dead/radioactive ant people... and they're totally fine. Which means they're going to rule the world if you don't knock them back. And if you do... maybe you can save your civilization. But if you don't... your people lose and will never recover.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
No it doesn't. Annihilation can't be escalated. How is a country going to nuke me if they're all dead?
As to neanderthal terms... how about I just fuck your sister? While I'm doing that, you can talk to me about what is and is not neanderthal behavior.
Kindly stop talking to me. You're that internet typical mix of fucktard and arrogant that is a complete waste of oxygen.
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