Coming to America: Unprecedented Electrical Blackout Warfare Threats
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“Someday science shall have the existence of Mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.”
-Henry Adams (1862)
Editor's Note
The majority of Americans (and our foreign allies) now believe what's taken place in Afghanistan is nothing short of a complete humiliation and disaster… and a complete United States surrender on terms demanded by the Taliban.
News coverage 24/7 by the majority of both liberal and neoconservative media sources agree the Afghanistan debacle has unbelievable strategic consequences well beyond Afghanistan itself.
Indeed, anyone with a detectable heartbeat now realizes the only near-certain outcome of America's hasty withdrawal is a re-energized mobilization for TERRORIST attacks against Democracies worldwide – especially, the United States.
How could it not be? Why did we enter into a war with Afghanistan after 9/11?
Answer: To prevent another serious attack on the West from Afghanistan. America succeeded with respect to this objective over the past 20 years.
Nearly 90 retired U. S. Army generals and admirals have recently stated: "The threat is now much worse than it was before."
It has been chillingly predicted – by many high-ranking military leaders worldwide – terrorist training camps will once again be set up in Afghanistan and inevitably spawn a new wave of horrific violence against America and its allies.
These terrorist training camps will attract fighters from Al Qaeda and other terror groups eager to learn how to make bombs... hone their killing skills... and carry out sophisticated cyber-attacks in an attempt to destroy not only America's but other countries' electrical grids – which will, if successful, paralyze a given nation's ability to adequately respond.
Add this new threat to America's horrific wide-open border crisis... increasing reports that many Afghan refugees arriving in the U.S. are not properly vetted and one can easily conclude a new era is upon us.
Yesterday's world order is rapidly becoming a distant memory. We are not in fact facing the "new world order" many politicians so constantly invoke. Rather, we are facing a "new world disorder" – one with frightening realities.
In an effort to keep our readers informed and updated about the dangers ahead, we've asked one of the foremost electric grid security experts in the world – Dr. Peter Vincent Pry – to provide a much-needed briefing on the catastrophic consequences of intentional physical and cybersecurity damage to America's power grid infrastructure.
Beyond Hiroshima: Blackout Warfare
Now the Taliban have captured Afghanistan, and captured enormous quantities of sophisticated U.S. arms left behind. The U.S. border is wide open to terrorists.
The vulnerability of the U.S. electric grid to a terrorist attack by small arms or explosives is an existential (i.e. human existence) threat as great or greater than the H-bomb.
76 years ago, on August 6, 1945, a single A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima killing 135,000. A single H-bomb detonated over New York City could kill 10 million.
Today, a single nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warhead if detonated 300 kilometers high over North America could kill 300 million people.
There would be no blast, fire or radiation, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only an invisible electromagnetic wave, harmless to people, but lethal to electric grids, communications, transportation, food and water and other critical infrastructures that sustain the lives of 330 million Americans.
The same existential result can be achieved by a dozen, or fewer, non-nuclear EMP (NNEMP) warheads delivered by drones or cruise missiles, programmed to attack electric power control centers and transformer substations.
But There's More!
A cyber-attack and/or special forces sabotage—an “army” of a few dozen terrorists using rifles or explosives to destroy perhaps as few as nine critical on-site utility power transformers—could blackout electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for a year, causing 90% of the population to eventually perish from starvation.
U.S. military capabilities would be paralyzed or crippled severely. Much can be written about this. But you get the point!
Just to Be Clear
Adversary military doctrine defines "Cyber Warfare" differently than we do.
We regard physical attacks and EMP attacks on the electrical grid as distinct from Cyber Warfare which in U.S. military doctrine is limited to just cyberspace.
Russia, China, North Korea and Iran's military doctrine includes EMP and Special Forces Sabotage (i.e., physical attacks) as part of Cyber Warfare, which they envision as a combined-arms operation. (We discuss this in more detail several paragraphs below.)
Recommended Reading
For those still unfamiliar with elementary details about the U. S. power grid and how through an interconnected system of generating plants, wires and transformers keep the lights on for the bulk of American homes, offices and factories, we suggest reading Bloomberg BusinessWeek's excellent article which provides you with the fundamental understanding now required for all concerned Americans. (America’s Power Grid - Bloomberg)
The Needed Government Turnaround
The very near future will make unprecedented demands on policymakers and national security experts currently schooled primarily in the conventional and nuclear strategies of the cold war.
Slowly, now suddenly, there is an urgent need for new thinking. Tunnel vision, in all professional fields, afflicts many specialists and others unable to liberate themselves from their narrow focus.
Today's realities demand high government competence; they demand political leadership, political courage, and, above all, a grasp of a basic truth – modern civilization could be extinguished and national populations virtually annihilated, from a war on infrastructure electronics.
For a "Wake-Up" education, read the unclassified EMP Commission reports at www.firstempcommission.org or the article by EMP Commission Chairman, William Graham, and former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, “Prepare For The Worst” (RealClearDefense 21 October 2019).
An Overlooked, Seldom Reported Fact
Immediately, few or no fatalities may result from EMP, NNEMP, cyber or sabotage attacks on electric grids, an attractive feature of this revolutionary new mode of warfare.
Adversaries can, in effect, hold hostage the lives of the North American population, whose salvation will depend upon the U.S. government focusing all remaining resources on their rescue, instead of fighting World War III.
In plain, simple language: A nuclear EMP attack is immediately harmless to people because the electromagnetic wave, very much like a radio wave, passes harmlessly through people's bodies.
But by mass destruction of electronics and electric grids - causing a protracted blackout - millions will die from starvation, disease and societal collapse.
But - and this is the big "but" - starvation takes a long time, and the collapse of civilization can be prevented, and millions of American lives saved if the right preventative actions are taken now!
The Problem of Defining the Problem
Every problem must be correctly stated, that is, stated precisely and in such a way it is capable of being solved.
Only after one defines the problem properly can one decide what must be done and how to do it.
The most severe kind of competition is warfare. It is not surprising, therefore, war strategy has so often focused so carefully on a prior definition of the specific problem at hand.
Since one gets few second chances, it is essential the first try succeeds.
Let's get back to the problem at hand. If one of the worst-case scenarios should occur with respect to an attack on the electric grid, starvation will be the major problem.
But starvation takes a long time.
If government leaders focus all surviving operational assets (including military assets… on restoring electric power…turning the water back on… ensuring food in big regional warehouses does not spoil and is distributed to grocery stores and the population… repairing and recovering major ports to import food and other necessities (the big regional food warehouses only have enough food to feed the national population for 30 days at normal consumption rates)… and the like, millions of lives will be spared.
This is very real. And I should make one additional point. A decision is not an action. Good intentions are no substitute for putting a decision into operational reality.
Government leaders may see climate change as the key priority problem that should be tackled; the real priority problem may well be disaster recovery planning combined with strong, coordinated, preventative actions. You decide!
More About What You Should Know About Blackout Warfare… But Were Afraid to Ask!
Blackout Warfare, the name of my forthcoming book, and the term used here to describe a military strategy focused on attacking national electric grids and critical infrastructure electronics, is called many things by many nations.
The Congressional EMP Commission calls it Combined-Arms Cyber Warfare.
Russian military doctrine writes of No Contact Warfare, Electronic Warfare, and Network Centric Warfare.
China calls it Total Information Warfare.
Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran all call it Cyber Warfare.
But their version of Cyber Warfare, and all these other labels for the same concept, include the following three warfare strategies:
- Special forces sabotage
- Non-nuclear EMP (NNEMP) and
- Nuclear EMP attack
To be sure, these cyber-warfare strategies have been widely mentioned or discussed by many media outlets for many years. What I'm saying is nothing new.
But today's new realities are something very new indeed. Open borders, Afghanistan in the hands of terrorists, $83 billion in state-of-the-art vehicles and weaponry left behind in Afghanistan and a host of other unimaginable happenings all make America more vulnerable to the above-mentioned warfare strategies.
You'd Better Keep Up - It's No Time For Apathy and Indifference
The EMP Commission warns that adversaries regard this new way of warfare as the greatest Revolution in Military Affairs in history:
“Combined-arms cyber warfare, as described in the military doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, may use combinations of cyber-, sabotage, and ultimately nuclear EMP attack to impair the United States quickly and decisively by blacking-out large portions of its electric grid and other critical infrastructures.
Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military.
The synergism of such combined arms is described in the military doctrines of all these potential adversaries as the greatest revolution in military affairs in history—one which projects rendering many, if not all, traditional instruments of military power obsolete.” (Assessing the Threat from EMP Attack, July 2017)
'I Believe Russia, China, North Korea and Iran Are Right'
The U.S. electric grid is a technological Achilles heel, vulnerable to attack by many different means. Blackout Warfare could quickly and relatively easily paralyze all U.S. critical infrastructures, including:
Government... military... electric power... telecommunications... transportation... petroleum and natural gas... banking and finance... food and water... emergency services... and more.
Imagine the consequences of the collapse of all these critical infrastructures, as would happen by blacking out the electric grid—electric power being the keystone critical infrastructure that sustains all the others—some failing immediately, others within hours, virtually all within 72 hours (after exhaustion of emergency power).
It would be the end of civilization and a golden opportunity for aggressors.
Reiterating By Saying It With Straight Talk
Never before in history have little failed states like North Korea and Iran, or terrorists, been able to destroy the most advanced societies on Earth.
For the first time in history, the dependency of nations upon the very electronic technologies that make possible modern civilization, also makes them vulnerable to malevolent modern barbarians and pygmy powers.
Most dangerous is the failure of strategic imagination in the West and East to understand these new Weapons of Mass Destruction are more dangerous than H-bombs because they are more tempting to use.
Those who think EMP and Cyber Warfare are “grey-zone aggression” and “short of a real shooting war” are playing with existential fire.
The Good News
That said, let me emphasize this is the time to make the safer future we desire - precisely because everything is in flux.
We know the new demands and have many of the answers, the solutions and the new integrations.
Our political leaders have to act - not on yesterday's realities/assumptions - but rather on anticipation of "a future that has already happened" but still not completely recognized or perceived by the "vital few" who have it within their power to take the appropriate preventative/corrective actions.
Required: Changes in Perception
Knowledge and experience as a whole determine our mindset or perception.
Said Peter F. Drucker: "When a change in perception takes place, the facts do not change. Their meaning does."
How we see things influences how we understand them and how we respond to them.
I am hopeful that by asking the right questions, challenging closely held assumptions and pushing people to see what was previously unseen, changes in perception about the EMP challenges ahead will soon occur.
Take-Home Message
The U.S. government should quickly implement the recommendations of the EMP Commission to protect electric grids and other critical infrastructures against nuclear EMP, since protection against this worst-case threat can mitigate other threats, including from NNEMP, Cyber Warfare, and special forces sabotage.
There is a profound sense of unreality about the dangers of an EMP attack. Most of what we assume axiomatically no longer fits today's reality. There is a new configuration to keeping America safe, which confounds all the old analytical categories.
