Administration takes EMP threat seriously

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry became one of the most important appointments that President Trump made during his first three years in office when he was named chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission.

The commission, whose main goal was to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse attack, has been warning that a nuclear EMP attack, or natural EMP from a solar superstorm, could destroy our electronic civilization. Since the power grid is a large system with interconnected networks, taking down one or more utilities could easily destabilize large areas of the grid. Losing power would affect modern day methods of communications, sanitation, lighting, cooking, refrigeration and preparation, and transportation.

In its 2017 report, the EMP commission stated that an EMP attack gives countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to critical national infrastructures and to the survival of a majority of its population.”

While Democrats and their major media cohorts hype the Green New Deal promoted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the radical left, the EMP issue receives far less attention.

Pry, meanwhile, has warned that an EMP attack on America could kill off 90 percent of the U.S. population. Before dismissing his apocalyptic warning as some “Star Wars” fantasy, we know that for years other credible sources have also been raising red flags.

In a policy paper published last year titled “The Danger of EMP Requires Innovative and Strategic Action,” Heritage Foundation analysts warned that “an EMP could cause widespread failure of the electric grids of entire regions, grinding the U.S. economy to a halt. Without electricity, almost nothing will work, which means that millions of people will die as a result of not being able to refill medical prescriptions, millions more will be without food, and predictable rioting and looting can quickly create a state of anarchy,” the authors stated.

The White House National Security Strategy in 2017 stated that “The vulnerability of U.S. critical infrastructure to cyber, physical and electromagnetic attacks means that adversaries could disrupt military command and control, banking and financial operations, the electrical grid, and means of communication.”

A worldwide threat assessment published by the Senate Intelligence Committee highlighted China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as specific threats to our national security in cyberspace. Pry recently warned that the belief that Iran lacks nuclear weapons is based on little more than wishful thinking and blind faith in an intelligence community deeply corrupted by the Obama administration.

Before 2003, Iran was already manufacturing nuclear-weapon components and working on the design of a nuclear warhead. We doubt that it suspended its program for over a decade because of the nuclear deal under President Obama.

Last March Trump signed an executive order on coordinating national resilience to electromagnetic threats, thus becoming the first national leader to call for protecting the electric and communications grid against an electromagnetic attack. Experts such as Pry, who served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee and at the CIA, applauded the White House for elevating the EMP issue. The executive order combines EMP and cybersecurity, directing DHS’s secretary to coordinate with the Energy and Defense secretaries, other agencies and the private sector to “develop a plan to mitigate the effects of EMPs on the vulnerable priority-critical infrastructures.”

Pry said that Trump inherited an intelligence community from the Obama presidency that disagrees with him about almost everything, including his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In addition, he’s had to battle the “political correctness” of the Obama administration which stopped the intelligence community from analyzing the ideology of radical Islam, which some blindly called a “religion of peace.”

While Russia and China have long-range nuclear missile capabilities, it’s not the only way to create an EMP. Radio-frequency weapons have a smaller range of effectiveness than that of a high-altitude EMP but a detonation at a minimum of 25 miles above the Earth’s surface can still disrupt infrastructure.

The president’s EMP executive order was a vital step to protect Americans from both human-made and naturally occurring EMPs. Lobbyists, bureaucrats and political opponents who oppose Trump at every turn need to wake up on EMP preparedness.

The consequences of inaction can be life-altering.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com