This has not always been the case. 

Until recently, 3,000 electric utilities and their lobbies like the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Edison Electric Institute (EEI) argued national security is not their business. Inconsistently, electric utilities also claimed they can be trusted to regulate and protect themselves from solar and manmade EMP, cyber-attacks and sabotage.

Simultaneously, NERC, EPRI and EEI discredited themselves with bogus studies underestimating all these threats.    

The Congressional EMP Commission and other scientific and strategic experts, after laboring for 20 years, have finally worked a profound and necessary change in the way Washington thinks about national security — to include the electric power grid, upon which the operation of all other life-sustaining critical infrastructures and the lives of 330 million Americans depend.

The new Executive Order on Securing the United States Bulk-Power System recognizes electric grids are so important the United States should reduce dependency on equipment critical to grid operations — such as control systems, transformers and generators — manufactured by foreign nations:

“The bulk-power system is a target of those seeking to commit malicious acts against the United States and its people, including malicious cyber activities, because a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself and its allies.”

Therefore: “… the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of bulk-power system electric equipment designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of foreign adversaries to create and exploit vulnerabilities in bulk-power system electric equipment, with potentially catastrophic effects.”

EMP Commission reports warn that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran plan to attack U.S. power grids using EMP, cyber-attacks and sabotage in combination to blackout the United States and win a war.

Trusting China or others to manufacture U.S. electric-grid equipment makes no more sense than trusting them to make U.S. aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft and missiles.

Ideally, all critical equipment for the U.S. electric power grid should be made in the USA. Achieving self-sufficiency in the supply of such equipment should be our goal.

Unfortunately, the United States cannot make some critical equipment, like extra-high-voltage (EHV) transformers, which currently are imported from South Korea and Germany.

Even importing equipment from U.S. allies is risky as the “chain of custody” from manufacturing to delivery offers too many opportunities to hostile intelligence services. 

If the U.S. and Israel managed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear weapons program by inserting the Stuxnet worm into Tehran’s ultra-secure underground uranium enrichment complex at Fordow, imagine what China, Russia, North Korea or Iran could do to EHV transformers or control systems being manufactured overseas and shipped to the United States. 

The new executive order creates a special task force to review and approve critical equipment of foreign manufacture. But the safest solution will be to, as soon as possible, end these foreign dependencies by making equipment in America.

An executive order is only as good as its implementation. 

Will the Department of Energy and other U.S. government bureaucracies, that have long had a too cozy relationship with the electric utilities, aggressively enforce the new executive order, or find loopholes and excuses to return to business as usual?

Ambassador Henry Cooper, long a leading champion of grid security, raises legitimate criticisms of the new executive order, and about the commitment and competency of U.S. government bureaucrats tasked with protecting the national grid in “New Executive Order Mixed Bag” High Frontier (May 5, 2020):

• Why is the electric distribution system, that powers the homes of average Americans, unaddressed in the new executive order?

• Why have DOE and DHS long neglected the very generous offer by Duke Energy to provide an EHV transformer for EMP testing?

• Why are DOE and DHS apparently uninterested and providing no support to pilot projects at Lake Wylie, South Carolina, to protect a nuclear reactor, and in San Antonio, Texas, to protect a grid vital to that city and several U.S. military bases?

I would add: Why is DHS not aggressively circulating its own excellent report “DHS EMP Protection Guidelines for Equipment and Facilities”? If DHS will not energetically promote its own work, how about excellent work by independents like the Foundation for Resilient Societies report “Protecting U.S. Electric Grid Communications from Electromagnetic Pulse”?  

So far, most of the heavy lifting on national grid security is being done by independent patriots outside the U.S. government.

•Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, served as chief of staff on the Congressional EMP Commission, and on the staffs of the House Armed Service Committee and the CIA. He is author most recently of “The Power And The Light” (Amazon.com).  

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/6/made-in-america-protecting-the-power-grid/

The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission's War To Save America 2001-2020

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) manmade or natural, from solar superstorms, can blackout electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures putting at risk the lives of millions. 9 of 10 Americans could die from starvation, disease, or societal collapse from a nuclear EMP attack that blacks-out the U.S. for a year. A solar superstorm could blackout electric grids worldwide, putting at risk the lives of billions. A small heroic band of scientists and national security experts serving on the Congressional EMP Commission have been striving for 20 years to protect America from the existential threat that is EMP. Their war to save America from ignorant armies that are the government bureaucracy, electric utility lobbies, and an irresponsible press is not yet won, and may soon be lost.

Blackout Wars: State Initiatives to Achieve Preparedness Against an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Catastrophe

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, David Drummond, et al. 2015

Blackout Wars is about the historically unprecedented threat to our electronic civilization from its dependence on the electric power grid. Most Americans have experienced temporary blackouts, and regard them as merely an inconvenience. Some Americans have experienced more protracted local and regional blackouts, as in the aftermaths of Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, and may be better able to imagine the consequences of a nationwide blackout lasting months or years, that plunges the entire United States into the dark. read more

EMP Manhattan Project

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry 2018 

The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat to the United States is existential and growing. EMPs can occur with a nuclear explosion in space, cyberattacks, terrorist attacks, physical threats or a large coronal mass ejection from the sun, all of which are described in this book. Any of these EMPs could wipe out not only our electric grid, but anything with a computer chip in it, sending the U.S. back to the 1850s. Within a year after grid failure, the EMP Commission tells us that 9 out of 10 Americans will succumb to dehydration, starvation, gang and other violence, murder, suicide, breakdown of society and diseases. The government needs to take action now by forming an EMP Manhattan Project that focuses on hardening our electric grid. If it doesn't, those who survive will be existing in a country unrecognizable. read more

Civil-Military Preparedness For An Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophe

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry  

In my long experience, no other single issue has been such a scientific and national security conundrum as electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The phenomenon itself is not easy to explain to non-scientists, be they policymakers, generals, or ordinary citizens. The EMP threat seems like the stuff of science fiction. Yet your life depends upon understanding EMP.  

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry

Why do some American intelligence officials maintain fallout shelters and private contingency plans to evacuate their families in the event of a Russian nuclear strike―even in today's post-Cold War era of U.S.-Russian partnership? The frightening answer lies within the pages of War Scare, a terrifying assessment of the prospect for nuclear holocaust in our day. Written by Peter Vincent Pry, a former CIA military analyst, War Scare provides a history of our country's little-known brushes with nuclear war and warns that, contrary to popular opinion and the assurances of our political leaders, the possibility of a Russian attack still exists. Nuclear deterrence has been the foundation of Western security for the last 50 years, but since the end of the Cold War, Russian military doctrine has become more destabilizing, and much more dangerous, than is commonly believed. read more

Poseidon: Russia's New Doomsday Machine

by Dr. Peter Vincent Pry | Jun 14, 2018   "POSEIDON: Russia's New Doomsday Machine" describes Moscow's unmanned automated drone submarine designed to deliver a 100-megaton warhead to inundate U.S. coasts with nuclear tsunamis, leaving the most populous parts of America radioactive wastelands. Is this the real purpose of POSEIDON? What are the strategic implications of this new doomsday weapon, the latest in a series of Russian doomsday machines? What are the implications of the marriage in POSEIDON of Artificial Intelligence with the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built? Author Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is one of the nation's foremost experts on nuclear weapons and strategy. Pry is Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both Congressional Advisory Boards. He served as Chief of Staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, on the staffs of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission and the House Armed Services Committee, and in the CIA.

Thursday, 26 March 2020 11:52 AM
If you think the coronavirus is frightening, wait until a solar superstorm or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack blacks-out the national electric grid, collapses the economy and critical infrastructures for food and water, and 9-of-10 Americans die of starvation.

One year ago, President Trump issued his excellent "Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses" (March 26, 2019) responding to 20 years of warnings by the EMP Commission that solar superstorms, or manmade EMP from nuclear or non-nuclear weapons, poses an existential threat to the U.S. and to global electronic civilization.

Mandated by the EMP Executive Order is a progress report to President Trump from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Energy (DOE), and other relevant parts of the U.S. Government due to the White House on March 26, 2020.

My newly published book "The Power and the Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War To Save America 2001-2020" (www.amazon.com) is my progress report to the American people on implementation of EMP national preparedness:

—Obama-holdovers and Deep State bureaucrats who are EMP non-experts and have long opposed national EMP preparedness for reasons ideological, political, and personal, not least stupidity, are largely in charge of “implementing” President Trump’s EMP Executive Order.

—The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Standard for natural EMP/GMD is merely 8 volts/kilometer, far too low, and should be at least three times higher (24-30 volts/kilometer).

—The EMP Commission recommended EMP/GMD Standard is over ten times higher: 85 volts/kilometer, so the national grid would survive a worst-case solar storm or the long-wavelength threat (E3 EMP) from nuclear EMP attack.

—There is still no FERC approved Standard for E1 EMP, the short-wavelength electromagnetic “shockwave” from a nuclear EMP attack that would do the most damage to most electronics. Protection against E1 EMP (50-100 kilovolts/meter) would also mitigate lesser threats from non-nuclear EMP weapons and system-generated over-voltages from cyber-attacks, physical sabotage, and severe weather like hurricanes.

—The deeply erroneous Obama-era EMP report by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) and the more recent so-called “Tri-Labs EMP Report”, both written by a small number of non-experts parroting each other, continue to circulate misinforming U.S. officials and damaging national security. Both reports are highly classified, apparently to protect them from scrutiny and criticism from real EMP experts, while being invoked to prevent mid-level officials (who lack the clearances) from protecting their assets from EMP.

The EMP Commission wrote a classified rebuttal and recommended the recall of these reports, including in letters to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coates and DNI Joseph Maguire, which recommendations have been ignored, to the grave harm of our nation.

—The DHS “National EMP Strategy” drafted at the direction of Senator Ron Johnson’s excellent Critical Infrastructure Protection Act underestimates the EMP threat and is deeply flawed.

—Bogus analysis that grossly underestimates natural and nuclear EMP threats by the Electric Power Research Institute, a lobby for the electric power industry masquerading as a think tank, is being funded by DOE and wrongly treated by DHS as analytically sound, even though the EPRI Reports have been critiqued and proven erroneous by the EMP Commission and the USAF Electromagnetic Defense Task Force.

—The rampant incompetence of DHS and DOE is manifest in that they give greater credibility to EPRI non-experts than to the EMP Commission and its Chairman, Dr. William Graham—the foremost EMP expert in the Free World. Chairman Graham also served as President Reagan’s White House Science Advisor, ran NASA, was on the defense science team that discovered the EMP phenomenon, and has been protecting U.S. military systems from EMP since 1963.

—President Trump’s EMP Executive Order responds to the work and recommendations of the EMP Commission, yet U.S. Government implementation of the EMP Executive Order proceeds with almost no involvement or consultation with former EMP Commissioners and staff.
We have seen this movie before, and are living through it now.

20 years ago, in 2001, Operation Dark Winter by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies and Center for Strategic and International Studies simulated a biological attack on the United States, producing an excellent documentary "Dark Winter" about the wargame, that shocked and galvanized Congress to act.

Legislation and resources were invested, recommendations were supposed to have been implemented, to protect U.S. citizens from catastrophic Biological Warfare (BW).

Yet today, the coronavirus, which is chiefly a psychological threat, is having disastrous economic and societal consequences. What happened to BW preparedness?

For the $2 trillion that will be spent on the coronavirus, we could harden all critical infrastructures against EMP; deploy space-based missile defense Brilliant Pebbles before the end of a second term in office by President Trump; modernize the entire U.S. nuclear deterrent from top to bottom (including new missiles, bombers and submarines; new nuclear weapons; and a completely renovated nuclear scientific-industrial base) and have over $1 trillion to spare.

The strategy of pretending to do something, but really doing nothing, and then throwing money at the threat when it happens, will get millions of Americans killed when there is an EMP.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served on the Congressional EMP Commission as chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of  “The Power And The Light: The Congressional EMP Commission’s War To Save America 2001-2020”.