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An official EMP commission tried for several years to spur hardening of key equipment and systems. You can read the last report of the group, decommissioned in 2019, for yourself.
In an interview that year, report author Peter Vincent Pry warned that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and others were interested in the potential for combined cyber, EMP, and direct attacks on the U.S. power grid.
This new warfare uses cyber viruses, hacking, physical attacks, non-nuclear EMP weapons, and a nuclear EMP attack against electric grids and critical infrastructures. It renders modern armies, navies, and air forces obsolete. It paves the way for asymmetric warfare by small nations and terrorists.
How bad would such an attack be? The report estimates that 90 percent of the population would die from starvation, disease, and societal collapse.
Under the Biden Administration, solar power generation is a key priority despite its low generation efficiency and its dependence on rare minerals whose control, in many cases, has fallen into the hands of the Chinese. The administration is eagerly rebuilding long-neglected power production and distribution in Puerto Rico while throttling U.S. oil and gas extraction.
What it is not doing is addressing the vulnerabilities of the mainland American grid or promoting nuclear generation using modern, much safer technologies.
If the grid is taken off line for weeks or months, people will die. Many people.
Hospitals will run out of emergency petrochemical-based backup systems. Food supplies will be interrupted. Sanitation and water supplies will be in danger as well—which will lead rather quickly to major disease spread. The economy will crash in the absence of both electricity and of the communications systems that depend on it.
And if that happens as a result of one or more EMP blasts too high up to melt Los Angeles and Silicon Valley but close enough to destroy the semiconductor chips in crop harvesting equipment, cell phones, and Internet communications, along with all transportation throughout California, the number of dead Americans will be staggering.
Which is why recent evidence that Russia and China are each rapidly maturing advanced hypersonic missile capabilities has badly shaken key Defense Department leaders. While they were busy adjusting troop physical fitness tests for gender equity, our rivals have been focusing their attention on key attack capabilities that have the potential for asymmetric devastation of our country.
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