The prospect of the nation’s electrical grid being compromised has been a concern for many years, but worries are ramping up as Russia appears to be mastering systems that can overcome the protections that have been put in place to preserve the integrity of the grid.
Recent intelligence shows that Russia now possesses a specialized “super electromagnetic pulse” weapon and warhead that can travel at speeds of Mach 20 and would be able to plunge America into darkness with very little advance warning.
The Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, Peter Vincent Pry, has also warned that China has surpassed American developments in electromagnetic pulse warfare, putting us at a serious disadvantage if they choose to attack us in this manner.
Some experts are worried that President Biden’s lifting of President Trump’s ban on Chinese involvement in the U.S. grid will make it easier for them to attack our electric supply.
Pry, who has worked with previous administrations and the Pentagon to prepare for attacks, said that the current political turmoil presents a “golden opportunity” for an EMP strike, adding: “Washington’s impotence and irresolution will invite future, increasingly aggressive cyberattacks.”
The truth is that enemies of our nation, such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, view the U.S. as an easy target given how much of our economy depends on electricity, the internet and electronic communications. An attack would easily wipe out all of these, putting every American in danger.
Pry outlined these advancements in EMP warfare in a new report on Russia. EMP weapons, he says, are exploded very high up in the atmosphere, allowing them to wipe out electric grids and computers across wide swaths of the country in outages that could last longer than a year.
The nation’s large transformers controlling the grid and high-voltage control cables are said to be particularly vulnerable. Transformers take two years to build and cost roughly $7 million each, and we are already behind schedule in having backups ready. This means that if many of our transformers go out at once, as they would in an attack, there is little we can do to restore power in a reasonable time frame.
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