It would be the ultimate asymmetric threat.Terrorists armed with rifles could cause a protracted blackout of the North American electric grid. A terror attack that collapses the electric grid would black out all the life-sustaining critical infrastructures — communications, transportation, business and finance, food and water — in effect, hitting the “off switch” for the entire nation.No less than two congressional commissions, the EMP Commission (2008) and the Strategic Posture Commission (2009), and numerous independent studies, including the recent books “Lights Out” and “Blackout Wars,” warn that an attack on the grid that causes a protracted blackout could kill millions. Electricity sustains the economy and the lives of more than 300 million people. Classification.However, the Department of Homeland Security has neglected to protect the United States from an even graver threat posed by the vulnerability of the national electric grid.Federal Permitting Improvement Act of 2015 : report of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, to accompany S.America is an electronic civilization. This act refers to only a portion of the Public Law the tables below are for the entire Public Law.
The EMP Commission warned that terrorists armed with a single primitive nuclear weapon and short-range missile, or even a high-lift balloon, could inflict an EMP catastrophe.North Korea apparently practiced a nuclear EMP attack in April 2013, orbiting its KSM-3 satellite on the optimum trajectory and altitude to evade U.S. Turkey experienced a highly disruptive temporary blackout, reportedly from an Iranian cyberattack, on March 31.The worst threat to the grid would be from a high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which would cause the most widespread and deepest damage to the critical infrastructures. 25.Terrorists might be able to black out the grid with cyberattacks. Terrorists blacked out most of Pakistan — a nuclear weapons state — on Jan. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula temporarily blacked out the entire nation of Yemen, 16 cities and 27 million people, on June 9, 2014. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a terror attack on just nine key transformer substations could black out the nation for 18 months.Terrorists already know about and have exploited grid vulnerability in attacks on other nations.The Knights Templars drug cartel used explosives to temporarily black out Michoacan in Mexico, plunging 420,000 people into the dark so they could execute local leaders opposed to the drug trade on Oct.
Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. 1846).In the aftermath of Paris, isn’t it time to protect the grid? Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has introduced a similar bill (S. 1073), a bill to protect the electric grid, sponsored by Republican Rep. The KSM-3 still passes over the United States every few days.The good news is that the grid can be protected against even the worst threat, nuclear EMP attack, for about $2 billion — and this would mitigate all the lesser threats, including from sabotage, cyberwarfare and severe weather.Awaiting passage in the House is the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (H.R.
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