"If you want to cry after WannaCry ransomware attacked FedEx in the United States, hospitals in Britain, and telecommunications networks in Spain last Friday, you’ll want to bawl when North Korea hits the U.S. with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Let’s not go there.
Congressional reports and most security experts agree that America’s adversaries—from developed nations like China and Russia to dictatorships like Iran and North Korea—prefer to target our country with a triple threat combination of cyberattacks, physical damage and EMP. And EMP is the greatest threat of the three.A unique menace in that it can occur naturally (via a geomagnetic storm) or by man (via the high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon),
EMP is a rapid acceleration of particles that creates a high-power burst of electromagnetic energy.
55 years ago, during the Cold War, the United States experienced an accidental EMP blast when the JFK administration tested a 1.4-megaton nuclear warhead 250 miles above Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The test, Operation Starfish Prime, malfunctioned.
Traffic lights 850 miles away in Hawaii immediately went out, six satellites above the Pacific died, and radio networks were disrupted in Alaska, Hawaii and California.
Starfish Prime was a powerful warning—had we listened.
Unfortunately, today our country is virtually defenseless against an EMP attack.
Furthermore, the ramifications of an EMP attack in 2017 are far greater than in 1962 due to the proliferation of grid-dependent smartphones, computers, cars, medical facilities, financial institutions and food distribution channels.
Even our military is far more electricity-dependent..."
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