March 3, 2020—Bypass Washington Lethargy to Protect the Grid!

“I appreciate the urging that we not let our guard down … recognizing that this [threat] is complicated and multifaceted … truly daunting … and that we need to start out locally … It is important that we in congress be reminded of the urgency and imperative of our task and I think we were given that message this morning.” ~ Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Chairlady of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at the conclusion of her May 4, 2017 Hearing on EMP and policy options to protect the grid.

I was privileged to join Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in testifying in this important hearing to warn about the existential natural and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threats to the nation’s electric power grid and all we hold dear — and the need for congressional support.

Most of the others who testified basically told senators not to worry — everything is under control. Nothing could have been, and still is, further from the truth.

Click here for my written testimony, which expressed my frustration with the dysfunctional federal government and described our Lake Wylie Pilot Study that was intended to work the issue from the bottom-up, because at least local folks understand they are at risk and want to see the problem addressed.

I think this is still a fair representation of the status of the dysfunctional federal government, while our Lake Wylie Pilot Study has steadily moved ahead with no Washington help.

It was gratifying that Senator Murkowski seemed to get our message, as shown by her concluding comments that “we need to start out locally.” Sadly, I must report that little has changed in Washington since then, in spite of our and others’ warnings.

Little still seems to be happening, approaching three years later, in spite of President Trump’s 2016 campaign promises — though he has taken important initiatives as demonstrated by his important March 26. 2019 Executive Order produced by efforts of his National Security Council staff. It was further strengthened by the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020, which he signed into law on December 20, 2019.

That strengthening was due to an important Amendment sponsored by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) who chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. His important initiative reflected his well-known frustration on the pace of the government’s efforts in dealing with this existential threat:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. . . . It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.” ~ Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) — Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, February 17, 2019

Senator Johnson’s apt comment was made at the conclusion of his important February 17, 2019 hearing involving a “Round Table” panel discussion of the EMP threat, where most of the testimony still seemed to be that everything was under control. Click here for the full 2-hour hearing — a year ago, which did little to sooth his apparent frustration with the government’s slow progress in recognizing and countering the existential EMP threat.

That concern still is well deserved, at least in my opinion — and I trust that Senator Johnson will continue his penetrating oversight of the lethargic and dysfunctional Executive Branch efforts, where bureaucratic and regulatory constraints slow possible progress.

Click here for last week’s message, suggesting that such impedance “grows at the same rate as weeds” and urged the President to “drain the swamp” to remove conditions blocking his initiatives that I very much support — including to address the existential EMP threat and to build his Space Force.

I can’t help but believe that Senator Johnson would agree. Click here for Dr. George Baker’s prepared testimony for this hearing, which in my view is the most representative presentation of the still current situation re. EMP — and one to which Senator Johnson asked all hearing participants respond. (Don’t know anything about whatever response Senator Johnson received.)

Dr. Baker also worked with our Lake Wylie Pilot Study by conducting a very important detailed assessment of vulnerabilities of the Distribution Grid in York County, South Carolina; and providing an independent cost estimate for hardening it. Dr. Baker has supported our Lake Wylie Pilot Study effort from its inception about five years ago to work toward a viable solution from the bottom-up. My testimony before Senator Murkowski’s May 4, 2017 Hearing, came after we had spent almost three years on that effort.

For years, I have discussed the EMP threat and my frustration that so little has been done — and is being done — to deal with this well-understood threat, in spite of the fact that our most qualified technical experts well understand how to harden the electric power grid to counter it.

Indeed, we have understood how for decades, because we hardened our most important military systems against EMP decades ago — and those same hardening methods can and should be used to protect our critical civil infrastructure, especially by hardening the electric power grid.

These efforts were highly classified for years, but we no longer need that constraint for our security interests; so all electric power company engineers should be fully informed so that they can protect the grid upon which all Americans currently depend.

Click here for almost 250 of my messages dealing with the existential EMP threat and, after about 2015, our Rock Hill/York County Lake Wylie efforts. Click here my October 27, 2019 message that discussed in some detail essentially the current status of the Lake Wylie Pilot Study, and urged that the federal bureaucracy get on with executing the President’s Executive Order — as shortly thereafter was improved by Senator Johnson’s welcome amendment to the NDAA (2020).

Existential EMP threats are explicitly included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and are potentially posed by terrorists that get their hands-on nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Relatively short-range missiles that can be easily purchased to launch such an attack from vessels off our coasts. I’ve also written extensively about this threat, especially from vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.

Note that I have joined many colleagues and tried to get the Washington “powers that be” to address this existential threat. And I must say that the Washington establishment has been more resistant than helpful. Indeed, it actively opposed all efforts to deal with this critically important issue during the Obama administration — and the bureaucracy still is resistant to change, even though President Trump has made clear his support.

Click here for the June 26, 2013 letter from the Directors of the Foundation for Resilient Societies to President Obama and his most senior advisors — notably ignored. It had included several important appendices spelling out a number of technical details that the administration should have been addressing. And click here for another important May 14, 2015 letter to President Obama, signed by 41 former senior government officials urging him to intercede and assure that the existential EMP threat would be dealt with. Nothing of note resulted.

Dr. William R. Graham resigned from the Foundation of Resilient Societies Board of Directors to chair the reinstated Congressional EMP Commission, which reinforced its previous important findings on this existential threat (e.g., reported in 2004 and 2008), only to be shut down at the direction of congress and senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials. Click here for the complete set of the Commission’s important reports. I encourage you to read his still pertinent July 2017 “Chairman’s Report.”

As former Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), once Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and one of the prime movers for forming the original EMP Commission, wrote at the time: “Only Washington bureaucrats could be so stupid that they would terminate the Commission to Assess the threat to the United States from EMP attack — just when North Korea threatened to attack the United States with EMP.”

Click here for my message at the time, which also noted North Korea’s then recently announced interest in an EMP attack as a “strategic goal;” after it already had demonstrated an inherent capability to carry out such an attack on America.

At the same time and afterward, ill-informed alleged experts have seriously understated, even dismissed, the EMP threat. I fear there are still senior Trump officials who are reluctant to address this existential threat.

In any case, the current situation reinforces my long-standing view that we need an alternative strategy to counter Washington’s impedance against dealing responsibly with the existential EMP threat. I believe that Americans want to be protected and are prepared to engage if they are informed, which is why about five years ago I sought a “bottom-up” way to engage to protect those nearest to my home state, South Carolina.

I began by seeking from the Chairman the Electrical Engineering Department of my alma mater, Clemson University, the names of his graduates working with Duke Energy, one of the largest U.S. electric power companies. Subsequent connections led to a cooperative view of working the issues from the “bottom-up” with a special focus initially on the Lake Wylie Pilot Study.

Duke operates three power plants on Lake Wylie on the Catawba River that flows from North to South Carolina — hydroelectric and nuclear plants in York County, SC and a coal plant in Gaston County, NC. Duke’s corporate headquarters is in Charlotte in neighboring Mecklenburg County, NC. We agreed to first focus on York County, where most of the Distribution Grid is owned and operated by Rock Hill Utility and York co-op companies.

Subsequently, the managers of Rock Hill Utility and York co-op companies opened their infrastructure for Dr. Baker’s assessment and his estimates of costs to harden the Distribution Grid. Dr. Baker’s earlier leadership at the Defense Nuclear Agency — subsequently morphing through several organizations to the now current Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) — uniquely qualified him for this task. He has led the nation’s nuclear weapons effects research, testing and hardening efforts to protect against those EMP effects, and has conducted major assessments of EMP hardening efforts by the DoD military departments.

His expertise on how best to protect our most important strategic military systems and their supporting command, control and communications systems enabled him to lead the nation’s EMP experts to produce the comprehensive manual for protecting such important military systems—the completely unclassified Military EMP Standards MILSTD-188-125-1, 17 July 1994. These directives used to protect our most important military systems are the same as the EMP Hardening Level D from the authoritative Department of Homeland Security (DHS) EMP Protection Guidelines for Critical Infrastructure and Equipment.

No better basis exists for estimating the cost to harden the most critical York County infrastructure, including the Rock Hill Hospital, the York County Water-Wastewater infrastructure, key York County emergency management infrastructure and the Palmetto 800 MHz Emergency Management Communications connection to the SC Capitol operations in Columbia. His estimate was based on his vulnerability assessment of this essential Distribution Grid infrastructure throughout York County and particularly in Rock Hill, South Carolina’s fourth largest city.

Dr. Baker’s personal engagement in the Lake Wylie Pilot Study assured that the best available information to protect our most important military systems also can be used to protect York County’s most important critical civil infrastructure. Moreover, he employed the most resilient hardening methods employed by the Defense Department and estimated the associated costs based on the experience of Michael Caruso, a widely-recognized, field-experienced authority on protecting large facilities and essential equipment against EMP.

These hardening recommendations included shielding of rooms, racks and/or buildings to protect critical equipment, as well as special protection measures to protect key equipment outside of shielded areas. Dr. Baker also recommended maintaining 30+ days of supplies and hardened back-up power (to include on-site fuel) for critical systems. He urged against relying for communications on commercial internet, telephone, satellite or radio nets that are not competently and confidently hardened—and regularly tested to assure that hardness is maintained. (EMP protected fiber, satellite and radio links are possible and recommended.)

Dr. Baker’s assessment and costing priorities reflected the above discussion and considered water-wastewater infrastructure second only to electricity itself, with emphasis on intake and treatment plants to support hospital and infrastructure to support the general population; and then emergency communications and their links to Columbia (SC State Capitol) and other counties to support emergency management following a major grid blackout.

His one-time installation cost estimate for protecting the key infrastructure for Rock Hill was $15.52 million and for the rest of York County was $6.24 million for a total of $21.8 million for all of York County. He also estimated that protecting the state-wide SC Palmetto 800 MHZ communications including to the Governor and key emergency managers in Columbia would be another $17 million. In addition, he estimated it would cost $2 million to protect the link to the ETV headquarters in Columbia.

According to 2018 census estimates, 274,118 people lived in York County — say 300,000 as a year 2020 population estimate. To simplify further, consider slightly inflating Dr. Baker cost estimate for hardening the York County Distribution Grid ($21.8 million) and the communication link to Columbia ($2 million) to a total of $30 million—i.e., about $100 one-time cost for each York County citizen.

Compare this one-time cost to the much larger monthly cost of an average household’s health insurance policy. The median York County household annual income is nearly $52,000; so if paid off in just one year, the distribution system’s EMP protection program would be about one-half of one-percent of the median household annual income. This cost could be spread over several years to accommodate the anticipated scheduled hardening rate.

Thus, York County citizens can afford hardening their own York County Distribution Grid, even if the Federal Government provides no help — even though it should in response to the President’s Executive Order, as improved and amended by the NDAA (2020)!

Obviously, our Pilot Study has illustrated the absurdity of the continuing delays in protecting the electric power grid that have been imposed for years because of a lack of Washington leadership and assumed excessive costing estimates. .

Continuing such delay should be intolerable because little has happened since the threat was made public by congressional actions almost 20-years ago, by establishing a Congressional EMP Commission that issued its findings and recommendations in 2004, 2008 and most recently in 2016-17. Click here the Commission’s reports. Click here to read the Chairman’s July 2017 personal summary report that lays out with important notable specifics the issues that the Trump administration should most definitely take into account.

I am persuaded from our Lake Wylie Pilot Study experience that we can quite affordably harden the electric power grid by using the same EMP hardening procedures that we have used for decades to design, deploy, assess and upgrade our most important military systems. Moreover, these hardening principles are completely unclassified and available. We don’t need more studies!

But to be successful, national efforts must take into account a very important byproduct of our effort: The realization of how complex is the hardening task! Hardening a county-sized area is a much greater challenge than hardening the largest military base! And when it comes to protecting against the EMP threat, details matter!

There are 40 municipal utility companies and co-ops that own and operate their respective Distribution Grids in 46 counties in South Carolina — fed electricity by the Transmission Lines from some combination of Duke Energy, Dominion Energy and Santee-Cooper Power companies. The engineers in all these companies and counties need to understand how best to protect their and their customers’/constituents’ most critical infrastructure.

And while we have demonstrated that accomplishing this difficult task is quite feasible and affordable in one county, it remains to be accomplished for the critical civil infrastructure of South and North Carolina — and beyond. Doing so is not a technical or financial problem; it is a political and bureaucratic one. And based on our Lake Wylie Pilot Study experience, I’d argue it can best be done from the bottom-up. With help and support from state and federal authorities, of course — but success will depend on cooperation from local, county, and state officials — and most of all the private citizens who already want and can afford to be protected.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study has shown this task can be accomplished affordably — from the bottom-up! We just need to organize to empower the local authorities to accomplish what we have for decades known how to do! Click here for the completely unclassified Military Standard formulated by experts who had serious experience dating from the days when we actually tested our military systems to assure they can survive these nuclear weapon effects.

As proposed here, the National Guard can and I believe must play an essential role in accomplishing this critical task that links our knowledge originally fostered within the Defense Department to the local and state authorities — and across the nation.

I urge Senator Johnson to look into whether the National Security Council staff, now being substantially reduced and reorganized, is assuring a “whole of government” approach by taking his (and my) concerns into account, armed with this now demonstrated fact.

As Senator Murkowski said in our hearing almost two years ago, “we need to start out locally” — in my judgment by emphasizing initiatives by local and state initiatives that address the problems best known to those who manage the nation’s electric power grid day-to-day.

Again, I’ll close with Senator Johnson’s statement:

“We have known about the existential threat posed by electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) for decades. Because most people are either unaware of the danger, or view these as very low probability events, there has not been sufficient public pressure to take effective action to mitigate these threats. Instead, we establish commissions and study panels, conduct research, and develop plans to develop strategies. It is way past time to stop admiring this problem, and actually begin to do something concrete to protect our vulnerable electrical grid, control systems, and the ever-increasing array of electronic devices our society has become dependent upon.”

To which I say: “Amen!!!!”

Bottom Lines.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study is demonstrating how to accomplish a viable assessment and estimate valid associated affordable costs to assure “from the bottom-up” a viable Bulk Power and Distribution Gird to deliver electric power to the citizens of Rock Hill and York County.

This Pilot approach is an appropriate model to be pursued in responding to President Trump’s Executive Order directing the executive branch “powers that be” to protect the nation’s electric power grid.

Senator Johnson could do this project and others a great service by looking into the status of the efforts to implement the President’s EMP Executive Order, ASAP!

A number of “Due Dates” have already passed. Were they met? And do they fit with a strategy that begins locally?

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org, for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them. I hope you will help us with our urgently needed efforts, which I will be discussing in future messages.

Click here to make a tax deductible gift. If you prefer to mail a check, Please send it High Frontier, 20 F Street 7^th Floor, Washington, DC 20001.

E-Mail Message 200303