October 29, 2019—Press-On, Senator Johnson!

“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)

Thus, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) closed his February 17 2019 “Round Table” hearing with this statement of frustration with the government’s slow progress in recognizing and countering the existential EMP threat. As Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he has clear responsibility for overseeing the lethargic and dysfunctional Executive Branch efforts — and I am greatly encouraged by his continuing efforts in that regard.

Click here for that full hearing, still well worth a couple of hours of your time, and here for Dr. George Baker’s prepared testimony, which in my view was the most representative presentation of the current situation — and one to which Senator Johnson asked all hearing participants to respond. Dr. Baker also conducted a detailed assessment of, and provided and independent cost estimate for hardening, the Distribution Grid in York County, South Carolina.

I have discussed our Rock Hill/York County efforts for several years — most recently last week. Click here for that message and its links to numerous related background messages and articles. It also highlighted Senator Johnson’e important role in overseeing Executive Branch lethargic efforts to assess the vulnerability of the nation’s electric power grid and efforts to protect all Americans against associated threat.

Those threats particularly include existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threats included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — and potentially posed by terrorists that get their hands on nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. Alternately, the grid can also be threatened by terrorists exploiting physical and cyber attack, perhaps as precursors to a primary EMP attack.

As an example of the kind of chaos that such tactics could creat, consider the figure below reported by Fox News of a transmission grid tower malfunction that helped spark the fires still raging in California. Imagine what it would be like to fight such fires without aid from key disaster management infrastructure that depends on electricity.

For my part, I have been working for several years with Duke Energy, one of the largest U.S. electric power companies, if not the largest, to conduct what we refer to as the Lake Wylie Pilot Study. We are conducting a detailed assessment of the grid surrounding Lake Wylie on the Catawba River that flows from North to South Carolina — and estimating the cost for protecting against the EMP threat. We are making great progress in providing a pattern that others might consider following.

Moreover, I believe we are pursuing the wisest approach by avoiding the dysfunctional Federal Government and pursuing a “bottom-up” approach rather than waiting on top-down directives from Washington. Such local and state initiatives can initiate efforts to address the problems best known to those who manage the nation’s electric power grid day-to-day.

Click here for my May 4, 2017 testimony before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that provides my early, but still current, views on this important matter.

I’ve long discussed the slow pace of federal and state “top-down” efforts to counter the existential threats to the electric power grid — particularly from manmade and natural EMP threats, and my testimony a couple of years ago emphasized:

How to protect the grid was learned by the Department of Defense (DoD) decades ago, and no technical reason prevents using that knowledge to protect the grid;
Ignorance, resulting from over-classification of that information and other political constraints, has frustrated governmental and private efforts to apply these known solutions to protect the grid;
A “bottom-up” approach in York County, South Carolina can provide a very affordable precedent that can be exploited by other counties in South and North Carolina and throughout the United States.

Click here for my most recent discussion, just three week ago, which introduced a discussion of the current status of our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, which has demonstrated the affordability of protecting critical civil infrastructure by using the same hardening methods applied for decades to protect our most important strategic military systems (our strategic nuclear forces and their essential command, control and communications systems).

As noted last week, we concluded it would cost each citizen of York County less than $100 to protect the county’s Distribution Grid that provides electricity to its hospital, water-wastewater management and delivery, other utilities, businesses, people, industry, transportation, emergency management, essential communications, etc. Imagine life without electricity. Additional funds would be required to assure the York County Distribution Grids is maintained, but that additional maintenance costs should be minimal.

These quite affordable methods and procedures would be the same as those employed for decades to assess and protect our most important mimitary systems — our strategic nuclear forces and their supporting essential command, control and communications systems.

There is no valid reason to withhold this information from those responsible for our Bulk Power and Distribution Grids—yet, that has been the case for decades — and it should stop immediately!

I encourage you to reread last week’s message for the details, but the following are its key points:

We are demonstrating how to accomplish a viable assessment and estimate valid associated affordable costs to assure “from the bottom-up” a viable Distribution Gird to deliver electric power to the citizens of Rock Hill and York County.
With Duke Energy’s promised cooperation, such estimates will also be provided for the Bulk Power Grid in York County, setting the stage for further extensions of the lessons learned.
This “Pilot” approach is an appropriate model for responding to President Trump’s Executive Order directing the executive branch “powers that be” to protect the nation’s electric power grid.
I believe Senator Johnson could do all our projects a great service by looking into the status of the lethargic Executive Branch efforts to implement the President’s Executive Order ASAP!

Whatever, I look forward to extending our Lake Wylie Pilot Study efforts to key South Carolina counties and those surrounding Charlotte, the nation’s 22^nd most populous city neighborhood, throughout other South and North Carolina counties and to other states. In particular, I look forward to working closely with friends in the Lone Star state, especially with an important San Antonio initiative.

I believe that our Lake Wylie Pilot Study and its extension into other counties in South and North Carolina will provide a sound basis for making these extensions. We have no time to waste in making this case.

Either manmade or natural EMP poses an existential threat to all Americans, as I have written repeatedly over the past five years. Click here for over 200 previous messages on EMP and what we should be doing to deal with this existential threat.

President Trump has acknowledged the existential EMP threat and established leadership within the White House National Security Council, intended to produce a “whole of government” response to counter the threat. That’s the good news. But now it is time to check up on the progress of his initiative, which called for several deliverables by now.

I urge Senator Johnson to look into this status, because of his concerns about the lethargic response to dealing with this long recognized existential threat.

In particular, as noted last week, I urge him to check up on whether the Executive Branch “powers that be” are meeting the due dates identified in the President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order.

Such delays 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 future White House/National Security Council initiatives should most definitely take into account.

Senator Johnson should look into whether the current plan of the National Security Council staff, now being reduced and reorganized, is taking those concerns into account. And I again urge him to consider 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.

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.

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.

Again, I’ll close 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!!!!” And I urge him to check up on what is being done by the bureaucracy in allegedly responding to President Trump’s March 26, 2019 Executive Order.

The time for action is now!

Bottom Lines.

The Lake Wylie Pilot Study is demonstrating how to accomplish a viable assessment and to 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!

Some “Due Dates” have already been passed. Were they met?

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.

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