July 14, 2020—On Washington’s Stumbling, Fumbling, Bumbling Response to the Existential EMP Threat!

The most terrifying words in the English Language are: “I’m here from the government, and I’m here to help!” ~ Ronald Reagan

My favorite President was certainly correct insofar as protecting our vitally important electric power grid against existential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threats is concerned.

One of the most recent illustrations of this reality was the June 20, 2020 White House publication of “Research and Development Needs for Improving Resilience to Electromagnetic Pulses,”

Click here for this report by the Electromagnetic Pulse Research and Development Assessment Interagency Working Group, Subcommittee on Resilience Science and Technology of the Committee on Homeland and National Security of the National Science and Technology Council — all within the Office of the President of the United States and published by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

This report reminds me of the observation of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman when reviewing the absurdities of an earlier era, “What … me worry?” Let me explain.

While considering this 13-page report, remember Donald Trump promised in his campaign he would deal with EMP, and as President has signed Executive Orders and Congress’ Acts directing the Federal Government to address this critically important — and I would argue urgent — matter. This most recent effort was initiated by his March 26, 2019 Executive Order calling for a report within a year — and reinforced by the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020 — the NDAA(2020) — that he signed into law on December 17, 2019.

To say this 13-page report is disappointing is a gross understatement.

After this “exhaustive study,” what was the astonishing conclusion from this report from the Office of the President?

DRUM ROLL, PLEASE!!!

Would you believe: “WE NEED MORE STUDIES!”

This implicit claim was packaged in pseudo requirements for addressing key issues “that can only be resolved through coordinated R&D activities” involving a bureaucratic interagency process that undoubtedly could go on into the indefinite future.

More studies????

By the way there is nothing specific about clearly needed testing of components of the existing grid. Or about numerous other initiatives also needed to assure the viability of the nation’s electric grid. It is as if we never learned decades ago how to protect our most important military systems against EMP effects.

Utter nonsense! We should be using those defense conservative methods to protect our most important critical civil infrastructure. And as we have demonstrated in our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, this approach is quite affordable.

We don’t need more studies of the technology and hardening methods. We just need to apply what we learned decades ago. We just need to assess critical civil infrastructure complexities to apply that known technology wisely.

To be generous, I suppose it was hard to get everything in such a short report. And they only had a year to study the issue — and it already took several extra months to produce this sophomoric 13-page report . . . from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, no less!

Is President Trump aware of how poorly his White House is responding to his 2016 campaign pledge, his December 18, 2017 National Security Strategy and his March 26, 2019 Executive Order that was intended to fulfill his campaign promise to address the existential threat of an EMP attack that is included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran?

Then there’s Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) — Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and primary advocate of the NDAA(2020) Amendment mentioned above. I wonder how he sees this initiative in the context of his comments over a year ago at the end of his February 17, 2019 hearing on the EMP threat:

“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.” ~ Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI)

I believe we can expect more deficient White House studies, unless the President again takes an interest in this important issue and demands better from the Executive Branch — and Congress. And I hope he can find Capitol Hill allies, e.g., Senators who chair the key committees with pertinent oversight responsibilities.

So, unlike Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine fame, the “powers that be” should worry about the current dysfunctional interagency process dealing with this existential threat to all we hold dear — and do something about it!

Moreover, this White House report is not the only less-than-excellent recent product from Washington’s interagency process.

I long ago noted the dysfunctional nature of the “powers that be” in Washington and the need for coherent leadership to protect our critical civil infrastructure against the existential EMP threat. Those warnings still seem pertinent.

Click here for my February 25, 2013 message over seven years ago, in which I poked fun at these dysfunctional arrangements by recalling the famous Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” comedy routine of yesteryear — click here. And click here for my June 24, 2014 message, 16 months later, again attempting a bit of humor in the title, “What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?”

But there was, and is, very little humor in recounting the federal government’s dysfunctionality — that is still so pervasive.

Recent positive developments only deal incompletely with this existential threat of EMP attacks on our electric power grid. For example, click here for my May 5, 2020 discussion of President Trump’s May 1, 2020 Executive Order 18920 on securing the Bulk Power system against cyberattack — an important positive initiative as far as it goes, but with notable shortcomings as again briefly repeated below.

Click here for the full Executive Order that focuses almost entirely on the operation of the “Bulk Power Grid,” which includes power plants and “transmission lines” that carry the electricity to “stepdown transformers” to reduce that voltage and transmit electricity to the Distribution Grid, which in turn delivers electricity to essentially all critical civil infrastructure.

Specifically, it directs the Secretary of Energy over the next year to lead a whole of government effort to counter foreign adversaries that “are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the U.S. bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life,” particularly from “malicious cyber activities, because a successful attack on our bulk-power system would present significant risks to our economy, human health and safety, and would render the United States less capable of acting in defense of itself or its allies.”

These and related conditions fully justify President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency with respect to the threat to the United States bulk-power system.” Thus, he again demonstrated his clear commitment to protect the electric grid, as he promised in his campaign; included in his December 18, 2017 National Security Strategy and in his March 26, 2019 Executive Order; and on December 20, 2019 demonstrated when he signed the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act — NDAA(2020), also showing congressional support for protecting the electric power grid against existential threats.

However, I have two major concerns in this recent Executive Order, as discussed in detail in my May 5, 2020 message linked above. I worry that:

There was no mention of the existential threat posed by man-made or natural electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which the Congressional EMP Commission reported poses the most catastrophic cyber attack strategy, which is why such an attack strategy is included in the military doctrine of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran; and
The focus is almost entirely on a top-down directed (from Washington down), but not to support local level operations of the Distribution Grid that composes about 90-percent of the overall grid and about 70-percent of the cost of the combined Transmission and Distribution lines. See the figure below.

In this figure that I have used many times in briefings and previous messages, the critical line between the Bulk Power Grid and the Distribution Grid is the “substation step-down transformer” listed here as within the “green” Distribution Grid. In our Lake Wylie Pilot Study, multiple such substation step-down transformers are owned and maintained by the municipal and co-op companies that provide electricity to essentially all Rock Hill/York County citizens and their supporting industry, businesses, hospitals, etc.

BOTTOM LINE: FIXING THE BULK POWER GRID WITHOUT FIXING THE DISTRIBUTION GRID DOES NOT ASSURE ELECTRICITY GETS TO U.S. CITIZENS AND THEIR CRITICAL SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTUE.

Furthermore, it appears to me that this Executive Order presents ambiguities that can delay further our efforts to demonstrate that we can affordably harden the Distribution Grid by employing the same methods used to protect our most important military systems (as already demonstrated by our Lake Wylie Pilot Study).

Click here for my June 19, 2020 discussion of these concerns, including that in South Carolina, 40 such municipal and co-op electric companies own and operate “local distribution grid” components (not covered by the May 1, 2020 Executive Order) in addition to three larger companies that own and operate the bulk power grid (and some distribution grid components) — Duke, Dominion and Santee-Cooper — serving SC citizens living in a complex “crazy quilt” of 46 counties. And note that there are 3000-4000 such companies across the nation — I haven’t been able to get an authoritative count.

Based on our joint effort with our Duke Power partners, I believe we must address how best to protect the overall grid from the “bottom-up” — and especially the “step-down” Distribution Grid transformers owned by the Rock Hill Municipal and York Electric co-op companies — not Duke Energy (which owns and operates three power plants on Lake Wylie, their associated Transmission lines that link to its corporate headquarters in neighboring Charlotte, NC and a small portion of the York County Distribution Grid).

Note: Duke Energy gave the humongous transformer pictured below, worth well over a million dollars, to Clemson University and the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) — they shipped it to North Charleston where it has sat idle and deteriorating for over two years for lack of less than a million dollars from the Department of Energy (DOE) to ship it up the Savannah River to SRNL for testing in a prepared location.

This is the same DOE that is assigned to manage President Trump’s May 1, 2020 Executive Order — a fact that does not encourage confidence that DOE is serious about actually protecting the grid, especially given that the nation has no full-scale EMP testing data on such large transformers that are critically important to the viability of the grid.

The DOE must change its ways if it is to play an effective role in the interagency processes. But past performance does not encourage confidence that will be the case. Consider that Dr. William R. Graham, after chairing the Congressional EMP Commission for 17 years and as an expert on EMP matters for over a half century, beginning when we first appreciated the importance of protecting our most important military systems, wrote on April 20, 2018 to then Secretary of Energy Rick Perry that:

Nuclear EMP is the ultimate cyber weapon in the military doctrines and plans of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran for Combined Arms Cyber Warfare that they see as a decisive new Revolution in Military Affairs.
Protecting the grid from the worst threat — nuclear EMP attack — can also mitigate lesser threats, including from natural EMP from solar storms, non-nuclear EMP from radiofrequency weapons, cyber-attacks, physical sabotage and severe weather.
State electric grids can be “islanded” by installation of surge arrestors, blocking devices, Faraday cages, and other devices to protect individual states, even though they may be part of a larger regional electric grid, from a prolonged catastrophic blackout. For example, Texas State Senator Bob Hall has introduced legislation to harden the Texas Electric Grid.
The Commission is profoundly concerned that the 2014 Obama administration intelligence community assessment of nuclear EMP is profoundly erroneous, and perhaps the worst ever produced on EMP, and that has been used to thwart efforts to protect the nation against nuclear EMP by dismissing the threat, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (A major concern is that this condition still exists.)
The Commission is very concerned over misleading and erroneous studies by the North American Electric Reliability Cooperation (NERC) and others that grossly underestimate the natural EMP threat from solar storms, and dangerously, have become the basis for grossly inadequate standards for EMP/GMD protection approved by the Obama administration’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
The Commission is also concerned over misleading and erroneous studies recently completed by industry’s Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in cooperation with Obama administration holdovers in the Department of Energy (DOE), that grossly underestimate the nuclear EMP threat.

Click here for Dr. Graham’s complete letter and sobering observations that provide key information for those charged with assessing and responding to the current vulnerabilities in the management and execution of efforts to provide a viable electric power grid. Note:

Dr. Graham never received any response from Energy Secretary Perry, or senior DOE staff, regarding his succinctly stated concerns. Nor from other alleged responsible government officials that he also informed of such critically important facts, largely being ignored. And as best I can determine his concerns still describe the current situation. Moreover, the EMP Commission was abolished by actions of the Congress in 2018, and its reports were only partially distributed by the governmental “powers that be.”

This is not a pretty picture — and it leads me again to the conclusion that if ever the American people are to be protected from existential threats from EMP attacks on our electric power grid, the solution must come from the bottom up.

Click here for my May 9, 2017 message following my May 4, 2017 testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. As far as I can tell, little substantive has changed since then, when Chairlady Lisa Murkowski agreed with me by noting at the conclusion that

“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)

In any case, President Trump’s May 1, 2020 Executive Order, if not amended, leaves out the citizens of York County — and could plausibly delay initiatives to address the EMP threat from the bottom-up, as has been our (especially most importantly Duke Energy and Rock Hill/York County engineers) objective for five years.

Our Lake Wylie Pilot Study experience likely indicates what to expect throughout South and North Carolina and the rest of the nation.

Click here for my most recent detailed discussion of that effort and why we are confident of a very affordable way to harden the critical elements of the York County Demonstration Grid. In this context, if the DOE is to lead effectively the effort to execute President Trump’s May 1, 2020 Executive Order, its representatives should rectify such past failed stewardship — and assure sufficient funds for testing as a comprehensive national effort to better evaluate and improve all key electric power grid components.

Other concerns are associated with assuring the viability of the community of critical operators/operations that essential to the viability of the grid. Numerous small companies could undoubtedly be employed in protecting and sustaining the complex grid that consists of 3000-4000 municipal and cooperative electric companies that own, maintain and manage grid operations. It is a top priority engineering and management problem.

I hope to be proven wrong and that we shall soon see much improved, responsible and informed interagency activity in Washington — but doubt that I will be.

So, I urge that the nation’s Governors and Adjutants General inform themselves on this important threat that can be affordably rectified and join in an appropriate “bottom-up” approach to do so—with major participation by the National Guard. More to come . . .

Bottom Lines

Once again, I’ll close by quoting Senator Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:

“[W]e 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.”

Indeed! Recent products of the interagency process have failed to demonstrate any urgency in addressing this existential threat to all we hold dear, and there is little hope for improvement in the near future.

We should validate our Lake Wylie Pilot Study and join forces with others in South and North Carolina — and at local and state levels across the nation, hopefully with Senator Johnson’s help.

Perhaps he again might propose an appropriate amendment to advance that cause in the NDAA(2021) now under consideration?

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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