March 17, 2020—COVID-19: Grid Vulnerabilities?

The source of COVID-19, without exaggeration, was in Wuhan, China, justifying some to refer to it as the Wuhan or China coronavirus, notwithstanding claims of some that such a label is racist. Moreover, we should be wary of the rapid pace at which COVID-19 may expand in the United States and the possibilities of unanticipated consequences.

Don’t take my word for my above summary warning, do your own homework on this pending pandemic for which I am convinced we are unprepared. You can learn much from a little googling.

Click here for a January 29, 2020 CNN report that complained about false or misleading information being posted on-line; click here for CNN’s February 18, 2020 seemingly more authoritative summary of the origin and nature of the threat — both of which observed that it began in Wuhan, China; and click here for CNN’s March 5, 2020 report on the expanding threat as several states across the nation begin dealing with it — before President Trump endorsed a full court press last week — and finally, click here for a March 9, 2020 CNN Status report, just a week ago.

What a difference a few weeks can make! And click here for a perhaps little visited (but in my opinion knowledgeable) webpage that has for weeks consistently warned of this very dangerous COVID-19 threat to all we hold dear.

My point in this brief review is to observe that we are still awakening to a very serious threat, and that we need “outside-of-the-box” thinking about how to prepare for a still continuing possible series of threatening events — especially because it is apparent that we are not at all ready to deal with such contingencies.

What if others are prepared to exploit these conditions to do us harm? What are the weaknesses they could exploit — apart from the expanding illness among our citizens?

What about threats from Iran? Remember its Shia leaders’ great hatred for “The Great Satan” and the “The Little Satan” and their Shia supporters’ corresponding chants, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Thus, while there are potential friends among the Iranian people, Iran’s leaders are, by their own pronouncements, our mortal enemies. And they are allied with our longstanding enemies in China. And we are engaged in “economic warfare” with both.

While holding that thought, click here for Ilan Berman’s recent article that explains how “Iran’s illness comes from Asia.” He authoritatively notes that Johns Hopkins University has ranked Iran as third in the world in the number of reported coronavirus infections — including over, and possibly many, many more than, 10,000 Iranians. Click here for information on the Johns Hopkins report.

Ilan’s pertinent report recounts Iran’s linkage to China. He concludes that although the responsibility of Iran’s widening health crisis “lies squarely on the shoulders of the country’s ayatollahs who have horribly mismanaged the official response to the coronavirus to date,” it likely was a product from Iran’s partnership with China — “a partnership dangerous to their health.” And also to ours, I would add.

Click here for an informative complementary March 16, 2020 Frontpage Magazine article by Ari Lieberman that argues that Iran in on the brink — as a “Killer Pathogen Ravages the Country” and the “regime” seeks $5 billion in aid, even as it continues to propagate conspiracy theories and bankroll terrorist groups.

I worry that Iran’s dire current state, however problematic to the Ayatollahs and rooted with China’s origin of COVID-19, could also lead to their common interest with China’s leaders in causing serious problems for the United States … especially since China’s leaders have long pursued strategies for China to replace America as the dominant world power.

And given this situation, I believe we are entering a very trying time where a COVID-19 “lockdown” could be possible even here in America.

So . . . how could Iran — and China — cause us great harm in possibly unanticipated ways?

Well . . . as argued by many authors/articles, either or both Iran and China could execute major cyber-attacks on America — especially, to shut down our electric power grid in an effective nationwide attack.

Even when everything is on an even keel in peacetime, that threat could shut down the entire grid for an extended period of time. That could be disastrous if we were on a lockdown status to deal with the COVID-19 threat to our overall population!

Maintaining effective operations of our electric power grid would, perhaps will, then be challenging, even without conditions that Iran and/or China might pose.

Are we prepared for that threat? Hmmmmmm??? And what about Russia and its longstanding ties to China and Iran? Then there is North Korea and its longstanding ties to all three?

Lest you think contemplating that threat is so extreme as to be ignored, I would urge you to consider the wise adage, “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!”

And remember that “Hope is not a strategy!”

Moreover, a typical cyber-attack per se is not the worst case threat!

Just to make that point clear, remember that the Military Doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran includes electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks among their cyber-attack strategies — in my view, it is the most daunting Cyber Attack.

Click here for publications of the Congressional EMP Commission that authoritatively reference these conditions.

Regrettably, I have to warn that we are totally unprepared for such an EMP attack.

And we seem to be doing little to deal with that threat except to study it — even though President Trump’s March 19, 2019 Executive Order explicitly calls for a “whole of government” response to protect the electric power grid from such an EMP attack.

That Executive Order was strengthened and expanded by Senator Ron Johnson’s Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 — the NDAA (2020), signed into law by President Trump on December 20, 2019.

As best I can tell, we nevertheless are primarily studying the threat and how to protect the electric power grid from EMP effects — even though we learned how to do so decades ago. We should simply be employing those lessons-learned in protecting our most important military systems decades ago.

Lest you believe my perception is exaggerated, I encourage you to watch the full hearing last week when Department of Homeland Security (DHS) senior officials testified in the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee Hearing on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection & Innovation, intended to review the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request for the DHS Cybersecurity and Innovation Missions. Click here for the video and note that EMP was hardly mentioned in the entire hearing.

Indeed, when Rep Mark Walker (R-NC) noted that the Military Doctrines of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran include EMP attacks in their cyber-attack strategies and asked what DHS was doing to address this threat — the answer was, in effect, that it was working with the interagency process and, from my perspective, only studying the problem. Note that DHS is supposed to be leading these federal interagency efforts — and I believe this was the only reference to the EMP threat in this entire hearing.

More studies?????

Meanwhile, we have learned in our Lake Wylie Pilot Study with city and county officials that the cost for doing so is quite affordable — less than $100 per York County, SC citizen as a one-time cost to protect the York County Distribution Grid and about $10 a year per citizen to assure a continuing hardness assurance effort to maintain the Distribution Grid in that hardened configuration.

These costs are quite affordable, if the politicians will only deal with the obvious bureaucratic lethargy in Washington! But Washington seems interested only in studying the problem.

We should stop such studying that at best amounts to “reinventing the wheel.” ASAP, we should apply what we have long known how to do. To emphasize this point. I’ll again end by quoting Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), who Chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:

“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.”

Moreover, I urge him to look into what the Trump administration is actually doing while alleging to accomplish key directives of the NDAA(2020) that he was largely responsible for assigning, especially to the DHS.

And hopefully, Senator Johnson will also press DHS to understand the broader implications of being unprepared for COVID-19 as it is likely to spread throughout the United States. And we may not have much time to prepare!

Everyone is concerned about COVID-19 — as indeed we all should be.

Given the pace of the past expansion of the current coronavirus world-wide, America may be in for a rough ride, too.

Bottom Lines.

While everyone is properly hunkering down to maintain the safety of their families and all we hold dear, it is important that we not forget that the world remains a dangerous place, even while the COVID-19 is a global threat.

We should not forget that our adversaries can exploit these dangers, even while they themselves are under its threat.

Some may even be prepared to accept the consequences to take advantage of our apparent vulnerabilities, that may be growing.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst!

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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