EMP Nutzies Attack

The Washington Independent reports that former Governor Mike Huckabee is now headlining the upcoming "EMP Conference" that the right-wing wack-jobs defense analysts are promoting. It's a sad commentary about a guy who actually had a shot at the Republican nomination for president. It's clear he's given up on showing any potential credibility on national security issues. Former House Leader Newt Gingrich has already reported for duty at the carnival. Michael Crowley at The New Republic explains the background to this issue in this June article.

The EMP commission actually had a point. There is a scientific basis for fears about widespread electric outages, and there is evidence that other countries, possibly including Iran, have studied the technique. "EMP is real," agrees Joe Cirincione, a nuclear weapons expert who now runs a pro-disarmament think tank, the Ploughshares Fund. But, as Cirincione notes, few analysts take the threat very seriously. The odds that Iran or North Korea would prefer a technologically untested Rube Goldberg scheme to merely nuking us seem slim. And any terrorist group able to execute such a plan was probably capable enough to get us one way or another anyhow.

Those realities argue overwhelmingly for prudent but unsexy infrastructure protections, not preemptive attacks or advanced technology. "It's horror theater," says Cirincione, "trying to scare Americans into doing something which a rational analysis would stop them from doing." Charles Ferguson, a nuclear engineer at the Council on Foreign Relations, agrees. "[T]here are some important things we can be doing that won't cost much, but that can serve as a vital backup," he says. For instance, Ferguson has advised the New York City Fire Department to keep some backup communications equipment and extra ignition switches for its trucks in electromagnetic pulse-resistant steel cages.

The hawkish right, however, has much bigger things in mind. Although Bartlett himself seems to lack a sub-rosa strategic agenda, he has found common cause among national-security conservatives, about whom the same can't be said. Take, for instance, the spin of Frank Gaffney, perhaps the right's main missile-defense zealot: "[T]he United States must now make a redoubled effort to deploy effective, comprehensive defenses against ballistic missiles that might be used for EMP and other attacks," Gaffney wrote in a 2006 National Review article. Republican Senator Jon Kyl, a key missile-defense champion on Capitol Hill, has held hearings and published a Washington Post op-ed on the EMP threat. The like-minded Wall Street Journal opinion pages have repeatedly flogged the EMP commission's findings. "The only solution to this [EMP] problem," Brian T. Kennedy of the Claremont Institute wrote in an op-ed in the pages last November, "is a robust, multilayered missile-defense system."

Let's be clear about the EMP Nutzies. They have no interest in hardening critical infrastructure or developing redundant capabilities in our electronics industry. It's about rationalizing the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in a national missile defense system against a threat that they've imagined in their minds. It's pretty clear, which makes this "national conference" even more of a joke. And any national Republican politician who joins the circus deserves to be mocked as a phony and a fraud.

Comments

[Andy]

I'm curious about your thoughts on EMP. Is your position that EMP itself (technically) isn't much of a threat, or is it that a scenario that would lead to use of EMP (high altitude nuclear air burst) isn't much of a threat, or both?

My view is that, as a phenomenon, EMP is definitely a threat, but scenarios where it would be used are not likely.

[J.]

I agree with you. There is no question that EMP is a nuclear weapons effect that should be considered by military forces. I believe there are systems that can generate an EMP to a limited degree and that can damage electronics equipment. I do not believe that any current or future adversary would seriously consider a high-altitude EMP attack on the United States for the purposes of "shutting down" the country's communications infrastructure, or that we would be hurled back into the stone age as a result. I don't think any basic review of an adversary's motives and intentions would lead one to that conclusion as a rational outcome.

It makes lots of sense to 1) harden military systems and military comms from EMP effects and 2) increase civilian electronic infrastructure's system resiliency from EMP and natural disasters/man-caused accidents. We need to ensure that future conflicts involving nuclear weapons do not shut down operational capabilities. We ought to acknowledge the vulnerability and fragility of civilian comms, because it's an expensive, national-level public concern. Neither one of those goals, however, requires a national missile defense program.

[Ray]

I don't knowq the effects that the EMP could have on human bodies. I had a triple bypass heart operation 5 years ago and am very fit; however, the pins "they" left in the bones in the chest sound off when going through customs at airports (I kid you not). Causes some irritation of feelings on my part since I put everything else metallic through the system of course. I am not compelled to swing around to face North like a compass needle, but joking aside, I wonder the possible effects if any of EMP on tissue.

[Andy]

Ok, just making sure.

Ray, my wife is a nuclear engineer who has done some work on EMP. I'll ask here and see what she says.

[Ray]

Thanks, Andy.

[Andy]

Ray,

Here's what my wife sent me:

The biggest problem is when we have long conducting lines that will bring in a spike of power that the terminators or receiving ends are not equipped to handle and they overheat or cause something else to overheat and break. A piece of metal (like a pin in a shoulder or something) in your body isn't a big deal because its purpose isn't electrical in nature. A pacemaker on the other hand COULD be very sensitive, because I don't know how it would respond to the long EM pulse or even a single short pulse. Unfortunately, analytical models of EMP "effects" on a system predict correctly (compared to an actual test at an EMP test facility) about 50% of the time. And the magnitudes are usually about 30% off (+ or -) and usually there is "new phenomena" that has never been observed/predicted before. So models really aren't enough, the only way to be sure is to actually test something and this hasn't been tested to my knowledge.

[Ray]

Thank you, Andy and Mrs Andy.

Interesting.
I think I wanted to find out how far these tests had gone; how much the general population would be effected. You both have indicated this is still largely unknown.
Mind you, I ask myself why anyone would bother to just knock-out communications and not go the whole way by using the usual nukes. What would be the point. What is the scenario afterwards, if there is widespread failure in communications after EMP...Others have covered that point, above.

Still, I'm no analyst, or strategist, as you've gathered. I wonder if there'll be a test, like the old atom bomb days.
Thanks again.

[jacob]

Your argument is not a valid claim, because even if there are people who wish to capitalize from this threat, it may still be the case that we should take it seriously.

It's like arguing against welfare because the people who support it wish to be viewed as compassionate by their constituency. No, that's not an argument about whether or not we should fully fund welfare.