[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE EMP THREAT: THE STATE OF PREPAREDNESS AGAINST THE THREAT OF AN
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) EVENT
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE INTERIOR
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 13, 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-42
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
96-952 PDF WASHINGTON : 2015
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Columbia
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TED LIEU, California
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
KEN BUCK, Colorado STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
MARK WALKER, North Carolina MARK DeSAULNIER, California
ROD BLUM, Iowa BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
JODY B. HICE, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
WILL HURD, Texas
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
Sean McLaughlin, Staff Director
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Andrew R. Arthur, National Security Subcommittee Staff Director
William McGrath, Interior Subcommittee Staff Director
Sharon Casey, Deputy Chief Clerk
Subcommittee on National Security
RON DESANTIS, Florida, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts,
JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee Ranking Member
JODY B. HICE, Georgia ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma, Vice Chair BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
WILL HUR, Texas TED LIEU, California
Subcommittee on the Interior
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming, Chairman
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan,
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas Ranking Member
KEN BUCK, Colorado, Vice chair MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama JIM COOPER, Tennessee
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 13, 2015..................................... 1
WITNESSES
Mr. George Baker, Professor Emeritus, James Madison University,
CEO of Baycor
Oral Statement............................................... 5
Written Statement............................................ 8
Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Executive Director, Task Force on National
and Homeland Security
Oral Statement............................................... 21
Written Statement............................................ 23
Mr. Mike Caruso, Director of Government and Specialty Business
Development ETS-Lindgren
Oral Statement............................................... 49
Written Statement............................................ 51
APPENDIX
Walpole Fire Department Research Paper 2012...................... 70
Submission of William Graham, Commission to Assess Threat to U.S.
From EMP Attack................................................ 71
Submission of William Radasky, Metatech Corporation.............. 75
Submission of Thomas Popik, Resilient Societies.................. 80
Opening Statement from Interior Ranking Member Brenda Lawrence... 85
Opening Statement from Congressman Trent Franks.................. 87
THE EMP THREAT: THE STATE OF PREPAREDNESS AGAINST THE THREAT OF AN
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) EVENT
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Wednesday, May 13, 2015
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Joint with
Subcommittee on the Interior,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 2:20 p.m., in
Room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Ron DeSantis
[chairman of the subcommittee on National Security] presiding.
Present for Subcommittee on National Security:
Representatives DeSantis, Duncan, Hice, Russell, Lynch, Lieu,
and Kelly.
Present for Subcommittee on the Interior: Representatives
Lummis, Gosar, Buck, Palmer, and Lawrence.
Mr. DeSantis. The Subcommittees on National Security and
Interior will come to order. Without objection, the chair is
authorized to declare a recess at any time.
The state of preparedness against the threat of an
electromagnetic pulse is the subject of today's hearing. An
electromagnetic pulse could be created through an attack from a
missile, nuclear weapon, radio frequency weapon, or geomagnetic
storm caused by the sun. Fallout from an EMP event, either man-
made or natural, could be extremely significant ranging from
the loss of electrical power for months, which would deplete
energy sources of power such as emergency batteries and backup
generators have cascading consequences for supplying basic
necessities such as food and water, and result in loss of life.
The electrical grid is necessary to support critical
infrastructure, supply and distribution of food, water, and
fuel, communications, transportation, financial transactions
and emergency and government services. Significant damage to
the electrical grid during an EMP event would quickly and
significantly degrade the supply of these basic necessities.
EMPs can also be caused by solar storms, also referred to
as geomagnetic disturbances, which are basically an everyday
occurrence, they just doesn't always hit the Earth. Two
significant storms that did enter the earth's atmosphere
occurred in 1859 and 1921, respectively. Given the limited use
of electricity in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, the
impact on society was relatively minimal.
Today however, society depends heavily on a variety of
technologies that are vulnerable to the effects of intense
solar storms. Scientists predict that these storms impact the
Earth once every 100 to 150 years. So it's not a question of
if, but a question of when.
The occurrence today on an event like the 1921 storm could
result in large scale and prolonged blackouts affecting more
than 100 million people. The National Academy of Sciences
estimates the cost of damage from the most extreme solar
weather at $1 to $2 trillion with a recovery time of 4 to 10
years. The cost from even short-term blackouts are significant.
In July of 1977, a blackout in New York that lasted only
one day resulted in widespread looting and the breakdown of law
through many New York neighborhoods. The blackout cost
approximately $346 million and nearly 3,000 people were
arrested during a 26-hour period. In August of 2003, more than
200 power plants shut down as a result of the electricity cut
off caused by cascading failure. The blackout affected Ohio,
New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan and parts of Canada.
Although relatively short in duration, the blackout's economic
cost was between $7 billion and $10 billion due to food
spoilage, lost production, overtime wages and other related
costs.
To look at this threat, Congress has created two EMP
commissions which reported their findings in 2004 and 2008.
Based in large part on their recommendations, a bill has been
introduced in every Congress since 2009 to strengthen
protection of the electrical grid by mitigating the effects of
an EMP. Some bills have passed the House but no bills have yet
become law.
Congress is not alone in its assessment of the EMP threat.
State governments, such as in New York and Massachusetts have
taken action themselves to protect portions of the electrical
grid located within their respective States. Even some
individual utilities have correctly assessed their
vulnerability to EMP and hardened a few of their critical
electrical control centers.
The Department of Defense recently decided to move the
North American Aerospace Defense Command, NORAD back inside
Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado because the mountain is EMP
hardened and would allow the military to sustain communications
and homeland defense operations despite an EMP event.
One of our witnesses here today, Dr. Peter Pry, wrote in
The Wall Street Journal earlier this month about the military's
decision and rightly surmised, ``The Pentagon was wise to move
NORAD back into Cheyenne Mountain, but how are the American
people to survive?'' The Department of Homeland Security, the
Federal agency responsible for protecting the American
citizens, is not doing enough to lead an interagency effort to
mitigate the impact of an EMP event, leaving vast populations
of Americans vulnerable to the effects of an EMP.
Lastly, the draft executive order by the National Space
Weather Strategy was released for comment earlier this month by
the White House Office of Science and Technology Council. This
order is necessary and clearly within the constitutional
mandate to provide for the common defense, but it is an outline
of goals, not what is needed. A strategy with priorities and a
blueprint for how to reliably mitigate adverse solar weather.
It is essential that state and national leaders have
adequate plans at hand to determine how best to respond to EMP
threats as they arrive. As such, it is critical that a scenario
focused on the EMP threat be included in national planning
scenarios by the Department of Homeland Security. This is
precisely the directive included in the Critical Infrastructure
Protection Act sponsored by my good friend, Congressman Trent
Franks, who will be here with us today later to discuss the
importance of the EMP issue. His bill would require DHS to take
the lead for researching for how to best prepare and protect
the American citizens from the threat of an EMP event.
Trent is also the leading sponsor on legislation such as
the Secure High-Voltage Infrastructure for Electricity from
Lethal Damage Act, the SHIELD Act, which again, seeks to
strengthen America's hand against an EMP attack.
I look forward to hearing Trent's thoughts on this issue
when he's able to come as well as our other witnesses because
this is an important issue and there are things our government
can do to address it right now. And with that, I recognize the
ranking member, the gentleman from Massachusetts for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank you
and also Chairwoman Lummis for holding the hearing, this
hearing to examine our state of preparedness against the threat
of a Electromagnetic Pulse Event, also known as a EMP.
As well, I would like to thank our colleague, Mr. Franks of
Arizona, who will, as you say, join us shortly and also, our
other witnesses on the panel today for helping us with our
work.
As set forth in President Obama's 2015 national security
strategy, a comprehensive national security agenda must
prioritize efforts to address the top strategic risk to the
U.S. interests, including the possibility of a catastrophic
attack on U.S. critical infrastructure.
Similarly, the strategic plan developed by the Department
of Homeland Security provides that we must enhance security for
our Nation's critical infrastructure against the threat of a
terrorist attack by identifying key vulnerabilities and
addressing them through the implementation of appropriate
technology.
In support of our shared responsibility to protect America
against attack, we must make every effort to examine the extent
of potential threats such as an electromagnetic pulse event to
our homeland security. Now, this oversight is even more
critical, given that the current budgetary climate requires
Congress to make very difficult choices in determining Federal
agency spending.
Not only is the Federal Government still operating under
sequestration, but unfortunately, Congress recently passed a
budget blueprint that contemplates cutting nondefense spending,
including our Homeland Security budget that could be helpful on
this issue by nearly $500 billion below sequestration level
spending caps.
While government officials, scientists and other experts
may disagree on the imminence of Electromagnetic Pulse event,
the EMP Commission established by Congress in 2001 to assess
the threat of an EMP attack reported that our national electric
grid and other U.S. Critical infrastructure could be
significantly disrupted by a sudden and high-intensity energy
field burst. Now as the chairman noted, this could be large in
scale and produced by nuclear explosion, it could also be
created through the use of batteries, reactive chemicals and
other nonnuclear devices, or be the product of a natural
magnetic storm.
According to the Commission's 2008 report, ``Because of the
ubiquitous dependence of U.S. Society on electrical power
systems, its vulnerability to an EMP attack, coupled with the
EMP's particular damage mechanisms creates the possibility of a
long-term catastrophic consequence.'' A 2012 research paper
prepared by a Fire Department in my congressional district--and
I'd like to ask unanimous consent to submit the report by
Deputy Chief Michael K. Laracy, Sr., from the wonderful town of
Walpole, Massachusetts, he's the deputy fire chief there. The
title is ``Potential Impacts of Electromagnetic Pulse Attacks
on Fire and EMS Delivery Services for the Walpole Fire
Department.''
Mr. DeSantis. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you. In response to such concerns, the
House passed H.R. 3410, the Critical Infrastructure Protection
Act, by a voice vote at the end of last year. This bill
introduced by our friend, Mr. Franks from Arizona, sought to
require the Department of Homeland Security to include the EMP
threat in its national planning scenario.
While the bill did not pass the Senate, DHS has indicated
that the threat of an EMP attack is very much on its radar
during recent congressional testimony. Ms. Suzanne Spaulding,
the Under Secretary for the National Protection and Programs,
indicated that the DHS is currently partnering with private
sector entities in the electronic sector to determine how best
to address the EMP threat. So I look forward to discussing the
issue with our witnesses in order to examine what additional
steps we might take in order to better safeguard our national
electric grid and other critical infrastructure. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. DeSantis. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts. I
ask unanimous consent that enter into the record a letter from
Dr. William Graham who is chairman of the 2008 EMP Commission,
a letter from Dr. William Radasky, president of Metatech
Corporation and leading EMP expert for more than 50 years and a
letter, fax sheet and cost estimate model from Thomas Popik,
chairman of the Foundation for Resilient Societies. Without
objection so ordered.
Mr. DeSantis. I now recognize the chairwoman of the Natural
Resources Subcommittee, Mrs. Lummis, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lummis. Thank you, Chairman DeSantis for spearheading
this hearing. And I also want to thank ranking member, Ranking
Member Lynch, thanks for your participation and involvement in
this hearing to examine the important issue of electrical grid
preparedness in the event of an electromagnetic pulse caused by
an attack or a solar storm hitting the Earth.
The threat to the grid infrastructure is real and the
potential for devastating impacts needs to be examined. Solar
flares have resulted in numerous incidents; the Carrington
event of 1859, which at the time, only affected telegraph
systems. To be honest, I don't remember the Carrington event
personally, I was a mere child at the time. That was a little
joke. But I do remember the 1989 geomagnetic storm that
disrupted radio signals and satellite damage and knocked out
the power grid in Quebec. The grid is a critical piece of
national infrastructure that contributes to the most basic
daily needs of Americans, as well as business and government.
Given the threat presented to this critical infrastructure,
I agree with Chairman DeSantis that the Federal Government
needs to take the EMP threat seriously by including it in DHS
national planning scenario. That's why I support Congressman
Trent Franks' Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. This
important bill takes a step forward towards protecting our grid
against an EMP threat. I note that it passed the House last
Congress, and I appreciate all the hard work that Congressman
Trent Franks has done on this issue.
The Federal Government needs to follow the lead of State-
based utilities and harden the grid against an EMP threat. As
we will hear today, the entirety of the Nation's grid is not
prepared to deal with a variety of threats. It is important
that the Federal Government realize this and takes the
necessary steps to protect the grid. I welcome the testimony of
our witnesses today. I look forward to hearing more about what
our country needs to do to protect against the threats of EMPs.
Mr. Chairman, thank you, I yield back.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentlelady yields back. We will now
recognize our panel of witnesses. I'm pleased to welcome Dr.
George Baker, Professor Emeritus at James Madison University
and CEO of BAYCOR; Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of
the Task Force on National and Homeland Security; and Mr. Mike
Caruso, Director of Government and Specialty Business
Development at ETS-Lindgren. Welcome all.
Pursuant to committee rules, witnesses will be sworn in
before they testify. So if you guys can rise an raise your
right-hand side.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you
are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the
affirmative. Thank you and please be seated.
In order to allow time for discussion, please limit your
testimony to 5 minutes and you'll see the blinking lights in
front of you. When it hits red, that's when you've hit 5
minutes. Your entire written statement will be made a part of
the record. And with that, Dr. Baker, you are up for 5 minutes.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF GEORGE BAKER
Mr. Baker. My thanks to Chairman DeSantis and Chairman
Lummis, ranking members and committees members for this
opportunity to share my concerns about EMP. My name is George
Baker, and I've spent most of my professional career protecting
the U.S. military from EMP. At the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency, I manage the development of the military standards used
to protect the Department of Defense systems. As a retired
professor, James Madison University and DOD consultant, I now
perform EMP vulnerability assessments of key government
facilities.
The congressional EMP Commission on which I served as
principal staff made a compelling case for protecting critical
infrastructure against nuclear EMP and solar storm geomagnetic
disturbances, I will also refer to that as GMD. Among potential
disasters, EMP and GMD are particularly challenging because the
effects can be continental in scale. EMP and GMD disasters are
preventable, that's my main point today, they are preventable.
We have the engineering, know-how and tools, what is missing is
resolve.
I see three reasons why we are not making progress at
present on these threats and I'll address these in the rest of
my talk. The first is there are many misconceptions about EMP
and GMD threats. I'll look at four of those. The first
misconception is that only major nuclear powers, such as Russia
and China with high-yield thermonuclear devices could
effectively execute an EMP attack. In fact, low yield devices
obtained by emerging nuclear powers such as North Korea and
Iran can produce catastrophic EMP effects.
Misconception two, that a nuclear EMP attack would burn out
every exposed electronic system. In fact, based on government
tests, we know that smaller self-contained, self-powered
systems such as vehicles, handheld radios, disconnected
portable generators are often not affected.
Misconception three, EMP effects on critical infrastructure
will be limited to nonsevere, nuisance-type affects. In fact,
wide area failure of just a few systems, could cause cascading
infrastructure collapse, in highly interconnected networks. One
example is the 2003 electric blackout of the northeast was
precipitated by a single high-voltage line touching a tree, and
then proceeded to cascade to the entire northeast.
So, when you extend this concept to a wide area of failures
and infrastructure networks, including the Internet, you can
see that EMP is an existential threat that we must take very
seriously.
Fourth and final misconception I'll address, that is, to
protect all other infrastructure against EMP would cost a large
fraction of the U.S. GNP. In fact, protecting the electric grid
and communication networks alone would provide substantial
benefit and be cost effective.
A recent cost study by the Foundation for Resilient Society
shows that significant EMP protection could be achieved for an
investment in the range of $10 to $30 billion. The second
reason we aren't making progress is the stakeholders are in a
state of denial. Concerned about cost makes stakeholders, the
government and the private sector reluctant to admit EMP
vulnerabilities. Actions to date have been limited and
ineffective. An example is the joint effort of the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, that is, FERC, and the North
American Electric Reliability Corporation, that is NERC, to set
reliability standards for wide area electromagnetic impacts on
the electric grid.
The NERC-developed and FERC-approved standards that we have
exclude nuclear EMP, despite the opportunity to protect against
both GMD and EMP using the same equipment. NERC standards rely
on operational procedures that require no physical protection
of the electric grid. The largest measured storms are a factor
of 10 higher than their benchmark for protection. A sceptic
might suspect that NERC's main objective was to avert liability
rather than to protect the American public.
The third reason we aren't making progress is there is no
one in charge. There's no single point of responsibility to
develop an implement a national protection plan. When I ask
NERC officials about EMP protection, they informed me we don't
do EMP, that's DOD's responsibility. The Department of Defense
tells me, EMP protection for civilian infrastructure is DHS's
responsibility. And then when I talk to DHS, I get answers that
the protection should be done by the Department of Energy,
since they are the infrastructure's sector-specific agency. So
we have EMP and GMD protection as finger-pointing exercises at
present.
In closing, I have the following recommendation for future
progress, the DOD experience with EMP protection has given us
the necessary engineering tools, but what we need is the help
of your committee to get government to act. First, we need a
designated executive authority. The DHS and DOD both are likely
candidates. The first order of business would be a national
EMP, GMD protection plan and a set of planning scenarios.
Second, let us budget for a national program to check the
electric grid, including essential supporting infrastructures
used for fuel supply and communication. And third, Congress
should recognize that the regulatory apparatus conceived in the
Energy Policy Act of 2005 is not working. Establishing a new
independent commission, solely focused on electric grid
reliability would be very helpful, a commission with the power
to issue and enforce regulations on its own similar to the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The present FERC/NERC arrangement has proved ineffective.
Thank you for this opportunity to present my concerns and
recommendations, which are more fully explained in my written
testimony and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baker follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. DeSantis. Thank you, Dr. Baker.
The chair now recognizes Dr. Pry for 5 minutes, you are up.
STATEMENT OF PETER VINCENT PRY
Mr. Pry. Thank you for the opportunity to address the
subcommittees today. First, what I think we must understand
about the threat is that it is not merely theoretical, it is a
real threat. In the military doctrines of Russia, China, North
Korea and Iran, they plan to make a nuclear EMP attack against
the United States. We have seen North Korea and Iran exercise
this, including by launching ballistic missiles off of a
freighter at sea, which would enable the possibility of an
anonymous EMP attack. During the nuclear crisis we had with
North Korea in 2013, it was the worst nuclear crisis we ever
had with Kim Jong Un was threatening to make nuclear missile
strikes against the United States in the aftermath of their
third illegal nuclear test.
In the midst of that crisis North Korea orbited a satellite
over the south pole that passed over the territory of the
United States on the optimum trajectory and altitude to both
evade our national missile defenses, and, had that been a
nuclear warhead, to place an EMP field over all 48 contiguous
United States that would have had catastrophic consequences.
That was the KSM 3 satellite; that satellite stills passes over
us, it's sill in orbit and passes over us with regularity.
Another thing that must be understood is that EMP is part
of a--a larger part of their military doctrine that they
consider a revolution in military affairs. That, basically, is
a combined arms operation with cyber attacks, physical
sabotage, nonnuclear EMP weapons, and nuclear EMP weapons is
the most decisive instrument all used together and coordinated
in a formula new Blitzkrieg, except one that's waged in
cyberspace to basically bring a civilization down to its knees
so that a failed state like an Iran or North Korea could
theoretically defeat and destroy a highly advanced society like
our own.
This would be unprecedented in history where you would have
a situation where a state like Iran or North Korea or even a
sub national actor like a terrorist group if they could get
hold of that one nuclear bomb and do it in combination with
cyber attacks and physical sabotage to crash our critical
infrastructures, especially the electric grid and basically
destroy our civilization. But they write about it; they
exercise it; they are serious about it. And we actually see
this being practiced in real life in some countries back in
June of last year while ISIS was sweeping over northern Iraq,
al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula blacked out the entire
electric grid in the state of Yemen, put 18 cities and 24
million people into the dark. That is the first time in history
that a terrorist group has blacked out a whole country. And it
so destabilized Yemen that look what happened to them. They
have gone from being a U.S. ally, so now we have lost one of
our most important allies in the Middle East already to this
kind of an attack.
This year, in January 25 of this year, a terrorist group
blacked out 80 percent of the grid in Turkey. We don't know
what they are up to in doing that--excuse me, in Pakistan, but
Pakistan is a nuclear weapons State. So the idea that 80
percent of the grid could be blocked out in Pakistan for
purposes unknown is extremely disturbing.
Is this a precursor to try to get their hands on nuclear
weapons in Pakistan? About a week before the Washington
blackout happened, Turkey was put--80 percent of Turkey was put
into blackout by a cyber attack by Iran. These were not EMP
attacks, but they are experiments with parts of this doctrine
that they have that would combine all these things and we have
seen in the case of North Korea and Iran experiments with the
nuclear EMP option as well.
Now, so the threat is real. As George Baker has testified,
however, there is really no excuse for us to be vulnerable to
this. We know how to fix the problem, and one of the things the
EMP Commission recommended was, if you can protect against the
worst threat, which is the nuclear EMP attack, if you can
protect against that, it will mitigate all the others: Cyber
attacks, physical sabotage, nonnuclear EMP weapons and GMD as
well. So we know how to fix the problem.
What to do? I endorse everything that Dr. Baker said. We
need to pass the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. The
importance of having a national planning scenario focused on
EMP cannot be understated.
Right now, despite what DHS may be telling you, if it is
not in the national planning scenarios, the threat doesn't
exist for State and local emergency planners, or for Federal
emergency planners, too. People who want do something about
this threat at the State level when they apply for funding, for
example, from DHS, can't get it because EMP is not among the
national planning scenarios. So that would put it on the radar
screen for Federal, State and local emergency planners and
would be an enormous step forward toward solving the problem.
Next, we need to bring back the congressional EMP
Commission, which is actually under consideration right now in
the Defense Authorization bill being negotiated with the
Senate. The greatest progress we made in this country was when
the EMP Commission was around and, you know, with the absence
of the Commission, well we have seen that no progress has been
made. If we can bring back the EMP Commission, I expect that
that would reintroduce, we would have a voice in the
governmental level part of Congress that could aggressively
promote EMP preparedness, and that is what we need to do.
And last, the NERC/FERC relationship, I completely agree
with Dr. Baker. It's extremely dysfunctional, it doesn't work.
It needs to be reformed. I'm not sure that you can actually
reform those institutions. I would actually advocate abolishing
both FERC and NERC and starting with something else, a
different kind of institution, something similar to the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission that has real regulatory power, and that
understands that its stakeholder, its customer is not the
electric power industry first, but it's the American people
first. And the responsibility is first not to the profits of
the utilities, but it's to America's national security. Thank
you for hearing me out.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pry follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. DeSantis. Thank you. Mr. Caruso, thank you for coming
you're recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL CARUSO
Mr. Caruso. Thank you. I'd like to thank Chairman DeSantis,
Chairman Lummis, ranking members and committee members for this
opportunity to testify. I consider it an honor and a privilege
to be here today to share my 32 years of experience in the
practical side of protecting against EMP events.
EMP hardening has long been considered very expensive and
an illusive art known to few. The current guidance on EMP
protection is found in the MIL Standard 188-125 that is not
necessarily appropriate for every application when considering
the critical infrastructure.
EMP hardening of the critical infrastructure would require
a less stringent application of the MIL Standard 188-125.
Government, public, and private critical infrastructure
facilities and services are becoming increasingly
interdependent, as we've seen with many of the companies that
I've talked to over the past 3 years.
In addition to the interdependency of those services, we
see an increasingly dependence on the very vulnerable electric
grid and electric power system. To date, little has been done
to harden the electric power system and the 16 segments of
critical infrastructure as designated by the Department of
Homeland Security.
Currently, 18 States have ongoing initiatives to require
the electric utilities to at least address the protection of
the electrical grid from the dangers of a EMP or solar storm.
Electromagnetic energy from an EMP can disrupt a supervisory
and control data acquisition systems, or SCADA systems, which
the electric grid heavily relies.
I recently testified in the Texas State House in support of
bills introduced for EMP protection of the critical
infrastructure. Texas is one of the States aggressively
pursuing passage of EMP legislation, including an appropriation
to get critical infrastructure segments started in the overall
evaluation of their vulnerability.
In 2014, ETS-Lindgren, the company for which I work, was
part of a multidisciplinary team that successfully completed
construction of the very first large private sector SCADA
facility in the United States that includes EMP protection. The
building was a 2-story, 105 square-foot building, of which
44,000 square feet were EMP-protected, that included generators
and cooling systems. The total project cost was about $100
million and the approximate EMP protection part of that was
about $8 million. So if we're looking at it, about 8 percent of
the overall budget. If we looked at that cost spread over the 2
million customers that that building serves, we're looking at
less than a dollar per year, per customer spread out over 5
years.
While the optimum scenario is to protect a brand new
control building, retrofitting is possible. I've spoken with
quite a few electric utilities about retrofitting their control
buildings. If we're looking at the existing facilities, they
are tremendously vulnerable because the equipment was never
intended to be EMP-protected, nor were the support systems ever
laid out properly to be protected. An estimated rough order of
magnitude for protecting a similar facility as the 44,000
square feet that we talked about in the new building would be
approximately $16 million. And there again, when you take a
look at that and spread that out over 5 years, it's less than
$2 per customer, based on the 2 million customer service area.
In my opinion, EMP protection of the electric utilities is
the primary concern due to the survival and dependency we have
on electrical power. Some proactive, forward-thinking utilities
have either instituted EMP protection programs, or have at
least begun to consider implementing them. However, the balance
of the critical infrastructure segment, such as financial,
wastewater, drinking water, transportation, food distribution,
health care emergency services, have really not ever been
addressed at all. It is my sincere belief that we as a Nation
will some day face an EMP attack. I respectfully urge you to
consider and pass legislation to address the EMP threat that I
belive has been overlooked for far too long.
Chairman DeSantis, Chairman Lummis, ranking members,
committee members, I thank you again for this opportunity to
present my thoughts, and I would be very happy to answer any
questions that you have of me. Thank you to your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Caruso follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. DeSantis. I thank the witnesses for your testimony. The
chair now recognizes himself for questions for 5 minutes.
Dr. Baker you talked in your written testimony about the
critical importance of the electric grid. So an EMP attack that
would fry the electric grid, can you just explain the
consequences to somebody who maybe has never heard of an EMP
before today's hearing, what practical effect would that have
on American society?
Mr. Baker. The electric grid is the foundation for all
other infrastructures. DHS has listed 16 critical
infrastructure sectors, and the one sector that every--depends,
you know, that drives everything else is the electric power.
The other thing about the electric power, it not only is the
most critical, arguably the most critical infrastructure, it is
arguably the most vulnerable to EMP because you measure EMP in
volts per meter, so the longer the line, the larger the voltage
it will be induced on the line.
So it's ironic that our most critical infrastructure is
also the most vulnerable, and that's why we have to be so
serious about protecting the grid. But without the electric
grid, basic life services: The ability to pump drinking water,
the ability to heat and cool our homes----
Mr. DeSantis. Take our money from an ATM, would you be able
to do that?
Mr. Baker. Yeah, that's right. You would--you would--our
financial sector is also way up there on in terms of EMP
vulnerability and risk factor mainly because it depends upon
the electric grid and the on call communications as well. So
essentially it would be--we've seen sort of a microcosm of what
could happen in the northeast blackout and the anarchy that
resulted there, but that--in Britain, I've been to some EMP
meetings in Britain, where they actually are protecting their
grid--but their rule of thumb is it's 3 days to total anarchy,
I heard this member of Parliament say--once you lose the
electricity.
Mr. DeSantis. And in terms of the some of the casualties,
because people have surmised men, terrorists, if they can get
their hands on a nuclear device, detonate an American city,
obviously that would be very devastating. And someone said,
yeah, that would be, but their best bet to do the most damage
would be to try to launch it over the country and explode it
and create an EMP. And the casualty estimates I've seen are
really, really high if they were able to cripple our entire
electrical grid. Is that your understanding that you are
talking about potentially millions of people?
Mr. Baker. That's my understanding. Even though you don't
get direct effects on biological, humans--the long-term term
effects without the electric power grid, we're talking about
certainly within a year, you would lose at least half the
American population. I have seen estimates as high as 90
percent of the American population would be at risk over a
projected 1-year period.
Mr. DeSantis. So given that the consequences are
potentially very dire, but also given that, I think, as all the
witnesses have said, there are certainly things we could do
very easily, why haven't we done enough, in your opinion?
Mr. Baker. One of the problems is that the liabilities, the
public companies are reluctant to admit vulnerabilities,
because if something bad were to happen, they would be liable,
and I think that's a big problem. And just the cost, the wide-
area effects, we get into these hand-wringing stances where
people--they don't know where to begin so they haven't. And
what we're trying to do is lay out, you know, a well-ordered,
incremental approach where to get us beyond the hand-wringing.
Mr. DeSantis. Mr. Caruso, you've been involved in this
field and have done work hardening critical infrastructure
against an EMP attack. So help us understand what is involved
when you actually try to harden a facility or a line?
Mr. Caruso. Certainly. In addition to the critical
infrastructure, I've been involved in hardening military and
government facilities for the 32 years in this business. And
essentially, what's required to harden a facility is to create
an electromagnetic shield, a 6-sided electromagnetic shield
around the equipment that's intended to be protected.
Mr. DeSantis. As of right now, in your judgment, and based
on your experience, what percentage of the electrical grid is
prepared for an EMP threat?
Mr. Caruso. Currently, there's only one control center in
the entire country that I'm aware of that is protected.
Mr. DeSantis. And which one is that?
Mr. Caruso. I'm not allowed to say, because of non-
disclosure agreements that I'm under.
Mr. DeSantis. Understood. My time has expired. Thanks for
answering the questions, and I now recognize the ranking member
of the full committee--the subcommittee on National Security,
Mr. Lynch, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So what we're saying
here is that because of the interconnectivity of our society
today, the great reliance and connectivity to the Internet, so
much of every aspect of our lives is wired now, that that fact
will actually amplify the impact of a EMP event. Is that
basically what you're saying, Mr. Baker--Dr. Baker? Excuse me.
Mr. Baker. That's right.
Mr. Lynch. All right. Now, for countermeasures, I
understand, and I don't question the level of disruption that
would occur. And I guess the imminence of this is debatable,
but there is no debate above the disruption that would result
if one of these EMPs occurred. The countermeasures that have
been talked about, the folks at CRS that serve Congress, the
Congressional Research Service, mentioned a couple of
countermeasures. One was this Faraday Cage protection, which I
guess is some kind of a cladding. Can you talk about that for a
bit?
Mr. Baker. I can. Mike Caruso just mentioned the idea of a
6-sided shield. You have a six-sided metal enclosure, that's
referred to in electrical engineering as a Faraday Cage.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. Mr. Caruso, do you want to go into that a
little bit more?
Mr. Caruso. Certainly. The six-sided metal shield has to be
constructed so it basically has no openings in it except those
that are absolutely necessary to have. And all of those
openings are technically considered to be points of entry. So
you start out by building a six-sided metal box with no
openings, and then you start adding openings for things like
the electrical power, communications and air exchanges and
cooling systems. And all of those points of entries are handled
in a very, very special and particular way in order to ensure
that you are attenuating any EMP signal that might be broadcast
in the atmosphere, but also any signals that are being brought
in, conducted on the electrical lines or communication lines.
Mr. Lynch. Sort of like a surge protector? That type of----
Mr. Caruso. Exactly. A surge protector on steroids, if you
would.
Mr. Lynch. Yeah. Now, what about the other countermeasure
that I'm not sure if it incorporates the Faraday Cage
protection, these portable, or mobile units that, I guess, some
of the contractors for Microsoft and, I guess, some of the
other computer outfits have come up with, sort of an off-the-
rack type of system where they can house all of these servers
in the event that you have an event. Is that one and the same
or are these two different strategies?
Mr. Caruso. It's one and the same. In terms of technology,
the portable data centers, if you will, the EMP-protected data
centers are essentially six-sided Faraday cages with all the
points of entry addressed, and sometimes they get actually
interfaced with the fixed asset that might be inside of a
building. So they become a supplement to what's going on in the
building. These same shelters sometimes hold backup generator
systems or backup cooling systems to act as protection against
the EMP for those systems as well.
Mr. Lynch. Okay. So the last time we had a talk about this,
the study was done in 2008, I think, then there were 16
recommendations. Is there anything different that we're doing
now than what was going on at that point, talking about
Congress?
Mr. Baker. The only substantive response to the EMP
recommendations has been within the Department of Defense,
where they are actually providing an annual report to Congress
on the steps they are taking to meet the EMP Commission
recommendations. But as far as the civilian infrastructure, I'm
not aware of any progress.
Mr. Lynch. Dr. Pry, I don't want you to get off the hook
without a question. The general recommendation then would be to
adopt some of these countermeasures for infrastructure that we
identify as being critical, whether it's civilian critical
infrastructure, or military infrastructure; is that right?
Mr. Pry. Yeah, that's right. You know, for example, there
are 2,000 extra high voltage transformers that are basically
the technological foundation of our electronic civilization,
you know, most people don't even know that. These things are
vulnerable to EMP. They should be protected. You know, they are
very hard--we don't even make them in this country anymore. But
that's an example of--the Commission had a rather long list of
recommendations, basically a plan that could be implemented to
protect the civilian critical infrastructure at affordable
cost. It's not hard to do, the technology isn't the problem,
the money isn't the problem, it doesn't cost that much to do
it, it's the politics that has been the problem.
As George has said, nobody has responsibility for doing
this, those who would think would have responsibility, the
Department of Defense, for example. You know, when you talk
about it, they have no jurisdiction over the civilian critical
infrastructure. And they will say, well, this could be caused
by a geomagnetic storm and that's not our department. We are
dealing with foreign threats, so it is the Department of
Homeland Security's job. DHS will say, well, a nuclear weapon,
that's the DOD's job, so nobody has been in charge.
And then where it counts the most is we have this very
dysfunctional relationship between the NERC, the North American
Electric Liability Corporation that represents the 3,000
utilities that is supposed to be--partner with U.S. FERC in
providing for grid security. But the political reality is that
that relationship is dysfunctional and it has not resulted in
not only in increasing our security where EMP is concerned, but
even against tree branch problems, for instance. It took NERC a
decade to come up with a vegetation management plan to better
manage tree branches so that we won't have a repeat of the
great Northeast Blackout of 2003. They are falling down on job
on very pedestrians threats, let alone cyber threats and EMP
attacks and the like. It's just the system isn't working, and
that needs to be fixed by somebody.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you. I assume my time has expired. I yield
back.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back. The chair now
recognizes the gentlewoman from Wyoming, the chairman of
Natural Resources Subcommittee for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lummis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm a bit of a novice
to this subject, so I'm going to ask you some general
questions, feel free to take them wherever you choose. You
know, over the weekend I got a little taste of this. I woke up
Sunday morning in my country home, in Wyoming, without
electricity. I had no water because in a rural area I'm on an
electric pump to pump my well water. So the inconveniences
associated to being without electricity were apparent from the
minute my eyes opened.
As it turned out, it was just something, I think they
called it a bayonet which is a very large fuse that they just
came and replaced. And believe it or not, they came on Sunday
morning and I was back up and running, and happily so. But when
you think about that on the scale that we're talking about, it
really does create immediate global problems, especially in
this country.
So my first question, Mr. Caruso, what do these things
cost, these shields that protect our infrastructure?
Mr. Caruso. The shield that I gave an example of in my
testimony was approximately $182 per square foot to put into
place. So if you look at a floor plan of a building and look at
the square footage, again, about $182 a square foot on top of
the building cost itself.
Mrs. Lummis. So it's not chump change.
Mr. Caruso. It's not chump change, but it's not
insurmountable either.
Mrs. Lummis. My next question is for all of you. I am going
to direct to Dr. Pry first, but then I'd like to ask our other
two witnesses to weigh in. This is about your concern that the
relationship between NERC and FERC is dysfunctional. You
mention the possibility of doing away with both. So if you were
dictator for a day, and you could do exactly that, either
combine NERC and FERC or do away with them and replace them
with something else that would solve the dysfunction you've
identified, as well as address this electromagnetic pulse issue
responsibly, what would that look like?
Mr. Pry. That would look like the kind of relationship that
the Federal Aviation Administration has with the air line
industry. What I think that isn't understood is that the
electric power industry is the only critical infrastructure
that still operates basically in something that's close to a
19th century regulatory environment. The Federal Aviation
Administration has the power and has independent inspectors. If
they find metal fatigue in the wings of an airline, they can
ground that whole fleet and order the air line industry, you
are not going to fly those planes until they are fixed.
When there is a disaster and an airplane crashes, the
industry doesn't get to investigate and figure out what went
wrong, not by themselves. It's the Federal Aviation
Administration that drags those things into a hangar. And why
do we do that? Because we want an objective actor whose first
priority is public safety, because hundreds of lives are at
stake when airplanes fly and so we don't--you know, we don't
take lightly, you know, the lives of the American people when
it comes to that. If we go to the Food and Drug Administration
or any other industry, I would like that same kind of
regulatory relationship with the electric power industry.
Let me describe to you a little bit about what the current
regulatory environment is like, because it's not really what we
would consider a regulatory environment. The U.S. FERC, for
example, does not have the power to tell NERC, that is, the
industry, what they shall do to protect the grid. It can order
them to come up with a plan and then NERC can take as much time
as it likes to come up with a plan or a proposed plan. And then
if the U.S. FERC has objections that plan, the whole plan has
to be scrapped, and the process starts all over again.
That's how it took 10 years to get a plan for vegetation
management, you know, so we wouldn't have a repeat of the great
Northeast Blackout of 2003. Industry takes its time dragging
its feet and can use the process, you know, to basically escape
doing what it's supposed to do. The NERC is supposed to partner
with the U.S. FERC in providing for the security of the
American people, but it doesn't. And I don't think combining
these or keeping the same--I mean, there are some good people
in these institutions, but George and I have served, for
example, on the NERC's Geomagnetic Disturbance Task Force, and
we have actually seen them engage in junk science, dishonest
practices, you know, in terms of the science to try to mislead
people.
In my written testimony, I describe a very disturbing
example of where the NERC came up with a hollow standard for
the natural EMP created by the sun saying, okay--they were
dragged, kicking and streaming by the way and resisted for
years saying that oh, the threat from the sun doesn't really
affect the electric grid, which was completely untrue.
Eventually they were forced to come up with a standard, the
standard is so low, that it doesn't provide any real
protection.
Mrs. Lummis. Dr. Pry, my time has expired, but I'm hoping
to follow up with all three of you on this issue in a second
round of questioning. Thank you all very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentlelady yields back. I ask unanimous
consent to enter into the record a statement of Ms. Lawrence,
who is the ranking member on the Subcommittee on Interior.
Without objection, that will be so ordered.
Mr. DeSantis. At this point, I would like to recognize Mrs.
Lawrence for 5 minutes for her questions.
Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We--this issue is
one of great importance to me and to our country. The
congressional EMP Commission issued a report in 2008
identifying 16 segments of our infrastructure that could suffer
severe damage if not protected. Today, 7 years later, the
testimony continues to echo those concerns. I'm curious today,
Mr. Caruso, has anything changed since this last report
regarding the protection of the grid?
Mr. Caruso. I don't believe anything significant has
changed. What we have seen is that many private industries that
make up the critical infrastructure have taken it upon
themselves just as doing good business to do EMP protection. I
have worked with several financial institutions, including
insurance companies. I've worked with electric utilities and
have done some work counseling, the gas and electric industry
as well, but other than that, nothing real significant has
happened.
Mrs. Lawrence. To follow up on your statement, there has
been some independent efforts being made in this direction. Are
we monitoring that as a Federal Government if we start
implementing the--taking the steps that we should, would we
have a different system that is being used now, or are we just
going to provide oversight to these individual companies? What
is the plan that you're recommending here?
Mr. Caruso. My recommendation really falls in line with
those of Dr. Pry and Dr. Baker in that someone needs to be in
charge, and especially as it's related to the 16 critical
infrastructure segments in terms of providing real protection,
and at least addressing the issue to ask the question what if,
what happens if we lose the electrical power? What happens if
we lose the ability to do it? I use--I like to use the example
of the waste treatment systems. You would not only lose the
electrical power, but the control systems that control the
wastewater filtration and pumping stations throughout an area.
If that goes down in a major city, you have 2 or 3 days before
the city is just on its knees.
Mrs. Lawrence. My question is to Dr. Baker. As we look at
the need, we heard your recommendations, 2008 was the last
report. Will we have to initiate a new commission and a new
report so it would be relevant, or do you feel strongly that
the information we have now is enough to move forward with
starting our plan?
Mr. Baker. I believe that the EMP Commission reports that
were issued in 2004, 2008 are still operative, and so I would
say yeah, they are a very good place to start. I don't know
whether there is anything I can add to those reports. The thing
that helps us is that--I understand that there's going to be a
lot of new construction on the electric grid, and that if we
are able to project and develop some plans that we can actually
include EMP protection with the new build-out. So there might
be some maybe augmentation of the EMP Commission
recommendations.
Mrs. Lawrence. I do want to say as my time runs out that as
a mayor, I lived through the power outages that affected the
Midwest. And when you talk about the threat of lives, hospitals
that were in my city, individuals stranded on elevators, life
support systems and oxygen, getting the pumps backed up with
batteries so that we could continue to ensure that our water
was properly processed through cleaning water filtration, this
is a very serious issue. And I appreciate your testimonies
today, and I know for a fact if we receive such an attack, the
threat is one that would be significantly dangerous for our
country and a lot of dangerous people on simple mere traffic
navigation, everything came to a complete halt. To be able to
sit in a room in our emergency command center with no power, we
could not pull up documents of employee records, because it was
on a computer. So it taught me a lot of how we were dependent
just from being a mayor and trying to manage through that power
outage. So I thank you today for your testimony.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentlelady's time has expired.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia for 5
minutes for his questions.
Mr. Hice. Thank you.
Dr. Pry, what Federal agency do you believe is best suited
to lead a preparedness effort for this? Is it Homeland
Security? Is it Energy? Which one is it?
Mr. Pry. I think the Department of Homeland Security, that
it naturally falls under their jurisdiction, you know, because
they're responsible--they're supposed to be responsible for
critical infrastructure protection in the first place. So I
think that they're the ones.
However, DHS and the Department of Defense are also
supposed to have a cooperative relationship, you know, when it
comes to providing for homeland security. There's a lot of
expertise--now, DHS should have the lead, but there's a lot of
expertise in the Department of Defense. And the Department of
Defense is also dependent on the civilian critical
infrastructure.
Mr. Hice. All right. But, at the end of the day, DHS, you
believe.
Mr. Pry. I would say DHS. I'd like----
Mr. Hice. All right.
Does DHS currently have anything to deal with the
scenario--they've got the 15 national planning contingency
scenarios. Is anything dealing with EMPs a part of those 15
plans?
Mr. Pry. No, they're not. And that's part of the problem
and why we need to pass the Critical Infrastructure Protection
Act.
And I would add that there are people--there are people
within DHS that are standing by, waiting for us to do exactly
that. The----
Mr. Hice. All right. So there needs to be--if DHS is
responsible, DHS then needs some sort of plan. Is there a
reason there is not a plan, if DHS is responsible?
Mr. Pry. The--I think the--I don't know what the motive has
been within the leadership of DHS, because it's been a
bipartisan failure, you know----
Mr. Hice. But a failure it is. We don't need to elaborate.
If DHS is responsible, that is one thing. If DHS is responsible
and not prepared, that is another issue that certainly needs to
be addressed.
Mr. Pry. I'd say they are responsible and not prepared.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Well, then we have to--that definitely
needs to be addressed.
Let me go, Mr. Caruso, to you. Hardening a facility, can
you elaborate a little bit more on just what that means and
what it involves?
Mr. Caruso. Certainly.
As was mentioned before, we're talking--the scientific term
is ``Faraday cage.'' And it essentially--we use steel to do
that. So it encloses the area that's intended to be protected
in a six-sided steel enclosure. And all of the points of entry
coming in and, most importantly, the electrical power are
fitted with filter devices and suppression devices that would
suppress an EMP coming down the line being conducted in from
the external power lines.
In addition to that, the facility shield protects all of
the equipment inside from the radiated effects of an EMP coming
down out of the atmosphere. And it needs to also protect the
backup generators, the cooling systems, and all of the other
support systems that would support a facility.
Mr. Hice. Okay. I just have a couple minutes, so that--just
a general understanding, I appreciate what you just shared.
Do State governments--and I will just keep this with you,
Mr. Caruso--do State governments have anything right now to
protect against EMPs?
Mr. Caruso. Absolutely nothing.
Mr. Hice. Nothing. All right. So we are totally vulnerable.
That includes all 50 States; there is nothing out there?
Mr. Caruso. Nothing that I'm aware of.
Mr. Hice. All right. All right. So we have got to address
this problem because it is totally not addressed anywhere.
Mr. Caruso. That's correct, except for a handful of private
industry actors that have taken it upon themselves to protect
it. The control center that I was speaking of before is an
electric utility. They took it upon themselves to invest their
own money to protect their control center.
Mr. Hice. Okay. Then, real quickly, across the board, and I
would appreciate an answer real quickly from all three of you.
This being the case, what steps do Federal entities need to
take to protect this?
And, Dr. Baker, I will start with you, just real quickly
because I know my name is about up.
Mr. Baker. First, we need a single authority that is in
charge with the power to develop and enforce requirements.
Mr. Hice. Okay.
Mr. Baker. And then I think, you know, of the 16 critical
infrastructures, if we focused only on the electric power grid,
that would be well worth it. We should have a program to----
Mr. Hice. All right.
Mr. Baker. --protect the grid.
Mr. Hice. Real quickly, Dr. Pry and Mr. Caruso?
Mr. Pry. Pass the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act,
which will require the Department of Homeland Security to add a
new national planning scenario focused on the EMP threat. All
State, local, and Federal emergency planning, training, and
resource allocation is based on those scenarios. That's why
it's not on the radar screen right now. Bring back the
congressional EMP commission so you can have an aggressive
watchdog to make sure that this work gets done.
And reform the dysfunctional relationship between NERC and
FERC. I say abolish them and start all over again. Give the job
to DHS, somebody that's willing to do the job.
Mr. Hice. Unfortunately, my time has expired, but could Mr.
Caruso----
Mr. DeSantis. If you can submit your response----
Mr. Hice. Thank you.
Mr. DeSantis. --for the record written, it would be great.
Mr. Hice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DeSantis. And the chair now recognizes the gentleman
from California, Mr. Lieu, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for holding this
hearing to inform the public and policymakers about the threat
of an EMP device.
I have just some preliminary questions. Let's say an EMP
device was exploded over the U.S. What is the geographic area
that it would affect? Is it the size of D.C.? Of Maryland? Of
Virginia? Smaller? Larger?
Mr. Baker. An entry-level, you know, low-yield weapon, if
it's detonated at the optimum altitude, the diameter of the
effect would be 1,200 miles. So it would be a circle with a
1,200-mile diameter.
Mr. Lieu. Okay.
And then, within that circle--so let's say it fries the
electrical generators. Does it also destroy the lines
themselves, or are they still fine?
Mr. Baker. The----
Mr. Lieu. The lines that connect houses and businesses to
the electric grid.
Mr. Baker. The lines will remain intact. There was some
Russian experience where some of their lines, they actually had
damage to the support insulators, where some of their lines
fell to the ground. But the evidence is that, in most cases,
the lines would remain intact. It's just what's on the end of
the line would be affected.
Mr. Lieu. And then, based on the way our electrical power
grid is constructed in the U.S., could you take power from
another part of the country and route it through the affected
area?
Mr. Baker. That would depend upon the size of the circular
diameter. It would be difficult to do that because you're
looking at areas that are crossing, you know, State boundaries
and the boundaries of the different power companies. So it
could be difficult.
And we don't--the grid control centers--we don't have grid
control centers in most cases that span that large of an area.
Mr. Lieu. Okay.
And I think, Mr. Caruso, you had mentioned a cost to harden
our critical infrastructure. You said $182 per--per what?
Mr. Caruso. Per square foot of floor space.
Mr. Lieu. Okay.
Mr. Caruso. And that's for doing a facility, not looking at
the transformers.
Mr. Lieu. So it's hard for me to understand what that
means. Can you sort of give me a number? To harden the United
States to a place you think is sufficient, are we talking about
$50 million, $50 billion, $500 billion? What is the range here
so I can understand that?
Mr. Caruso. I'm sorry, I really don't have that number
available in my head. I can submit something.
Mr. Lieu. Sure.
Or anyone on the panel?
Mr. Pry. It depends on how much protection you want to buy
and what your judgment is, okay? It's sort of like asking,
well, how much will it cost to buy fire protection for my
house? You know, some plans can be very inexpensive. It can be
as simple as buying a smoke alarm--okay?--you know, which would
cost you very little. Others might want to put a fire
extinguisher in every room and put a sprinkler system in, which
is going to cost a lot.
There are--here are some legitimate plans and legitimate
prices for you to keep in mind--okay?--that can range--John
Kappenman, who was on our commission, had an idea, a plan, that
would cost $200 million. And the idea here would be to protect
the 200 most important extra-high-voltage transformers, the
ones that service the major metropolitan areas. So John
wouldn't say that this is adequate, but it will at least give
you a fighting chance to save millions of people from starving
to death, you know, because the transformers, at least, would
be saved.
The EMP Commission had a plan. It's, you know, right in the
plan, it's about $2 billion--okay?--that protects all of the
transformers and generators and is much more ambitious. And,
you know, that's a much better plan and would give you much
greater resiliency and confidence in being able to recover the
society quickly from an EMP.
George Baker described an even better--a more ambitious
and, I would say, a better plan that goes beyond that. It sort
of depends on how much do you want to put into prevention. Just
like in protecting your house, you know, you can spend more
money to protect your house and be safer, or you can decide to
spend less money and be less safe.
But there are a wide variety of plans, which----
Mr. Lieu. And----
Mr. Pry. --industry sometimes misrepresents as being
contradictory. They're not. You know, it could range from $200
million up to $20 billion, $30 billion.
Mr. Lieu. And so, given those options--as you know, a lot
of electrical utilities are regulated by States or cities. What
is your view of the Federal Government's role? Why is it we
don't leave it up, for example, to the Public Utilities
Commission of California to decide if they want to increase
fees on ratepayers in order to harden the facilities there?
In other words--or is it your view we should give DHS
authority to simply start imposing additional costs on
ratepayers so we can harden all these facilities?
Mr. Pry. May I respond?
Mr. Lieu. Yeah, of course.
Mr. Pry. Yeah. Well, you know, because this is--ultimately,
this is a national security--especially if you're talking about
a nuclear EMP attack or a great geomagnetic storm that could
cover not just the United States, but if it's a Carrington
event, you're talking about the entire world being affected by
this kind of a phenomenon.
A threat of this scale should be a Federal national
security responsibility. The States don't normally think of
themselves as protecting themselves against nuclear terrorist
attacks, but because of the----
Mr. Lieu. But they do think about--right?--natural
disasters. I mean, a massive naturally caused EMP thing would
be a natural disaster. So, in California, it's not so much the
Federal Government saying, ``Hey, harden yourself against
earthquakes.'' It's actually California building codes that do
that.
So I'm just sort of curious as to, do you want this
massive, overreaching Federal plan, or should we leave it to
States and cities and local control?
Mr. Pry. I personally don't think it should be left to
States and cities. But, however, you're getting your wish.
Because of the vacuum that's been created by the lack of
Federal leadership on this issue, the States are taking the
initiative because they have to.
Next week, I'm going up to Maine because Maine has passed a
bill to protect its electric grid because the Feds haven't done
anything. Virginia has passed a bill. Arizona has passed a bill
to protect its people. Florida has established a cyber and EMP
legislative working group because there is no leadership, no
help coming from Washington.
And so the States are being made aware. They don't even
know about this threat, most of them, but as they become aware
of this threat and they realize that the Federal Government
isn't doing anything, they are stepping up to the plate to
protect their people.
I don't think that that's--I was originally trained as a
historian, and I find that rather disturbing, the fact that the
States have to do this. You know, in the--one of the signs of
the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was the rise of walled
cities, because Rome would no longer--could no longer defend
its cities against the Barbarians. So the states had to start
providing for their own--I mean, the cities had to start
providing for their own security.
I don't think that's the way our system is supposed to
work. You know, when it comes to national security, the Feds
aren't supposed to just say, ``Well, the States, go ahead and
do the best you can to take care of yourselves. We've got other
things to do here.'' You know, the fundamental constitutional
obligation, the reason we have a Federal Government, is to
provide for the common defense.
Mr. Lieu. Thank you.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman's time has expired.
The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Tennessee for 5
minutes for his questions.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
thank you for calling this very important hearing.
This is just one of thousands of things that we deal with,
so none of us are the experts that you all are, but I can tell
you this, it's something I've been concerned about for a long
time.
In fact, just a few days after the 2003 blackout, I gave a
speech on the floor, and I quoted from the Associated Press
story at the time. And it said the proposed improvements that
they were talking about to keep this from happening a second
time, it says, ``are making the electricity supply vulnerable
to a different kind of peril--computer viruses and hackers that
could blackout substations, cities, or entire States.''
And the story went on to say, it said, ``In the past, the
grid's old electromechanical switches and analog technology
made it more or less impervious to computer maladies, but now
switches and monitoring gear can be upgraded and programmed
remotely with software, and that requires a vulnerable
connection to a computer network. If that network runs on
Microsoft Corporation operating systems, which virus writers
favor, or it connects to the Internet, the vulnerabilities are
increased.''
That's what came out in 2003. And I'm sorry that I've had
to run in and out of here and not hear everything you've said
because I've had some meetings with constituents. But when I
hear you talking about knocking out the power to 80 percent of
Turkey--somebody mentioned that--and all of Yemen, in some ways
it seems like we're almost more vulnerable today than we were
then. Are we?
Mr. Baker. The quick answer is ``yes.''
Mr. Duncan. Well, you know, my wife has told me for years I
still live in Andy of Mayberry days. And then, a few years
later, I saw that I had the same birthday as Don Knotts. And
when I saw that, I thought, well, she's been right all these
years. So I'm about as low-tech as they come.
But it seems ridiculous to me that we're so interconnected
with each other that, when a crew cuts a tree limb in
Cleveland, Ohio, and it cuts off the power to the entire
Northeast and part of Canada for several hours, I mean, it
seems like, to me, that that's just ridiculous that we would
allow that to happen.
And it also seems to me that we need to get more people
interested in this. Because surely we have people that can
figure out--is it possible, you know, that bigger may not
always be better? That maybe we shouldn't have these power
companies that are so big that, if we broke up some of these
power companies, that we wouldn't be so interconnected, where
what happened to one would affect people all over the country?
Mr. Pry. Well, actually, that was one of the
recommendations of the EMP Commission. It's called
``islanding.''
And, in effect, it's kind of what's happening at the level
of the States. Even though it isn't happening by a plan coming
out of Washington, by this natural process of the States
deciding to protect themselves, you're creating islands, you
know, where, if the big grid goes down, at least that State
will have its lights stay on. And so----
Mr. Duncan. Well, that is encouraging. I've been glad to
hear that, that some of these States are taking individual
initiatives. I hope that keeps growing.
Mr. Pry. It makes it harder to do when the NERC claims that
they've adopted a GMD standard and don't worry about it,
they're on top of the problem, which they also say about cyber
and things like that, which tends--is not true, you know,
because it ends up taking away the incentive for the States to
protect themselves when NERC convinces them that they are.
And one--I'd like to also make one last statement, because
you talked about, are we getting more vulnerable? Another thing
that needs to be kept in mind is that we are getting more
vulnerable all the time because of the advance of technology.
You know, as our semiconductor technology gets better and
better and faster and faster and runs on lower and lower
voltages, it becomes more and more vulnerable to the EMP
effect, which is why we're so vulnerable now.
Back in 1962, Starfish Prime test, when that happened, the
vacuum tube technology of the day, you know, was 1 million
times less vulnerable to EMP. Still, the lights went out in
Hawaii--1 million times less vulnerable.
And every time--I think it's every 10 years we have, like,
a tenfold increase in the capabilities of our semiconductor
technology. It also becomes tenfold more vulnerable to EMP. So
this problem is getting worse and worse. It's not just standing
still while we do nothing.
Mr. Duncan. Well, what do you think about this bill by
Congressman Franks? Is that a good first step?
Mr. Pry. Oh, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act?
Absolutely. It's, you know--it would go in a huge way toward
helping solve the problem.
Mr. Duncan. I remember several years ago I read on the
front page of The Washington Post one day that a 12-year-old
boy opened up the floodgates at the Hoover Dam 700 miles from
his home because he was able to hack in. And it seems to me
that, you know, we have a lot of brilliant people out here that
should be able to--that should be working on this.
We oversensationalize a lot of these threats because of a
24-hour news cycle and because so many people in companies make
money off of threats that are exaggerated. But, in my opinion,
this is one that's not being exaggerated and that we need to do
a little bit more. And I appreciate what you all are trying to
do.
I've run out of time. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. DeSantis. The gentleman yields back.
I want to thank the witnesses for their testimony, for
answering our questions.
We wanted to have Congressman Franks testify and present
both his critical infrastructure bill and the SHIELD Act, but
he has a bill on the House floor right now, and he's not able
to attend. So we're sorry that that couldn't be arranged.
But, clearly, I think, from what the witnesses have said,
you know, those are the types of pieces of legislation, you
know, that I think we need to be moving ahead in Congress. And
so, if this hearing has helped raise more awareness--and
hopefully we can get some bipartisan support for this stuff and
move forward.
I will hold the record open for 5 legislative days for any
members who would like to submit a written statement.
Mr. DeSantis. And, with that, this hearing is now
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:40 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
APPENDIX
----------
Material Submitted for the Hearing Record
``Identify Potential Impacts of an Electromagnetic Pulse
(EMP) Attack on Fire and EMS Delivery Services for the Walpole
Fire Department'' by Deputy Chief Michael K. Lararacy, Sr.,
Walpole Fire Department, Walpole, Massachusetts, can be found
here:
http://www.usfa.fema.gov/pdf/efop/efo46308.pdf
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