[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 83 (Tuesday, June 21, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H4888-H4894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania). Under the
Speaker's announced policy of January 4, 2005, the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Speaker, what I want to spend a few moments talking
about this evening is something that will be new to most Americans.
They will not have heard about this subject. Indeed, nobody knew about
this until 1962; that is, no one in this country knew about it.
There was an experiment over Johnston Island out in the Pacific Ocean
that was called Operation Starfish. It was part of a series of nuclear
tests that were called the Fishbowl Series. This was a unique one. The
others had all been at ground level or some little distance above the
ground. This one was an extra-atmospheric, a detonation above the
atmosphere.
Nobody knew what was going to happen. It was the first time we had
detonated a nuclear weapon in a test series above the atmosphere, and
there were a number of ships and airplanes and radar, theater-like,
that were tracking the missile that launched this nuclear bomb and
noted its explosion. The explosion occurred about 400 kilometers
[[Page H4889]]
above Johnston Island. That is well above the atmosphere.
Now, the Soviets have had very extensive experience with this kind of
testing. This was our first and, indeed, our only experience with this.
So our knowledge about this phenomenon comes from this single test,
what we have learned from the Soviets and now the Russians and the
number of simulations that we have done since that time.
There were no diagnostics to test the effects on Hawaii, which was
about 800 miles away, because nobody expected there to be any effect
there. Many of the instruments we were using for testing around
Johnston Island were pegged; that is, they did not have enough capacity
to register the effects that were produced by this extra-atmospheric
explosion.
What happened in Hawaii may be open to some controversy, but there
were some lights that went out. This was largely electrical. In those
days it was not all of the electronics that we have today. A number of
lights went out, and in the last couple of years, some of the evidence
of what happened to that equipment was shown to a commission that I
will talk about in a little bit that was set up in 2001 to investigate
this phenomenon, and they submitted their report in 2004.
This phenomenon that we observed there that exceeded the capacity of
the instruments at the test site, that went all the way, 800 miles
away, to Hawaii, have been called electromagnetic pulse, EMP. We have
learned since then that every extra-atmospheric explosion produces an
EMP. You can develop a nuclear weapon, as we designed but as I
understand never built and the Soviets both designed and have built,
enhanced EMP weapons that limit the explosion but increased the
electromagnetic effects.
What are the implications of EMP and why are we talking about it
tonight? EMP could be probably the most asymmetric weapon that any
adversary could use against us. By asymmetric, we mean a weapon that
has a relatively small impact in terms of its local effect but could
have an enormous impact on our military or our society because of its
effect.
There are a number of asymmetric weapons. Terrorism is an asymmetric
weapon. It does not cost them much money or take very big explosives,
but it has a big effect on us. 9/11, of course, was a major asymmetric
attack on us because those few people in those four airplanes have cost
us billions and billions of dollars and totally changed our society.
This is an example of an asymmetric attack.
Most Americans will not know about electromagnetic pulse and what it
could do to our military, to our society, but I will guarantee my
colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that all of our potential enemies know
everything about EMP. In a little bit, I will show you some quotes from
countries that could be our enemy that will indicate that they know all
about EMP.
In 1999, I was sitting in a hotel room in Vienna, Austria. We were
there near the end of the Kosovo conflict. There were eleven Members of
Congress there, several staff members, three members of the Russian
Duma and a personal representative, Slobodan Milosevic. We developed a
framework agreement for ending the Kosovo conflict that was adopted 8
days later by the G-8.
One of the Russians who was there was a very senior Russian. His name
is Vladimir Lukin. He was the ambassador to this country at the end of
Bush I and the beginning of Clinton. At that time he was chair of their
equivalent of our Committee on International Relations, a very senior
and very respected Russian. He is a little short fellow with short arms
and stocky build.
He sat in that hotel room in Vienna for 2 days with his arms folded
across his chest, looking at the ceiling. He was very angry. He said at
one point, You spit on us; now why should we help you?
What he meant by that was that the United States, the Clinton
administration at that time, had indicated to the Russians that they
really were not needed to help resolve this conflict, that we were big
boys and we would handle this on our own. It soon became obvious to the
Clinton administration that the only country in the world that had the
real confidence of the Serbs was Russia, and they were added to the G-7
to make the G-8, which 5 days after we came back resolved the Kosovo
conflict with the framework agreement that we had developed there.
The statement that Vladimir Lukin made was a startling statement. The
chairman of our delegation was the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Weldon) who had been to Russia thirty-some times and he speaks some
Russian and understands more. When Vladimir Lukin was speaking, he
turned to me and said, Did you hear what he said? Yes, I heard what he
said, but of course, I did not understand it; I just heard Russian
words.
When it was translated, this was what he said, and by the way, he did
not need a translator. Vladimir Lukin speaks very good English, but
when you are talking with these folks, they frequently will speak in
their native tongue so it has to be translated and then translated back
to them when we speak so that gives them twice as long to formulate
their answer. So if you do not know both languages, you are at somewhat
of a disadvantage in dialoguing with them because they have twice as
long to formulate an answer.
This was what surprised the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon),
and this is what he said: If we really wanted to hurt you, with no fear
of retaliation, we would launch an SLBM. That's a submarine-launched
ballistic missile. We would launch an SLBM. We would detonate a nuclear
weapon high above your country, and we would shut down your power grid
for 6 months or so.
Now, he made the observation that without fear of retaliation,
because you would not know for certain where it came from, particularly
today. Factor in the Cold War with only two superpowers, we absolutely
would have known where it came from, but today, how would you know?
There are many countries out there who can get a tramp steamer and a
Scud launcher and a crude nuclear weapon and that is all it would take
to produce an EMP attack because a Scud launcher goes about 180 miles
apogee, and that is plenty high. It would not cover all of the United
States, of course.
The third ranking Communist was there, a handsome, tall, blond fellow
by the name of Alexander Shurbanov, and he smiled and said, if one
weapon would not do it, we have some spares. I think at that time it
was something like 7,000 spares that they had.
This was a very startling remark, and what it said was that the
detonation of a single, large, appropriately designed nuclear weapon
above our country could shut down our power grid and shut down our
communications, he said, for 6 months or so. If that were true, and
there is increasing evidence, as I will indicate, from the report that
this commission gave us that it is true, that would mean that you would
be in a world, Mr. Speaker, where the only person you could talk to was
the person next to you unless you happened to have a vacuum tube
handset, then you could talk because they are about a million times
less susceptible to EMP than our current microelectronic systems, and
the only way you could go anywhere was to walk.
Several years ago, we had a field hearing at Johns Hopkins University
applied physics lab, and a Dr. Lowell Wood was there. I met Dr. Lowell
Wood through Tom Clancy who lives on the eastern shore of Maryland and
I know him. He has come to do several political events for me. I knew
that he had done a book where EMP was a part of the scenario, and I
knew he did very good research and he could tell me something about
EMP. This was several years ago.
I called Tom Clancy and I asked him, and he said, gee, if you read my
book you know all about EMP that I know, but he said let me refer you
to the smartest man hired by the U.S. government. He referred me to a
Dr. Lowell Wood from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California. We
got his pager number. In those days it was pagers rather than cell
phones that are so ubiquitous today, and I paged him, believing that he
was in California. The pager signal went up to a satellite and back
down, and he was in Washington, and within an hour, he was sitting in
my office.
Dr. Lowell Wood at this field hearing out at the applied physics lab
out in
[[Page H4890]]
Howard County made the observation that an EMP lay down would be the
equivalent of a giant continental time machine that would move us back
a century in technology. What this would mean, of course, is that we
would have no more capability for moving around, for communicating to
each other, for plowing our fields, for moving our equipment and our
food around than we had 100 years ago.
I said that, Dr. Wood, the population we have today, 285 million
people and its distribution, largely in large cities and suburbia,
could not be supported by the technology of a century ago. His
unemotional response was, Yes, I know.
{time} 2130
The population will shrink until it can be supported by the
technology. The point I am trying to make is this could be a
devastating asymmetric weapon. It may not be known to most Americans. I
suspect not one in 100 have heard of nuclear electromagnetic pulse, but
I can assure Members that all of our potential enemies know a great
deal about EMP.
The first chart shows the effects of a single nuclear weapon. This
one is detonated in the northwest corner of Iowa, and it blankets all
of the United States.
The colors here indicate the intensity of the pulse you get from
that. The purple as you can see from the scale is 50 percent. So what
this says is whatever the intensity was at ground zero, and we are
several hundred miles above that, but the intensity at that level which
is the red here in the center, will be half that out at the margins of
our country.
This little smile here and the distortion here is due to the magnetic
field of the Earth that bends the electrons that I will describe in
just a moment.
What is this electromagnetic pulse? It is produced from strong gamma
rays from the nuclear explosion which produce electrons that move at
the speed of light. They move now to everything within line of sight.
If you are about 3 or 400 miles high over the center of the country,
Iowa or Nebraska, that will blanket all of the United States.
If the voltage is high enough, it will disrupt or fry these
microelectronics.
Mr. Speaker, if you want to work on the inside of your computer, you
need to be very careful that the static electricity that you produce
just by rubbing your clothes together will not damage it. You need to
put a little wrist band on and ground yourself. At factories where most
of these computers are made, and it is almost all women that I have
seen there, this is one area where women do it better than men, and
they are grounded to the floor. They have a metal anklet on, and they
are grounded to the floor because static from just their movement could
damage these very sensitive, very tiny microelectronics.
A little later I will show a chart that says the interview with some
Russian generals have indicated that they have weapons that can produce
200 kilovolts per meter. They told us, and I cannot tell Members the
exact voltage to which we have harkened, but I can say that the Russian
generals told us they believe that this signal was several times higher
than the voltage to which we had hardened. And even out at the
periphery with 50 percent degradation, it was higher than we had
hardened. By ``hardening'' I mean we have put some buffers in there
that would intercept this pulse, like the surge protectors that we have
for our computers which we have for lightning which will do no good for
EMP because this pulse has such a rapid rise time measured in
nanoseconds.
This pulse will be through the surge protector before the protector
sees it. If you are 200 kilovolts at ground zero, it is 100 out at the
periphery, and that is probably enough to weld, to fry all of our
microelectronics, which is why Vladimir Lukin said they would detonate
a nuclear weapon high above our country, shut down our power grid and
our communications for 6 months or so.
From chart 2, I want to give some quotes from potential enemies to
indicate that I am not letting the genie out of the bottle this
evening. They know all about it. Not one in 50 Americans may know about
EMP, but I want to assure Members our potential enemies know all about
EMP.
This first quote is the quote that I heard myself sitting in that
hotel room in Vienna, Austria when Vladimir Lukin said they could shut
down our power grid and our communications. That was May 2, 1999. There
were 10 other Congressmen there and several staff members.
Chinese military writings describe EMP as the key to victory and
describe scenarios where EMP is used against U.S. aircraft carriers in
a conflict over Taiwan. It is not like our potential enemies not only
know about it. And they know that we know about it, so they feel free
to put it in their public writings.
A survey of worldwide military and scientific literature sponsored by
the EMP commission was set up, and they functioned for 2 years. They
submitted a report and they are now continuously briefing additional
entities, different organizations and people. They found widespread
knowledge about EMP and its potential military utility, including in
Taiwan, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea. Iran has
tested launching a scud missile from a surface vessel, a launch mode
that could support a national or transnational terrorist EMP attack
against the United States.
By the way, we thought that launch was a failure because the device
was detonated before it reached land. Now, that is exactly what you
would do if you were rehearsing an EMP attack. By the way, there is no
way that a nuclear weapon could do anywhere near as much damage against
a sophisticated country like ours by dropping it on one of our cities
as you could do to our country by detonating it at altitude. And you
would not know it happened unless you were looking at it.
We are totally immune to EMP. It will not hurt us or damage
buildings. All it does is to knock out all of our microelectronics,
which means all of our computers. For instance, your car has several
computers. Indeed, if you have a new car, they cannot even work on it
in a shop without hooking it up to a computer to tell what is wrong
with the vehicle. So an EMP with a high enough pulse would fry the
computers in the car. They would not run. If you happen to have an old
car with a coil and a distributor, that is probably going to work. That
is probably less susceptible to EMP.
This chart shows additional quotes: ``If the world's industrial
countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against
dangerous electronic assaults, they will disintegrate within a few
years. 150,000 computers belong to the U.S. Army. If the enemy forces
succeed in infiltrating the information network of the U.S. Army, then
the whole organization would collapse. The American soldiers could not
find food to eat nor would they be able to fire a single shot.'' This
is from Iranian Journal, December 1998.
``Terrorist information warfare includes using the technology
directed energy weapons or electromagnetic pulse.'' This is from
Iranian Journal of March 2000.
Terrorists have attempted to acquire non-nuclear radio frequency
weapons. These are the weapons that would produce the directed energy
effect. These produce a similar kind of pulse to EMP but does not have
the broad spectrum. It only has part of the frequency involved. But if
intense enough, if set up in this room, for instance, it could fry the
computers in the cloak room which is not that far away. If it was set
up in a van and went down Wall Street, if it were a really
sophisticated device, it could take out all of the computers there,
which would shut down our trading for quite a while if they were all
taken down.
Some people might think that things similar to a Pearl Harbor
incident are unlikely to take place during the Information Age. And
this is a writing from China. Yet it could be regarded as a Pearl
Harbor incident of the 21st century, if a surprise attack is conducted
against the enemy's crucial information systems of command, control,
and communication by such means as EMP weapons. Even a superpower,
China says, like the United States, which possesses nuclear missiles
and powerful armed forces, cannot guarantee its immunity. In their
words, an open society like the United States is extremely vulnerable
to electronic attacks. This is May 14, 1996 from a Chinese journal.
[[Page H4891]]
Iran has conducted tests with Shahab-3 missiles which have been
described as failures. I mention that because they detonated it before
it reached the ground. That is exactly what they would do if they were
planning for an EMP attack. Iran Shahab-3 is a medium-range mobile
missile that could be driven onto a freighter and transported to a
point near the United States for an EMP attack.
By the way, an EMP laydown is always an early event in Chinese and
Russian war games because it is the most asymmetric attack that they
could lodge against our country.
Just a little bit of a time line here. Operation Starfish occurred in
1962. In 1995, there was a very interesting event that nearly started
World War III. It has been written up in several books now. Most people
never knew about it, but the Norwegians launched an atmospheric test
rocket. They are fairly close to Russia, and they told the Russians
that they were launching this rocket; but in the bureaucracy of Russia,
that did not get communicated to the right people and when they
launched it, it was interpreted as a first salvo from the United
States. You do not have very long to respond if your enemy is about a
half hour away in terms of these ballistic missiles. The Russians came
very near to launching a major salvo of missiles with nuclear warheads
on them against our country. This was a very narrow brush with destiny
that tells us how important it is that we understand the potential of
these weapons and how they could be misunderstood by an enemy.
In 1997, I sat in a hearing here on Capitol Hill and General Marsh
was there. He was the general in charge of the President's Commission
on Critical Infrastructure. He was looking at the critical
infrastructure of our country and its vulnerability to enemy attack. I
asked him if he had looked at EMP. He said, yes, he did. Well? Well,
the commission thought there was not a high probability there would be
an EMP attack, so they had not considered it any further.
My observation to that was, Gee, if you have not already, I am sure
when you go home tonight you are going to cancel the fire insurance on
your home because there is not a very high probability that your home
will burn.
When you have an event like a potential fire in your home or an EMP
attack, which is a very high-impact, but low-probability, event, that
is just the kind of an event that you purchase insurance to protect you
from. It is unlikely to happen; but if it happened, it would be so
devastating you would need insurance to cover that.
Mr. Speaker, what we need is the equivalent in our country of the
insurance policy that you bought on your home. We need to make an
investment in the equivalent of an insurance policy so we will be able
to anticipate if we can survive an EMP attack.
{time} 2145
In 2001, we had some very interesting tests at Aberdeen with a
directed energy weapon that was put together. This was really
interesting, because we asked these engineers to put together the kind
of a weapon that terrorists might put together if they were buying
equipment only from Radio Shack. So they went to places like Radio
Shack and they bought the equipment and they put it together in this
van that could go down the street and it was kind of camouflaged so it
was not sure what it was and this directed energy weapon had the
ability to take out microelectronic equipment at considerable distance
from it.
In 2001 because of my concerns about the potential for EMP, I had put
in the authorization that year legislation that set up a commission to
look at this eventuality. The next chart shows the commissioners that
were on this. These are all very well known people. The first person
that heads the list there is Dr. Johnny Foster who is the father of
most of our modern nuclear weapons. He is the Edward Teller of today.
Another one of our commission members, Dr. Lowell Wood that I have
mentioned already, kind of inherited the mantle of Edward Teller. There
were several other people. They had nine people altogether. Dr. Bill
Graham who chaired it was the deputy chair of the emerging ballistic
missile threat that was chaired by Donald Rumsfeld before he was the
Secretary of Defense. Dr. Bill Graham has been the presidential science
adviser. He has held a lot of very high posts. He is really very well
known. Commissioner Richard Lawson was a USAF general, served on the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and was Deputy Commander in Chief of the U.S.-
European Command. The last member listed here, Dr. Joan Woodard, I had
a very interesting experience with her. I did not remember the names of
all the commission members and they had just been set up a little while
and I went out to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to visit my son who works
there in the laboratory. He brought home from the lab a little internal
report that they were passing around that indicated to me that they
might have some expertise at the lab there that would be useful in the
work of the commission. And so I asked to have a briefing on it and,
big surprise, Dr. Joan Woodard was one of the commissioners and she had
been working for several months and had a number of her staff working
with her and I had a 5-hour classified briefing on the potential
effects of EMP not just on our military because they were spending most
of their time on our national infrastructure. So we had this body of
real experts that was working for 2 years. Ordinarily a commission
works for 1 year. This one worked for 2 years and brought forth a big
report. They are still writing, I think, the third volume of this
report. They have now briefed the House, they have briefed the Senate,
they are briefing a lot of key people. A lot more people are now
knowing something about EMP and its potential effects.
What I want to do now in the next four charts, and we will look at
this next one now, I want to quote directly from the EMP commission
report. This is the EMP commission report that was Public Law 106-398,
title 14. This was the law that set up this commission and all of this
is from their report.
Over at the left of this chart, Mr. Speaker, you see the effects of
an extra-atmospheric detonation above our country and the concentric
circles there show the range that would be covered by detonations at
different altitudes. You see you need to get up about 300 miles high,
that is about 500 kilometers, before it covers all of the United
States. These are direct quotes from the commission:
EMP is one of a small number of threats--indeed, I do not know any
other threat--EMP is one of a small number of threats that may, one,
hold at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society. We
need to put that in everyday kitchen language, Mr. Speaker. What they
are saying is that this would end life as we know it in the United
States. Let me read it again in their carefully couched language: Hold
at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society. If, Mr.
Speaker, this EMP attack really did what Vladimir Lukin said it would
do and that is to shut down our power grid and our communications for 6
months or so, if the only person you could talk to is the person next
to you and the only way you could go anywhere was to walk, I think it
is very obvious that that would end life as we know it in this country.
Hold at risk, they say, the continued existence of today's U.S. civil
society. Also, it has the power to disrupt our military forces and our
ability to project military power. That is because, Mr. Speaker, for
the last decade, more than the last decade, we have been waiving EMP
hardening on almost all of our weapons systems. You see, when we had so
little money to buy weapons, particularly during the Clinton years when
they called it a build-down, I called it a teardown of the military, we
could get a few more percent weapons systems that cost somewhere
between 1 percent and 10 percent to harden, so you could get 1 percent
to 10 percent more weapons systems if you did not harden, and so they
just ran a calculated risk that we would not need the hardening. But,
Mr. Speaker, the time when we are really going to need these weapons is
when we are at war against a peer, and there will be a peer, a
resurgent Russia or a China of the future and the first thing they are
going to do, they say so in their writings, they say so in their war
games, the first thing they are going to do is an EMP laydown which
will then deny us the use of all of our military equipment which is not
hardened. I am not sure why we are building it, we do
[[Page H4892]]
not need it, to defeat countries like Iraq. We will really need it to
defeat a peer and if it is not hardened, then it will not be available
to us.
The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater than
during the Cold War. Yes, that is true. There was one then, the Soviet
Union. Now there are a whole bunch. Let us try Iran if it gets a
weapon, North Korea, India, Pakistan, a number of countries that are
today our friends, England and France and Israel and the list goes on.
Quotes again from the commission, not my quotes. Potential
adversaries are aware of the EMP's strategic attack option, obviously
from what Vladimir Lukin said and you can glean that from their
writings. The threat is not adequately addressed in U.S. national and
homeland security programs, and that is a gross understatement. It is
not only not adequately addressed, it is hardly addressed at all.
The second chart is again quotes from the EMP commission and we have
redacted some names here. I am not sure the Russian generals would want
the world to know who they were, but these are the two Russian generals
that I mentioned. They claim that Russia has designed a super EMP
nuclear weapon capable of generating 200 kilovolts per meter. I cannot
tell you what we hardened to, but I can tell you that the Russian
generals believe that this is several times the level to which we have
hardened. Chinese, Russian, Pakistani scientists are working in North
Korea and could enable that country to develop an EMP weapon in the
near future. This is not my statement, Mr. Speaker. This is a direct
quote from the EMP commission.
The next chart shows additional quotes from the EMP commission.
States or terrorists may well calculate that using a nuclear weapon for
EMP attack offers the greatest utility. Indeed, if they had a single
weapon, taking out Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia,
Washington would have nowhere near the effect on our society as simply
taking out all of our computers.
EMP offers a bigger bang for the buck against U.S. military forces in
a regional conflict or a means of damaging the U.S. homeland. Again,
these are not my words. These are quotes from the EMP commission.
This is a really interesting one. EMP may be less provocative of U.S.
massive retaliation compared to a nuclear attack on a U.S. city that
inflicts many prompt casualties. Even, Mr. Speaker, if we knew where it
came from, if all they have done is take out our computers, are we
justified in incinerating their grandmothers and their babies? Maybe we
should respond in kind and take out all the computers in North Korea. I
doubt that very few people in North Korea would care that we took out
all their computers. This, Mr. Speaker, is really a very asymmetric
attack because if we responded in kind, there are none of our enemies
that are anywhere near as vulnerable as we are and some of them could
hardly care less if we took out their computers and the few that the
military has could easily be hardened if they were anticipating that
they might need them hardened.
Strategically and politically, an EMP attack can threaten entire
regional or national infrastructures that are vital to U.S. military
strength and societal survival, challenge the integrity of allied
regional coalitions, and pose an asymmetrical threat more dangerous to
the high-tech West than to rogue states. Indeed, if we responded in
kind, it would really be an asymmetric attack, because they would be
little affected by taking out their computers since they little depend
on their computers.
Technically and operationally, EMP attacks can compensate for
deficiencies in missile accuracy, fusing, range, reentry. Suppose they
are really lousy in the kind of missiles they have, their aim is very
poor. If they missed the target by 100 miles, Mr. Speaker, it really
does not matter. One hundred miles is as pretty much as good as a dead
hit because 100 miles away really will not make that much difference in
the very large areas that are covered by this EMP attack.
Terrorists could steal, purchase or be provided a nuclear weapon for
an EMP attack against the United States simply by launching a primitive
Scud missile off a freighter near our shores. We would have, Mr.
Speaker, 3 or 4 minutes' notice. Scud missiles can be purchased on the
world market today for less than $100,000. Al Qaeda is estimated to own
about 80 freighters. So what they need is $100,000 to buy a Scud
missile and a crude nuclear weapon that who knows where they might get
that. Maybe some Russian scientist who has not been paid for 4 or 5
years.
Certain types of low-yield weapons can generate potentially
catastrophic EMP effects. These are the enhanced EMP weapons that the
Soviets, the Russians, have developed. Mr. Speaker, we have every
reason to believe that these secrets are now held by China. There is no
reason to entertain the thought that they do not have these secrets.
And if China has them, who else has them? I think the safest thing to
assume is that any potential enemy has them.
The last chart from the commission shows a very interesting little
schematic on the right which shows the interrelationships of our very
complex infrastructure. This was commented on a number of years ago by
a scientist at Cal Tech who held a series of seminars called The Next
100 Years. He was theorizing, could we indeed recover from something,
he did not know about EMP, so he was talking about a nuclear war,
because he noted that we had developed a very interconnected,
complicated infrastructure where one part depended on another part and
we developed that from a base of high quality, readily available raw
materials, oil that almost oozed out of the ground at Oil City,
Pennsylvania, coal that was exposed by a heavy rain when the dirt was
washed off, iron ore in the central part of our country that was such
high quality that you could almost smelt it in a backyard smelter.
Indeed, there is one of those, you can drive up and see it just south
of Thurmont on Route 15. It is called Catoctin Furnace and they denuded
the hills up there to produce coke to make iron there. You see here a
very interrelated infrastructure. The point they are making is that if
one part of that comes down, suppose you do not have electric power,
they have not drawn all the arrows they should have drawn because you
are not going to have oil or gas, you are not going to have
communications, you are not going to have water, you are not going to
have banking or finance, you are not going to have government services,
you are not going to have emergency services, you are not going to have
transportation without electricity. So if you take down just that one
thing, everything comes down. Of course, if you do not have any banking
services, pretty soon everything will grind to a halt because they will
not have the finances to keep the thing going.
One or a few high altitude nuclear detonations can produce EMPs
simultaneously over wide geographic areas. Again, I am quoting from the
commission. Unprecedented catastrophic failure of our electronics-
dependent infrastructure could result. I think that you should almost
put the verb in there, Mr. Speaker, would result. You may have noted in
the paper just today, I think, or yesterday, there was an account that
we almost had another big blackout, just almost tripped that big
blackout and there is no catastrophic insult like an EMP laydown to
cause that. Power, energy, transport, telecom and financial systems are
particularly vulnerable and interdependent. We just talked about that,
very vulnerable, lots of computers, very interdependent. One goes down
and they all come down. EMP disruption of these sectors could cause
large scale infrastructure failures for all aspects of the Nation's
life.
{time} 2200
Both civilian and military capabilities depend on these
infrastructures. Without adequate protection, recovery could be
prolonged months to years.
What would happen if that was prolonged months to years?
Increased dependence on advanced electronic systems results in the
potential for an increased EMP vulnerability of our technologically
advanced forces, making EMP probably the most attractive asymmetric
weapon. EMP threatens the ability of the United States and Western
nations to project influence and military power. We could be easily
blackmailed by a country that has the
[[Page H4893]]
ability to produce an EMP laydown if we are not prepared to protect
ourselves from it.
Degradation of the infrastructures could have irreversible effects on
the country's ability to support its population, and this one brief
three-word sentence, ``millions could die.'' That is what Dr. Lowell
Wood said when I asked him how could the technology of a century ago
support our present population and its distribution. And his
unemotional answer was, ``Yes, I know. The population will shrink until
it can be supported by the technology.'' That shrink could easily,
easily, Mr. Speaker, be in the millions or hundreds of millions of
people.
There are two other charts that I want to show the Members, and this
is what other people are saying. This is from an op-ed piece by Senator
John Kyl, and I am delighted that Senator Kyl is helping with spreading
the word about this and the caution that we really need to be doing
something. This was in The Washington Post, and he says: ``Last week
the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology
and Homeland Security, which I chair,'' this was John Kyl, ``held a
hearing on a major threat to the United States not only from terrorists
but from rogue nations like North Korea. An electromagnetic pulse, EMP,
attack is one of only a few ways that America could be essentially
defeated by our enemies, terrorists or otherwise. Few if any people
would die right away, but the long-term loss of electricity would
essentially bring our society to a halt. Few can conceive of the
possibility that terrorists could bring American society to its knees
by knocking out our power supply from several miles in the atmosphere,
but this time we have been warned and we better be prepared.'' And this
is his comment.
Another comment here, and this is from the Washington Times and just
a couple of brief paragraphs here. This is from Major Franz Gayl: ``The
impact of EMP is asymmetric in relation to our adversaries. The less
developed societies of North Korea, Iran, and other potential EMP
attack perpetrators are less electronically dependent and less
specialized while more capable of continued functionality in the
absence of modern convenience.''
That is an easy way to say they are not dependent upon computers like
we are and we would suffer a whole lot more than them. And then in the
next paragraph he pointed out that because of our enormous complexity,
how technologically developed we are, that our great strength has
become potentially our great weakness when we are talking about EMP.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to close with some observations.
Again, from the commission's report, the EMP threat is one of a few
potentially catastrophic threats to the United States. By taking
action, the EMP threat can be reduced to manageable levels.
I would like to say, Mr. Speaker, that the EMP Commission report is
really a good-news story. One would not think it was good news pointing
out how very vulnerable we are, but the good news is that we now know
how vulnerable we are, and we know that this is fixable; and it is
fixable for far, far less cost than the Iraq war. We just need, Mr.
Speaker, to do it. It is not going to happen overnight. It is going to
happen quicker in our military than in our private sector because we
turn over our weapons programs quicker than we turn over our big
transformers and our power grid and so forth. But we can little by
little, year by year, fix our national infrastructure and fix our
military so that we are not as vulnerable.
Mr. Speaker, being vulnerable like this, and I pointed out comments
from the writings of a number of our potential enemies, it is not that
they do not know this. Not one person in 50 in the United States will
know it, but it is very obvious that all of our potential enemies know
about this. Our very vulnerability invites that attack. Because we are
so vulnerable, because it is so asymmetric, we invite that attack. Mr.
Speaker, we need to do everything we can to lessen the probability of
attack. And the longer we go unprotected from EMP, the more we invite
this attack and the more vulnerable we are. U.S. strategy to address
the EMP threat should balance prevention, preparation, protection, and
recovery.
We have been talking primarily, Mr. Speaker, about prevention, about
hardening, so that those pulses will not get through so that it will
not fry the equipment and our infrastructure can keep working. There
are a number of things we need to do in preparation.
One of the things we need to do is to have the equivalent of the old
civil defense. In our homeland security we really are not looking at
civil defense. Those who are my age and maybe a little younger but
mostly my age can very well remember all those fallout shelters, and
the young people may have noticed some of those rusting signs and
wondered what they were because there were fall-out shelters almost
everywhere a generation ago.
In the 1950s, IBM was lending their employees money interest-free to
build backyard shelters. We were expecting the potential of a bolt out
of the blue, that nuclear weapons would be rained down on us. And there
were brochures put out by the government telling us how to build a
fall-out shelter, what to put in the fall-out shelter, what we needed
to buy. EMP is not going to be anywhere near as hard to protect
ourselves against as a nuclear explosion and all that fall-out. But to
the extent that each of us and our families and our communities are
prepared for this, our country is going to be enormously stronger
should this happen to us.
And, Mr. Speaker, whether one is preparing for an EMP attack or for a
terrorist attack or anything that disrupts our usual economy, we have
about 3 days' supply of food in any one of our big cities. If the
trucks do not keep coming, the supermarket may be open 24 hours a day,
but when we are in there, Mr. Speaker, we are going to see that as we
are taking it off the shelf, they are stocking the shelves. This goes
on continually because there are only about 3 days of food. What would
happen if our trucks could not run? What would our cities do after
those 3 days after the food was gone? It is very easy, Mr. Speaker, to
stock far more than 3 days of food in one's house.
A number of years ago, there was a very well-known economist by the
name of Howard Ruff. He had made some predictions about the stock
market that made him kind of an icon in his day, and people would come
to him for advice. And a very interesting story, when they came with
their money and said, How should we invest our money Mr. Ruff, he would
say, Do you have a year's supply of food for your family? They would
say, No. He would say, If you do not have a year's supply of food for
your family, you do not have any money to invest. The first thing you
need to do is buy a year's supply of food for your family, and then
come back and we will talk about how to invest the rest of your money
because that is the best investment that you need to make.
They would come back, and he would say, You have a year's supply of
food?
Yes, sir.
Well, he said, do you have a bag of silver?
A bag of silver is a bag of junk silver and one may do something else
but they need the equivalent of this. That is junk silver. It is silver
that has no numanistic value, and it is in bags that are sealed and
they have a $1,000 face value. He said, Unless you have a bag of silver
for each member of your family, you have not made the second most
important investment you could make; so go buy that and come back and
we will talk about what to do with the rest your money.
These are the kinds of things that Americans need to be thinking
about. What can they do, Mr. Speaker, what can their family do, what
can their church group do so that they are not going to be a liability
on the society should there be a terrorist attack that shuts down these
services or should there be a national EMP attack that shuts them down
all over our country? We can do something, Mr. Speaker, to prepare
ourselves so that we are going to have some sense that we can make it
through so that we are not going to be a liability on the system.
Let me show the last chart here now in our conclusion. The fiscal
year 2006 defense authorization bill contains a provision that extends
the EMP Commission's life to ensure that their recommendations will be
implemented. We want them watching to see what we are doing. We want
them to tell us and to tell the public. We are a representative
government here; and when our
[[Page H4894]]
people call in and say, Are you doing this, are you doing that, my wife
points out that if we do not represent our constituents, we will not
represent our constituents. So if the people across our country demand
that we be prepared, that we tell them how to be prepared themselves,
then we will do this.
The terrorists are looking for vulnerabilities to attack, and our
civilian infrastructure is particularly susceptible to this kind of an
attack. Our very vulnerability invites this attack. Mr. Speaker, we
obviously cannot do it yesterday. We certainty need to do it today and
tomorrow to begin to protect ourselves against it.
The Department of Homeland Security needs to identify critical
infrastructures. What are the first things, Mr. Speaker, that we need
to turn our attention to? Where would a minimal investment pay the
biggest dividends? And we need to have people studying this. The EMP
Commission has made a lot of very good suggestions. If we simply
followed those suggestions, we would be a long way to where we need to
be. The Department of Homeland Security also needs to develop a plan to
help citizens deal with such an attack should it occur, and then the
little note that our citizens need to become as self-sufficient as
possible.
Mr. Speaker, we have spent the better part of an hour talking about
something that one might expect to see in a science fiction movie or in
some magazine that is talking about the improbable. But what we are
talking about here is a very possible, and I think probable, event. It
is something that the American people have not been very much aware of.
We hope that this awareness, as the EMP Commission continues its work,
will be more widespread. We hope that the American people will respond
by doing two things: one, demanding that their government, that their
Representative make the right kinds of choices and appropriate the
right kinds of moneys to start on the path to developing a military
that is immune to EMP attacks and to, as quickly as possible, develop a
national infrastructure that will not collapse like a house of cards
with an EMP attack. And, also, I believe that our citizens will demand
that we tell them what they can do.
There is an interesting phenomenon, Mr. Speaker. If in anticipation
of a hurricane this fall, one goes to the grocery store now and stocks
up on some things that they need, they are going to be a patriot
because they are improving the economy. If they wait until the
hurricane is on its way and then they go to the store to stock up on
what they need, they are no longer a patriot. They are now a hoarder.
So exactly the same act is really a very good act or a very bad act
depending upon when they do it. If they buy it in long anticipation of
the event, they are now a real patriot. They are providing some
assurance that they will not be a liability and they are helping the
economy. If they wait until the threat is at their door and they now
buy it, now they are a hoarder and nobody wants a hoarder. So our
homeland security needs to help us to know what we need to do so that
we will be as self-sufficient as possible, an asset and not a
liability.
Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying that to be forewarned is to be
forearmed. I know that probably not even one in 50 Americans has ever
heard of EMP, but I will assure the Members that all of our potential
enemies know all about EMP. We see it in their writings. We see it in
their war games. And what we need to do, Mr. Speaker, is to proceed as
rapidly as we can to develop a military that is immune to EMP, to
develop an infrastructure that as quickly as possible will be less and
less damaged by EMP, and to provide each American citizen with the
information they need so that they, their family, their social club,
their church, as individuals, as families, as groups, can plan so that
they will be as self-sufficient as possible in whatever emergency
occurs.
And who knows what the terrorists might do to us. This is clearly the
most devastating, the most asymmetric attack that could be made on our
country; but there could be lesser ones that could for one's family,
one's locality be just as devastating as an EMP attack.
Mr. Speaker, I know the American people will respond and know when
our enemies see us responding that the risk of this kind of attack will
be immensurably lessened because the less vulnerable we are, the less
likely they are to attack.
____________________