Original subtitles

This week, I went to a meeting in Manhattan in the freezing cold.

But when I came out of that meeting, I was frozen.

Not from the bitter temperatures, but from fear.

I learned things that no one is talking about.

Things that can change my life, your life, and the lives of everyone you know

forever.

I started thinking about how fragile life is and how ill -prepared we are for

this.

The story I'm about to tell you is about the vulnerability of America's power

system, our grid.

And it's also about a series of forces and individuals who instead of doing the

right thing for you and me are interfering with the ability to protect

of life.

Who of us could ever envision a 9 -11 happening?

But the difference between 9 -11 and what I'm about to tell you is that we

This can happen.

The question is not will it happen, but when will it happen?

But Washington is doing little, if anything, to prevent it.

And the consequences, those consequences would be a million times worse than 9

-11.

One day you're enjoying the comforts of life.

The next, everything is different.

Civilization as you know it is gone.

the death toll would be staggering.

Even a blue ribbon congressional commission predicted a major catastrophe

mass American fatalities. And government studies prove an electromagnetic pulse

would destroy all electronics and the transformers that power everything,

anything, with an on -off switch.

Your hot water heater, your refrigerator, your dialysis machine.

Hospitals closed, grocery shelves empty, most of the food you have at home

spoiled. And forget about your bank account. What you have in your pocket is

you can access.

The disaster that I'm talking about can be unleashed naturally by an intense

solar flare or deliberately by an enemy detonating a nuclear weapon

in the Earth's atmosphere.

Now, the Earth is exposed to an intense solar flaring roughly every 150 years.

The last time it occurred was 1859.

Do the math. We're due.

Reports are that our grid has already been penetrated by our enemies, leaving

behind software programs that can compromise it.

Now, I'm not saying this to panic anyone.

But everyone, including our enemies, knows that an artificially created

electromagnetic pulse will shut down all power, which risks our survival.

What's even more frightening is that this can be prevented. But as with most

problems, greed, self -interest and politicians who care more about their

election than the American people and a total lack of leadership interfere.

with your safety.

Let's start with cyber.

Yes. You said that a cyber 9 -11 is not an if, but a when.

What would a cyber 9 -11 look like, and how soon could it happen?

It could happen imminently.

What would it look like? It could take many forms, but let me just give one

may come to mind, which is what happens when the electric grid goes down. We saw

that during Sandy, and you see how that impacts everything from the ability to

heat homes, to the ability to pump gasoline, to the ability to have

night, everything.

So when we look at the nation's critical infrastructure and where it is

vulnerable, one of the vulnerabilities is through the cyber and the networked

cyber world that we live in.

So we have been kind of...

Trying to get this word out, the Secretary of Defense has, I have, the

General has, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs has, saying, look, we shouldn't

until there is a 9 -11 in the cyber world. There are things we can and

doing right now that, if not prevent, would mitigate the extent of damage.

Defense has, I have, the Attorney General has, the Chair of the Joint

has, saying, look, we shouldn't wait until there is a 9 -11.

Chuck, right? I'd say, John, give us the power grid. But the bottom line is

this. I can give you the takeaway without the technology and the better

explanation John would give.

The bottom line is when the CME impacts the Earth's magnetic field, we're going

to have a reaction. There's going to be currents, electrical currents, developed

in our magnetosphere and ionosphere. They will manifest themselves right on

Earth. We'll have current induced on the ground that's going to find its way off

and into big conductors like the power grid.

pipelines, railway lines and whatnot.

And the bad news is this, folks, and it's the news there you'll see in that

bottom yellow box.

Perhaps the most vulnerable place in the world is the United States, the

northeastern part of the North American continent.

We have all the ingredients.

We have a very intricate power grid that acts like a big antenna. Obviously, we

need that.

We have the higher latitudes.

The geology is critical. How the current will flow to different types of rock

formations. Our position relative to another big conductor, salt water, the

ocean, all come into play.

In the recent Lloyd's report, Chuck, remember it said that the most

location in North America was the corridor between Washington, D .C. and

York City.

Not what you want to hear.

That is the reality, though, and we recognize, even with the moderate storms

get, that indeed it's those locations that do get impacted.

The nuclear power plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and up in New England

get impacted regularly.

Manageable. We just hope it is during the big one.

Thank you very much.

I think people are the most, the soldiers, the troops, I'm thinking the

response.

It's actually the carbon -based unit that's got to show up and actually go on

out there and do the recovery and so on and help his or her fellow citizens.

And that's where the long pole in the tent is because I said I wasn't going

I talked to a battalion commander who just got back from Iraq not long after I

did, and we were discussing EMP, and he's a local battalion commander in the

state of Pennsylvania, certainly won't mention his name, who said, I'm not even

going to go to the armory.

my men won't show up, I'll be home with my family where I belong.

And that came from a highly decorated Stryker Battalion commander.

And it really struck me then, this was about a year ago, right around the time

of the NDU exercise, and that's the way they're going to think. Unless you give

them some hope, give them some training, they think they're going into an

overwhelming environment.

I don't care if it's the National Guard, Army Reserve, General Purpose Forces,

or Soberny, you are going to go into an overwhelming environment.

An unknown environment, if you start training, make up scenarios, which

have been done a long time ago from the DHS and so on, should have been done a

long time ago. The 2008 EMP Commission report has been out for five years now.

What's been done?

That's what the troops need, the response forces.

All right. To ignore this when we haven't had a huge one for about 150

and they come about every 150 years on average, is sort of like being Dutch and

saying, Sea level rise? What's sea level rise?

Why would we want to build dikes?

Jim, can I ask you to elaborate? I think it would be helpful both for the

audience and for the people watching to elaborate on what specifically happens

in an EMP event in terms of in people's lives

what would happen as a direct consequence.

Well, the country has 18 critical infrastructures.

food, water, etc.

17 of them depend on electricity.

So if the electric grid goes, nothing else works.

Briefly, yeah, maybe you've got some, you were out of the line of sight and

you've got a few days worth of propane or

some way to store energy for a week or two.

But quite quickly, you find out that you can't get gasoline for your

generator because the pumps at the neighborhood gas station don't work

they're on the electric grid.

And so food stops being delivered after a few days.

Water, depending on how it's plugged in and connected, may shut down

immediately.

And by the way, all but one military base in the United States is on the

The exception is in California there's one geothermal base

that operates pretty much entirely on geothermal. Other than that, the

grid takes down the military bases.

Soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen are as hungry and thirsty as the

rest of us.

You're used to saying, well, you know, there's at least this residual

that can deal with this emergency and that emergency. Not with EMP.

Because the transformers from this third type of pulse I described, the

transformers are fried.

And the whole grid just doesn't work.

I think that it's something that...

Of course, no one's experienced it very briefly with power outages, but

nobody has experienced anything like this in human history.

And that's one of the things that makes it so hard for people to deal with.

Very few of us like thinking about how to deal with something that is so

horrible that...

It's just uncomfortable to cogitate about it and work on it.

But we've got to force ourselves to do that, or we leave

the grid vulnerable to this type of total and complete

breakdown.

The 90 % casualties, I think, are a perfectly reasonable assessment.

mention one other thing that people might not have thought of,

Our enemies on the other side of the earth like anniversaries.

And when this attack came against Metcalf on April 16th, that was the

day of the Boston Marathon, but it was...

The marathon was moved a couple of days for various reasons, but 18th of April,

of course, is the distinctive date. That was the beginning of the American

Revolution, Lexington and Concord.

It's a big holiday in Massachusetts, maybe not much in the rest of the

anymore.

But you want to keep an eye on anniversaries.

because they like doing things to us on days that are important to us, they

think, and ones that are symbolic to them.

And you also, I completely agree with Senator Cruz's statement about the

ridiculousness of saying Rahani and the rest of these guys are moderates because

they tweet or use Twitter or whatever.

Remember when Andropov came to power as the head of the KGB,

the Soviet Union, the General Secretary.

The press was absolutely jammed day after day after day with the fact that

drank scotch and liked to listen to jazz, and that meant he was a moderate.

The head of the KGB ordered the Pope's assassination on and on a moderate

because of the jazz and the scotch.

Are we and what steps are being taken to protect America's power grids?

Insight now from Frank Gavney, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for

Security Policy.

And we welcome you. Shouldn't authorities have said something earlier

terrorism? Why was that kept a secret for so long, Frank?

We've been treating as a dirty little secret something that unfortunately our

enemies know all too well, Bill, and that is that the electric grid that is

backbone of America's 21st century society is exceedingly vulnerable.

at the one end of the spectrum to this kind of very basic, fairly primitive

attack. And at the other end, and we were just talking with Senator Ted Cruz

former Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey about this on Capitol Hill,

a nuclear weapon detonated in space that could take down the entire grid,

possibly with just one blow. What is missing?

from this equation at the moment i think is a degree of transparency with the

american people about the dangers that disposes to all of us possibly life

ending for millions many millions and really even an existential threat to the

country as a whole

Homeland Security's stance is that it's up to the individual utilities to

protect these power grids. What do you think? Should they? Well, you know, you

have both sides pointing to the others, the outfit that ought to take care of

this. The utilities that are dominant in this space own...

what is it, 85 % or so of the power generation capabilities in the United

States, they think it's the government's responsibility if it's an attack.

They even think it's basically the government's responsibility if something

that is absolutely positively going to happen to us, Bill, takes place, namely

an intense solar flare.

exposes the Earth to this kind of electromagnetic energy and takes down

and possibly everybody else's. The truth of the matter is this is a national

problem. It has to be dealt with as a national problem.

I think probably the electric utilities and the ratepayers have a role to play,

but so does the government.

And if we don't get our hands around this, we're looking at the destruction

our nation inevitably. The last time one of these terrible solar storms happened

was 155 years ago. On average, they happen... happen every 150 years. So

it's not the vandals who are doing this, who are still at large by the way, then

this can happen through any number of other means and we are inviting it if we

don't take steps which we know how to do to protect the grid against this sort

of attack. Let's hope the fallout of this is a call to action on all that.

Frank, always good to see you. A year ago, the lights went out at the Super

in the third quarter for 34 minutes.

What if the power hadn't come back on? Our power grid, essential to our way of

life, can be compromised naturally or intentionally.

How can we stop it from happening?

With me, former CIA covert operative Mike Baker and retired military

intelligence officer for the U .S. Air Force and former NSA official Colonel

Cedric Layton. All right, good evening, gentlemen. Mike, after discussing the

dangers on the grid after last week's show, the website for practical...

BookPrepper .com, the gentleman that we had on, literally crashed after so many

viewers logged on for more information.

Are the fears justified?

Well, they are.

And then what happens is people hear the word prepper and everybody starts

rolling their eyes and they think of compounds.

The problem is we're talking about the world's largest and most complex power

generation and distribution system.

It's spread across the country at some 3 ,000 utilities.

It's got an aging infrastructure.

The utilities, states already spend an ungodly amount of money every year

to upgrade and improve the resiliency.

But by some estimates, you need to spend twice as much per year. to make this

thing happen. You've got to worry about, as you said, natural disasters. You've

got to worry about, you know, cybersecurity issues. You've got to

physical terrorism on these things.

And frankly, you know, we're becoming pretty squishy.

I mean, people go off the rails nowadays if their favorite flavoring at the

coffee shop is not available.

And so you can imagine, you know, you put the power down for three weeks and,

you know, you can pretty much put love thy neighbor out the window. Colonel

Layton, let me go to you. Mike mentioned something about, you know, cyber

threats. We've got this power grid and we've got it. Some people refer to it as

balkanized, but we've got.

A zillion local power companies that are in charge of their own area.

And then we have this organization that's over it called NERC as

well as FERC.

But what is the government doing to make sure that those local electric

companies comply with the requirements and the advancements in technology to

prevent us from a cyber attack?

Well, Judge, basically what they're doing is they're holding hearings and

a look at the way they're implementing their regulations.

They have crafted some regulations.

They did a lot of work up through 2012.

But none of this stuff has been promulgated in a way that actually makes

and in a way that actually can be used by the utilities in a coherent fashion

from A through Z that you can be assured that they will then protect their

consumers. So what we have here is basically a haphazard approach.

a balkanized utility system, like you said, but also a regulatory regime that

has not kept pace with the cyber threats and any of the other threats that are

out there. But, Cedric, look, you are in intelligence, and Michael, you as well,

and you're in the military, both of you. I mean, how could the United States

government allow this to happen? How could they not require those local

companies to comply, as opposed to having a hearing after a hearing, when

can literally hack? into our grid?

Well, I think part of the issue, Judge, is that they are really not quite sure

exactly what to do. And the other part is that we don't have coherent

cybersecurity legislation from the Congress.

And that has made a huge difference. There's no direction from the executive

that really impacts what the utilities are doing. There is direction when it

comes to government, but it doesn't really affect the utility part.

You know what, Cedric? I got to tell you that. Mike, go ahead.

No, I was just going to say, I mean, the colonel's spot on, but it's not as if,

I will say this, it's not as if the government isn't taking and hasn't been

taking for years, you know, very physical steps to try to improve the

of the system and to try to deal with this issue. They can't get a law passed

Congress. Michael, listen to me. They can't get a law on a committee. Idaho

National Laboratory.

I mean, not too far from where I am is the Idaho National Laboratory. They're

doing fantastic work in trying to deal with the control and data systems, which

are an integral part and a real key part of this in terms of whether it's

cybersecurity or just the problems that we face from natural disaster. Frankly,

our biggest issues come from weather and natural disaster concerns.

And then I'd argue that we're actually looking at more potential damage in the

short and medium term from physical terrorism as opposed to the

issue. All right. And so, but, you know, Mike, you just said Idaho.

You know, I'm asking what the federal government is doing because Idaho can't

control New Jersey with all due respect.

You know?

Well, no, again, my point being is that, yes, the colonel's right in the sense

that we're talking about regulation. We're talking about a very slow process

because the systems are in the hands of the states for the most part. Well, not

the states, the power companies.

Let's question to you, Colonel.

The military is on the same power grid as the rest of us. That's not too smart,

is it?

No, it's not. From an operational standpoint, if you're going to be

something, if you're going to be an adversary that's going to go after us,

are going to find our vulnerabilities.

And as Mike knows as well, what we're going to do from a targeting perspective

is go after those weakest areas.

When you go after the weakest areas, you pick things like the power grid to

actually find the vulnerabilities and to lay us low. And that's exactly what

they're going to try to do. They're going to try to create a situation where

are. without power for a long time over large stretches of the country.

Colonel, real fast, because I have another guest that we're coming up on.

Are we ready for this, Colonel?

No, no, we're not, Judge, not at all. All right, Mike, are we ready?

Yes or no?

No. No, there's a long ways to go before we're ready.

Fighting tirelessly to inform the American people of the very genuine

an electromagnetic pulse attack.

This could be one of the most catastrophic events we've ever seen and

ways would be even worse than a nuclear weapon in a single city because it could

literally paralyze the whole country.

It's a scientific fact. Virtually every physicist who's looked at it agrees it

is a real danger.

And we've learned recently that that danger is compounded because the sun

routinely produces waves that if they hit us at the right time and the right

strength, can basically create the equivalent of an electromagnetic pulse

attack. And it's pretty clear that that particular wave, if it hit today, with

the amount of smartphones and computers and electronics in our car, etc., would

be a disastrous event that would cause an enormous amount of damage and put us

in a very difficult situation. Solar flare that could have caused a

electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, barely missed Earth about two weeks ago,

according to a former member of the Congressional EMP Threat Commission.

Peter Vincent Fry, who served on that commission from 2001 to 2008, said that

the event, called a coronal mass ejection, could have inflicted damage

comparable to the 1859 Carrington Flare, which was so severe that it caused

telegraph lines in Europe and North America to melt.

We are only one act of madness away from a social cataclysm unlike anything our

country has ever known.

EMP is one of a small number of threats that could hold at risk the continued

existence... of U .S. civil society.

I want to think of that as a hurricane in space.

Just one violent active region on the sun can cause essentially continent

perhaps even planetary scale impacts to our critical infrastructure.

The likelihood of a severe geomagnetic event capable of crippling our electric

grid is 100%.

Good afternoon. My name is Frank Gaffney. I'm the president of the Center

Security Policy.

We are delighted to be sponsoring, on short notice, but I think a very timely

and topical presentation by several of the people who I think are most

knowledgeable about and certainly most effective in communicating about

the threat that is known as electromagnetic pulse, or EMP.

and the various ways in which that pulse could afflict a nation like the United

States, either man -caused or naturally occurring, and the repercussions of

such an affliction.

We're going to talk a bit about a very important and somewhat unexpected,

but not unanticipated, development in the past few days.

that bears directly upon the man -caused piece of the problem, namely the

interception in Panama of a vessel, a North Korean

operation that had in its hold

some weaponry that might bear directly upon

the threat of man -caused nuclear weapons.

We'll be going through them.

One of the nightmare scenarios the Congressional EMP Commission had was the

possibility of a rogue state or terrorist group, and they specifically

considered both Iran and North Korea when examining this threat, making an

attack against the United States by launching a primitive missile off of a

freighter near the U .S. coast.

What is an electromagnetic pulse?

Think of it as super lightning, except its effects, instead of being on an

on a point, can be in an area. When you detonate a nuclear weapon at high

altitude, at 30 kilometers or more, it generates a super energetic radio wave

that will destroy electronics, potentially across a continental -sized

the altitude is high enough.

But even at the relatively lower altitudes, it basically can cause

destruction of the electric grid and all the critical infrastructures that

depend upon that.

Communications, transportation, food, and water, the things that sustain our

modern civilization and life itself, would collapse in the aftermath of an

nuclear attack.

This can also be caused by the sun, by a solar flare that can generate something

very similar to a nuclear EMP.

Now, why are we here today? Because of our particular concerns about the North

Korean freighter that was intercepted in Panama, the Chong Chong gang.

You know, this North Korean flag freighter with the North Korean crew,

resisted. the boarding of it by the Panamanian authorities, and the captain

attempted suicide rather than being boarded, on preliminary examination, and

whole vessel hasn't been examined yet. They've only examined one cargo hold,

20%, and have already found two SA -2 missiles.

These are admittedly old surfaced air missiles, but they were designed to

both conventional and nuclear warheads.

They also have...

are high -altitude missiles.

They were used back in the 60s to take down Gary Francis Powers during the U -2

incident. They can reach an altitude of 20 to 35 kilometers, so they can reach

the altitude for an EMP attack.

They've got a slant range of about 40 miles, which means you could take a

missile like this, put it in a freighter, stand off the coast, outside

international territorial waters, and put an EMP attack over some place like

York City or Baltimore.

The area of effect would reach 60 miles inland.

and probably collapse the eastern electric grid, which generates 70 % of

electric power of the United States, which would have catastrophic

The Congressional EMP Commission estimated that an attack like this,

current state of unpreparedness, could kill up to 90 % of the American

population within a year from starvation, disease, and societal

It's basically a high -tech means of killing people the old -fashioned way.

purpose of the North Korean freighter was to do an EMP attack or even that

were practicing this. In fact, they probably weren't. But it's extremely

disturbing to find that we didn't even know that a freighter of a rogue state

like North Korea, actually had nuclear -capable missiles in its hold, two of

them, and there were other dismantled parts within that hold, and we didn't

know about it. The Panamanians didn't stop them because they had direct

knowledge of these missiles. They stopped them because the Chongchon gang

history of carrying drugs and arms to criminal organizations, and they

apparently thought that they were going to find drugs aboard. Instead, they

found...

in effect, what could be a delivery system for a weapon of mass destruction.

So it should give us pause that we have this sort of activity going on in our

backyard, the Caribbean.

these visits by North Korea and by Iranian freighters. The countries like

Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba happen all the time, and we don't know what's

going on. So it makes much more plausible the nightmare scenario that

Commission raised, which is this idea of a foreign -flagged vessel, a freighter,

rogue states or terrorists conducting a nuclear EMP attack that would have

catastrophic consequences for the United States.

I mean, everything was there except the nuclear weapons on the missile.

Another thing I want to point out is, and I'm amazed at how little reported

incident has been in the press.

You know, in fact, I only learned about it myself this morning.

But on April 16th, an armed gang attacked a

farm of Transformers in San Jose, California with AK -47s and tried to

out. They damaged five of the Transformers. This made the local press.

Didn't make much of the national news, didn't make any as far as I can tell.

And initially the local sheriff reported it as a sabotage attempt against these

transformers. Subsequently, the reporting has toned it down that it was

vandalism with AK -47s. None of the transformers were destroyed, but five of

them were damaged.

And this alone was sufficient to cause them to put people on, to call for

reduced electrical use in the San Jose area because of the damaged

Now, if you put this together with what's been happening to our country,

know, massive cyber attacks against our computer systems.

Now you've got an armed gang, you know, of some sort that made this attempt

against these transformers, you know, a physical sabotage attempt, and now a

freighter carrying nuclear -capable missiles off of our coasts. You know,

the things the commission found that's very important and that hasn't been

widely understood by people, but people like R. James Woolsey in congressional

testimony have been trying to educate policymakers to this fact, is that cyber

warfare, cyber warfare.

in the doctrines of countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran is

just about computer viruses.

Their doctrine includes physical attacks like sabotage attempts against

transformers and critical parts and all the way up to nuclear EMP attack. That

is considered part of cyber warfare doctrine by these guys.

I think I would like to see the press, instead of maybe cooperating with an

administration that seems to think the war on terrorism is over, to ask...

Is there some larger significance to all of these seemingly unconnected events,

these computer massive cyber attacks, this recent attempt at sabotage, the

discovery of this freighter with these missiles? Is it possible that dry runs

are being made for a larger operation, for an all -out cyber offensive that

would include all of these elements, computer viruses, sabotage against

freighters, finally an EMP nuclear attack?

You know, we see these things happening all around us, and yet nobody's asking

Jay Carney, you know, what does the president think about the significance

these missiles and this freighter or this attempt on these transformers in

California? A recent Lloyds of London study, not looking at nuclear MP attack,

just looking at geographic storms, you know, estimated that if only 10 to 20

transformers were destroyed, in the Baltimore, Washington area, 10 to 20

Transformers, it would put 40 to 80 million Americans in blackout, possibly

two years, for two years, just from the loss of 10 to 20 Transformers. These

guys with AK -47s tried to attack 10 Transformers.

I think we've got some questions here for Janet Napolitano and others in the

Department of Homeland Security about what are they going to do to protect.

the Transformers. I'll probably take up more of my time. I'll leave others to

talk about what to do about it. It's a very important groundwork, though,

Thank you very much. Thank you, Frank.

To talk a little bit more about the specific threat that Peter has

described and that the EMP Commission considered sufficiently serious

to recommend be addressed as a matter of utmost importance to the nation.

From the South, we're very pleased to have with us Dr.

Hank Cooper. Ambassador Cooper, among many other distinguished roles in our

country's government, served as the director of the Strategic Defense

under President George Herbert Walker Bush.

He knows a lot about both missile threats and the state

of our capabilities to both discern them,

and to correct or counter them.

He is, as they say, a rocket scientist.

I'm very pleased to have him with us.

Thanks, Frank.

I want to add just a point or two to what Peter said.

The Lloyds of London also, in reports I saw, indicated that this particular

vessel earlier this year had made stops in Russia and in China.

And in my mind, the whole incident points to what I refer to as a cacophony

proliferation. And while we focused on North Korea, North Korea and Iran are

colleagues cooperating on nuclear testing and on ballistic missiles. And

both launch satellites, have launched in the past year, satellites over the

South Pole.

which, if they were carrying a nuclear weapon, were at just about the right

altitude to be detonated over the center of the United States and potentially

knock out the entire electric grid.

So in the case of North Korea, perhaps our historic approach to things might

deter them. Some might argue that.

But in the case of Iran, we know they're ideologically committed.

to not only the destruction of Israel, the little Satan, but also the United

States, the great Satan. And there's a serious question as to whether or not

leaders of Iran would back away, and I'm assuming others will talk more about

Iran, on the basis of being concerned about nuclear retaliation, if they could

kill hundreds of millions of Americans, which is what is at stake with this EMP

threat.

Next, we're very pleased to have with us, though we weren't entirely sure he

going to be able to make it, but through superhuman effort, as we expect from

him, Michael Del Rosso has indeed joined our panel.

Michael is a man with a deep knowledge of technology and information technology

in particular, having worked with Fortune 500 companies in the past in

developing their capabilities and understanding threats to their

information technology.

Among other distinctions, Michael Del Rosso worked with Peter Pry on the EMP

Threat Commission, and he served formally as the chairman of the

very important committee on

critical infrastructure protection.

of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the USA.

He is a fellow, I'm delighted to say, senior fellow of the Center for Security

Policy and also the Claremont Institute.

And we've asked Michael to just flesh out, in addition to these various man

-induced electromagnetic pulse threats, a naturally occurring phenomenon and

what it might in turn mean for our critical infrastructure and our society.

Michael. Welcome.

Thank you.

of a coronal mass ejection where large amounts of plasma, or the corona of the

sun, are ejected. And if they hit the Earth's geomagnetic field, they produce

significant electromagnetic pulse.

And the first time this was observed on a large scale was in 1859 in a storm

known as the Carrington event, which a NASA report described as those who

witnessed this flare, that it electrified transmission cables of

lines. fires in telegraph offices and produce northern lights so bright that

people could read newspapers in the middle of the night by the red and green

glows of the aurora borealis which moved down toward the equator for days you

could send transmissions on telegraph lines without the batteries connected

had to be removed otherwise they they would catch fire if an event like that

happened today

it would probably bring down the entire grid. In fact, just last July, there was

a coronal mass ejection of a similar stature to the Carrington event that

the Earth by just one week.

It passed right through our orbit a week after the planet went through it. And

if it actually hit us, we'd have a much different conversation here right now.

There's been no less than five. Or no conversation right now. This would be

dead.

There's been no less than five blue ribbon commissions.

of the U .S. government that have looked at this and deem it to be a credible

event.

Just two and a half years ago in February, a number of colleagues all

co -submitted a petition to the Federal Electric Regulatory Commission and the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, led by Tom Popec, an engineer at the Foundation

for Resilient Societies. And we focused on just one.

specific issue in that petition.

We said, hey, there is a 1990 NERC memo that says if there was ever a prolonged

power outage from a geomagnetic storm, that the backup power that keeps the

spent fuel at nuclear reactors from overheating might not have the

maintain those cooling effects, and you would end up seeing

the spent fuel, which is not in containment, burst into flames and

great radiation disaster.

Well, a few weeks later, tragically, that's exactly what happened in Japan.

earthquake took down the primary grid, and a tsunami took down the backup

And the significant radiation leaks you saw and the explosion that took the roof

off the Fukushima power plant, which was just back in the news, that was not

the... power -generating reactors, which suffered damage but were in significant

containment vessels of multiple feet of concrete and steel, that was the

uncontained spent fuel.

Once the circulation, cooling water ceased, it boiled off. The zirconium

encrusting of the uranium hexafluoride fuel burst into flames.

It's an exothermic reaction. It's like a thermite bomb. You can't extinguish it.

And you have appreciable radiation leaks that... I've seen estimates that the

cost of it is north of $250 billion.

Now, meanwhile, the resiliency of adding resiliency to those power backup

generators for tsunami is really an insignificant amount.

And, in fact, there's monuments throughout Japan on hillsides that are

old that warn don't build houses lower than this. So with a little prudence,

someone might have said perhaps we should make these a bit more resilient.

Likewise, if there was ever an appreciable.

outage, which a geomagnetic storm would produce, you'd have a very critical

situation at the 60 or so sites where they spend fuel from the 104 operational

nuclear reactors are currently stored without containment in the United

The cost estimates, there was a National Academy of Science study, and it was

looking at the effects.

of a geomagnetic storm that was one -tenth of a Carrington event, which the

time one occurred was 154 years ago.

And by the way, they think the period of occurrence of this is anywhere from 150

to up to 300 or 500 years. So we're actually in the window where the best

science available says you run a probability of about a percent a year of

a similar event.

Well, they looked at a 1921 geomagnetic storm for which we have more data.

that at the time took down all the electric switching systems of the Penn

Central Railroad, amongst other things. And they felt that in their estimates

that you would have an expense of up to $2 trillion in the first year alone to

remediate the damage.

that would be caused by this, and you'd have prolonged outages from four to ten

years. And you'd have tens of millions of people without power. And you could

say you cannot have tens or hundreds of millions of people without power for an

extended period of time without expecting millions of deaths.

In fact, when Dr.

Graham testified, he was the chairman of the EMP Commission and, in fact, was

President Ronald Reagan's science advisor.

EMP lay down occurs and takes the grid and the associated electronics down, in

the first 12 to 18 months from probation, the lack of all the

that is electronic and electrical in nature, you'd have hundreds of millions

deaths in the United States because you wouldn't be able to sustain the

population.

So in the short run, just a threat from a geomagnetic storm, which can occur

tomorrow, which is not based on any human intent.

It's just a fact of nature. And as I said, no less than five official

studies say it's a probable event. And in fact, the recent Lloyds of London

study, Independent, said that it's almost inevitable.

and that the outages would be substantial, take years to repair.

Now, one of the things to note, too, is that the reason why it would cause such

damage is because there's a North American bulk transmission system across

United States that has from 500 to 1 ,000, however you want to categorize

large transformers. The United States...

manufacturers less than 20 % of the transformers that they need to support.

the ongoing maintenance and sustainment of this bulk transmission grid. So over

80 % come from foreign sources. The lead time is one to two years to get a

replacement transformer.

There's high -quality copper and steel that needs to be manufactured at lead

times, and they weigh up to 400 tons. So on a good day, it's a logistical

problem to replace them. A bad critical transformer from something that the

National Academy of Sciences says would cost trillions of dollars to repair.

replace over periods of years.

And it's inexcusable that the maintainers of this infrastructure, let

the Department of Homeland Security, which is statutorily responsible for

protecting the critical infrastructure, has taken no action on this. We recently

had a stimulus package of $865 billion, with a B, that included such...

efforts as building tunnels under highways for turtles, but for a mere

of a percent, that money could have been allocated if the people whose job it

was, the people who actually draw a paycheck and are responsible for keeping

safe, did something about it. And these people, as the public is aware, have

been giving all of these reports from these five Blue Ribbon Commissions.

They've been giving specific recommendations from the EMP Commission

Department of Homeland Security has, and they've not acted on a single one of

them. And so right now there's legislation that Representative Trent

introduced about a month ago, H .R.

2417, the SHIELD Act, that would start the process of actually having,

empowering the FERC to take a look at the national grid and to take the steps

necessary to secure it. And it's inexcusable for a nation with the wealth

the economy that we have that the insignificant funds necessary to protect

has been deemed inevitable are not being expended to keep the population.

Michael,

thank you very much. You've given us the perfect segue to our next speaker,

Peter Husey.

Turning now to news here in the United States, Secretary of Homeland Security

Janet Napolitano has announced today that she will be stepping down from her

position.

I'm just going to give you a brief overview of where the effort stands in

to protect the nation from a nuclear natural electromagnetic pulse

You know, we're meeting here today on December 7, 2012, when the solar maximum

has commenced. Every 11 years, the thermonuclear cauldron that is the sun

a phase of heightened activity, hurling into space coronal mass ejections and

solar flares that could cause a geomagnetic superstorm on Earth with

catastrophic consequences for the inhabitants of our planet.

Most scientists estimate that a superstorm like the 1859 Carrington

about once every century.

If so, we are now 53 years overdue for another Carrington that would collapse

electric grids and the critical infrastructures that sustain modern

and the lives of billions worldwide.

Our luck may hold through the solar maximum, which shall last a year through

2013. No Carrington event or lesser natural EMP catastrophe may visit us

yet.

But our survival will be due to luck.

not to prudence or wise policy.

We are living on borrowed time.

Reports are surfacing from sources inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard

there are two more previously unknown underground facilities working on

weapons in Iran, that the program is more advanced than previously estimated,

and that Iran is now in the process of actually building nuclear warheads.

If these reports are even partially true, Iran may be within...

months of executing a nuclear MP attack against the United States.

When I left the CIA to work as professional staff on the House Armed

Committee in 1995, one of my first jobs was to help Congressman Roscoe Bartlett

educate policymakers and the public on the EMP threat and on the necessity of

protecting our nation.

To me, the threat was so clear, the consequences so grave, and the necessity

action so urgent that I thought we could pass a bill.

and a year to protect the nation from EMP, and then move on to other national

security issues.

Thirteen years later, at the end of 2008, when the EMP Commission delivered

final report and recommendations to the Congress, I thought there was still time

to protect the nation. The solar maximum was still four years distant.

Iran had not yet developed nuclear weapons. Surely I thought the Congress

now enact legislation to protect the critical infrastructures from EMP.

After all, historically, Congress has promptly implemented the recommendations

of other congressional commissions, or so I told myself in 2008.

Today in 2012, four years after the EMP Commission presented its plan to

Congress, 17 years since embarking on their crusade to make America safe from

EMP, we are still naked.

I have grown old witnessing Washington's ignorance and inertia conspire to make

the people vulnerable to the greatest threat to our civilization.

yet a threat that is easiest and least costly of solution.

As of December 2012, the National Electric Grid and other critical

infrastructures are still unprotected from EMP.

Not a single recommendation of the Congressional EMP Commission to

harden the critical infrastructures has been implemented.

Yet there is still hope. There may be time to act decisively to protect the

critical infrastructures.

before nature or man hurls the EMP hammer.

Given good planning, adequate resources, and the will to move quickly, much

could be accomplished even in one year.

For example, the 300 most important EHV transformers servicing our most populous

cities and the nuclear power reactors might be protected on an accelerated

basis.

And the year 2012 has seen some amazing progress toward national EMP

preparedness, even if it is as yet only paper progress.

President Obama's Presidential Decision Directive 8 has, for the first time, led

to the recognition in the Strategic National Risk Assessment, developed by

direction of the White House, of natural EMP from a geomagnetic superstorm as

one of the greatest threats for which the nation must prepare.

If President Obama invested some of his political leadership in the cause of EMP

preparedness, if he gave EMP protection the kind of financial and regulatory

support that he accords to climate change, the White House could get the

done and perhaps single -handedly save the nation.

President Obama's re -election could well be fortuitous for the cause of EMP

preparedness. The President already knows about the EMP threat, so he will

have to learn on the job.

President Obama's inherent skepticism about the claims of industry and his

greater trust in government expertise would serve well the cause of EMP

preparedness in our struggle with industry lobbyists and the NERC.

President Obama reportedly will try another round of government spending to

stimulate the economy and his repeatedly promised investment in infrastructure

projects. Any money spent on protecting critical infrastructures from EMP would

be money well spent.

As the second -term president, Obama can and probably will act boldly and to the

very limits of his authority to achieve his objectives.

Such a president is needed to rescue the American people from the looming EMP

catastrophe.

Congress in 2012 launched numerous initiatives designed to greatly advance

-military preparedness for EMP. At minimum, these raise consciousness and

greater conscientiousness in the departments and agencies of the U .S.

government. The Department of Defense in 2012 continued to harden military

systems against EMP. Although these hardening programs are intended for

warfighting purposes, they inherently make the DoD better able to help the

Department of Homeland Security recover the critical infrastructures and rescue

the American people in the aftermath of an EMP event.

During Hurricane Sandy, the Defense Department cooperated and made available

resources to prepare and recover from the hurricane to an unprecedented

Hopefully this is a new trend that will lead to the much greater and more

ambitious cooperation needed between DOD and DHS to achieve the necessary civil

-military preparedness for an EMP catastrophe.

The Department of Homeland Security in 2012, for the first time in a

congressional hearing, acknowledged its responsibility to protect the critical

infrastructures from a natural or nuclear EMP event.

As 2012 draws to a close, DHS is finally working on and may adopt a new national

planning scenario focused on EMP, one of the chief recommendations of the

Congressional EMP Commission.

All emergency preparedness, planning, training, and resource allocation at the

federal, state, and local levels is based on the national planning

The inclusion of a national planning scenario for EMP would be an enormous

forward.

In November 2012, the U .S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directed

electric power industry to develop a plan to protect the national electric

from natural EMP, including by hardening the grid.

Technical hardening of the grid from natural EMP would also provide some,

incomplete, protection against nuclear EMP.

Now in 2012, despite amazing progress toward EMP preparedness in the policy

realm, there were also severe defeats and setbacks.

The SHIELD Act, the single most important congressional initiative for

preparedness that would mandate protection of the national electric grid

of relying on the voluntary cooperation of industry, failed to pass.

Industry lobbyists managed to keep SHIELD bottled up in the House Energy

Commerce Committee.

Congressman Trent Fanks will reintroduce the SHIELD Act and fight for its

passage in the next Congress.

But now, SHIELD cannot pass in time to be of any use protecting the grid during

the solar maximum.

and perhaps not before Iran gets the bomb and the capability to make a

EMP attack.

Worse still, the champions of EMP preparedness in the Senate are retiring

will not return in 2013.

Senators John Kyle, Joe Lieberman, and Jim Webb will be gone in 2013, with no

one to take their place on the firing line, at least not yet.

The bad economy is crippling the EMP movement at the grassroots level. People

who fear for their jobs and the immediate welfare of their families must

generous donating their time and resources for political activism. Even

task force on national and homeland security, which is operated on a

basis with very little financial resources through 2012, may perish in

Worth Dill, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, who started the EMP movement and has

long been the national leader on EMP preparedness, lost his seat in the 2012

elections. Maryland Democrats gerrymandered Bartlett's seat, making

-election impossible.

Even though the EMP movement is on the brink of victory in the crucial campaign

for sound government policies, our losses in people may well cost us the

The EMP crusaders have never been numerous or well -funded. EMP

been a David versus Goliath struggle, pitting a handful of political leaders,

scientists, and grassroots activists, having virtually no resources,

against the twin Goliaths of government bureaucracy and industry having

virtually unlimited monies and armies of lobbyists.

In 2013, we EMP crusaders may come to our Alamo.

I will hope instead for our Thermopylae, or better yet, a Salamis.

And I hope fervently, fighting against fear and resignation, that our struggle

for national preparedness is not terminated by the sun or a nuclear

delivering upon us an EMP apocalypse.

And just briefly, I'm going to introduce them.

General Ken Krosniak, sir.

Thank you.

Ambassador Henry Cooper, who's been very active in this in many ways for many

years.

General Robert Newman, sir.

And, of course, you've heard Paul Stockton.

And Captain James Turbush, sir. Thank you very much. And with that, I'm going

turn it over, and I think we're going to start.

right over here with General Krosniak.

Thank you, sir.

Especially, it's great to be, it's a real honor to be up here with the panel

that's here, especially with my idol, Dr. Stockton, over here.

I remember he came to the Army War College as a DDE class of 2012 and gave

23rd of July, I remember it said, I have your speech memorized, when you said

that EMP keeps you awake at night.

I mean, Secretary Panetta had asked you to come over there and talk about the

Title X, Title 32, and New Madrid Fault, and so on.

And that really perked our interest quite a bit at the Army War College

it raised it to a different level with our commandant.

The bottom line up front, I was asked to talk about EMP preparedness for the

military or survival. And I agree with Dr. Stockton that response is the big,

that's the long pole in the tent, to use a military term.

And for emergency or regional catastrophes, and there are

owned a bar in New Orleans, it's a catastrophe when it was underwater.

But it's a regional catastrophe.

The U .S. military is admirably prepared to do that. We have well -trained,

staffed exercise plans with NORTHCOM, R -NORTH, National Guard Bureau.

They do a very excellent job, and we've seen that.

However, the military is not prepared for a catastrophic, a cataclysmic event

such as if it reaches that level that we just saw a few moments ago.

An albisa is a maximum -maximum complex catastrophe, whatever you might call it,

but I call it a cataclysmic event, almost a tragedy.

But as Dr. Sotner said, we can attack this elephant and bite it off bite by

and actually walk it down to the base and mitigate as much as possible. You're

not going to mitigate everything, but you can, like Congressman Frank said,

can take it in small bites now and hopefully have some impact to save.

going to lose a lot of lives anyway, but save some lives, quite a few.

I'll focus on three areas quickly.

With my few years of military service,

I've noticed that the most important things that I've picked up in my few

of study of this, not as much as the other gentlemen here have been studying

is basically on troops, training, and communications.

First one is troops.

You need people. You need people identified. You need them trained and so

And we do not have military personnel right now.

Probably within NORTHCOM, within R -North and so on, we have wonderful

forces, you know, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear -enhanced forces

out there that are very good at what they do.

The State Adjutant Generals, General Newman had the Human Home

Response Forces and so on, and they're excellently trained if they can get out

the front gate.

But there aren't that many of them. What you're eventually going to need when,

as Dr. Stockton said one time,

When the state governor calls FEMA and says, send us all you've got, and the

state, well, they send them everything they've got.

And then the FEMA director, Craig Duguay, contacts the president. The

calls the SECDEF and said, send me everything you've got.

Eventually, we're going to need general purpose forces.

General purpose forces will not be trained to go into this no -notice

game. Some of you have been on some football and baseball teams when you

younger. It's a little pickup game, but you have to have what I call training

now. You have to be able to at least acclimate and make these forces aware of

what kind of environment they're going to be going into.

Now, the Soberny forces are trained for this, and some of the home response

forces are trained, but you're going to have untrained military forces going

into multiple regions, not just one region, but maybe all ten regions, maybe

four or five regions. But what do you do in the military?

You always plan.

Worst case situation.

So all 10 FEMA regions are involved. Let's just say it's a cascading effect

the National Geographic blackout.

All regions, all at the same time, over vast urban and suburban areas, multiple

jurisdictions for a very long, prolonged period of time, maneuvering within a

humanitarian disaster environment with overwhelming mass casualty, graze

registration, sanitation, medical needs, without the benefit of the defense

industrial base because you're going to need those critical...

just -in -time logistics providers and so on, to be able to bring products and

so on into the defense industrial base to be able to resupply the military,

resulting very little situational awareness, which is essential for the

GPS for those forces because your position, navigation, and timing, a lot

radios are synced to the GPS.

synchronization and so on, loss of air traffic control.

I can go on and on, but you see this all within a radiologic leak and hazmat

contaminated environment.

And being a first responder myself, a fire company and rescue and vice

of the ambulance company in Carlisle, small town, we still run 8 ,500 calls

even in that small town, but you're going to be overwhelmed.

And you have to be able to think as a military commander, you have to be able

think that in.

with FEMA.

And FEMA, Craig Fugate, about a year ago, put out a wonderful, I'll put it on

the, I'll give it to Chuck to put on the web. In fact, I was going to try to put

it on behind me, but I didn't want to take up too much time than I am already.

But he put out a wonderful scenario called Critical Communications During

After a Superstorm.

And basically, it boils down to this. After 30 days, even the plain old

telephone system, everything is down, except

those that are operated with HF, Mars, ham radio operators, and so on, as long

as you have power for your generator, you'll have HF line of sight. But we in

the military, we deal B -Lock.

Everything's beyond line of sight. It goes through satellites and so on.

And when Bill Murtaugh, we know you start discussing satellite scintillation

so on.

And I'm going to wrap it up. One more sentence. The other one was training.

If you can actually start training people, at least develop plans and

for a...

nationwide magnitude, of which we have no plans right now, and start exercising

them at least and get a lot of the smart minds in here to incorporate some of

their ideas on how we can at least respond and hopefully mitigate the loss

lives that are naturally going to occur anyway.

General, thank you very much.

Ambassador, Ambassador Cooper.

I want to link back to the first panel this morning just a little bit with what

I say.

I want to address two issues. One is the, I'll call it the threat from short

-range missiles off our coast, including from the south, as well as the

satellite launch that was mentioned by Jim Woolsey.

The good news, as far as I'm concerned, is the Senate.

If they get around to passing eventually the Defense Authorization Act, which is

under consideration now and is supposed to be passed in the next couple of

weeks, it will demand that the Secretary or instruct the Secretary of Defense to

come back with a program recommendation.

for how to improve the East Coast defense, including against threats from

South. And it's my belief that the Department of Defense, below the

is prepared to deal with this question. So many of the issues of concern I

believe DOD may address over the next year or so.

It's appalling to me that they've let it go this far without dealing with the

short -range threats since we've known about it for well over a decade.

And there are options.

There will be a lot of talk. You'll hear about needing a new site for missile

defense along the East Coast, extending all the way to Ohio is one of the places

being considered. I'll let you think about why that is.

And I just want to make an observation that the Aegis ships that we have

deployed, and last year a day at random would have found four to six operating

or in port along our east coast, have the inherent capability of shooting down

ICBMs that come at us over the North Pole.

We demonstrated that by shooting down a satellite in 2008, I believe it was.

So all that is needed is a radar up in Maine to make this happen. If you move

the one that exists, and I forget what Army base it is, to Maine, it would cost

like $20 million.

If you bought a new one, it would cost like $300 million.

A lot of money, but chump change in the broader scheme of things, and certainly

far less than building a new site, and we could overnight have defenses for

those of us who live along these coasts from threats from the north.

Our ships can also defend against short -range missiles if they're nearby, and

that is the case when they're in ports as well.

So it's a matter of training in that case, and the Navy can certainly provide

that capability if, in fact, they're called upon to do it.

The problem, a key problem, is that none of our ships operate in the Gulf of

Mexico, so we're wide open to threats from the south, whether they come from

vessels off the coast there or from Venezuela, which has ties, as you may

to Iran and other places.

And the other thing that was mentioned was the satellite threat.

If the Iranians or North Koreans choose to do it, they can overfly.

the range capability of the defense interceptors that we have, and we have

directed toward the south now, and the ships can provide interim capability for

that. We need, ultimately, I believe, space defenses to deal with that, but

that's years away for other reasons.

Enough said about those. The second issue I want to come back to is the

that was talked about.

by Ken at the end. I believe training is a key issue on the response side to

deal with this problem, and training beginning with the local responder

community. And I believe the cohesion that the National Guard can play,

including linked back to the missile defense world, where they man the sites,

you may know, in Alaska and some of the command centers around the country.

So the basic infrastructure exists within the National Guard that's linked

NORTHCOM and the federal level. And the Guard itself is made up, as you know, of

firemen and police and doctors and whomever when they're not in Middle East

wherever and they're working from home. So you have the inherent ability of

integrating the local responders within the Guard if we simply prepare.

and I believe training is needed. In South Carolina, I'm working with the

adjutant general there, who has been working for a number of years, and we

intend to put together an exercise.

If this meeting had been week after next, I could have told you a little

about the plan, but it's our intention to involve the inherent capabilities in

South Carolina and neighboring states.

perhaps extending to all of FEMA Region 4, which is headquartered, if you're

familiar, in Atlanta.

And with Bob Newman's help, who knows the Adjutant General of South Carolina,

maybe we'll come to Virginia and even Baltimore as we think about a scenario

to be included in one of the normal National Guard scenarios, Vigilant Guard

2015.

And it's my intention, at least, to encourage thinking between now and the

execution of that exercise with intermediate steps that can be taken to

train, to help train the community of people right now who have, maybe it's

zero understanding, but it's closer to zero than what is needed understanding

what they will be called upon to do if we have a blackout situation from any

number of threats.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much.

General Newman.

Thank you, Rich.

It was said by some famous American that all politics are local. Well, you've

heard it also said that all disasters are local.

And those of us that have experienced the need to bring disaster relief to our

fellow citizens understand the meaning of this.

First responders of what I call first responders of consequence, those people

that can bring a lot of stuff to help relieve an emergency situation, you're

talking about the National Guard.

Now, we're often guilty of assuming that everyone understands that the National

Guard is a dual -headed organization, and you hear terms like Title X and

32 thrown around. Let me simplify it for everyone so we're on a common sheet to

begin the discussion.

The National Guard has two commanders.

When mobilized under federal orders, their commander -in -chief is the

of each state or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or the territories.

We have 54 tags, 54 National Guard units.

In that capacity, in the Title 32 role, which is U .S. Code Title 32, the Guard

is funded for all its training, for all the equipment that it uses by the

federal government.

But it takes all that training that is used for the war fight.

To go to Afghanistan and Iraq or whatever a Title X mission, the

direct the Guard. It uses those capabilities, those trained resources,

guardsmen, airmen, and soldiers to do whatever the governor determines that

will do.

In the other role, and this is where most of us think we know the National

Guard, you'll see them in Afghanistan.

You'll hear about a Guard unit returning or one that's departing or one that's

serving over there. We think that the Guard is the reserve of our country, and

they're over there fighting.

the fight against the bad guys, and that's true.

But in this context and in the discussions we've had over the last two

think it's obvious that the National Guard can play an important role not

in preparing to defend against a catastrophic, or as Ken said, a

attack. Did I say that right?

Cataclysmic attack.

But also to help recover from one, which I think is the real challenge, as

Secretary Stockton was talking about.

I can tell you now that at least from my time, and I've been out of uniform for

three years now, the National Guard was not ready for this mission. We had not

planned. We had not trained. We had not exercised to the degree necessary to

handle a cataclysmic event. Now, sure, we had units that could do that, and we

had partnerships with other states through emergency assistance compacts.

partnerships with the United States Northern Command and others. But on an

individual basis, I can tell you that the guard was not there.

And we've seen how difficult it is on this mission of preparation for a

cataclysmic event, whether it's an EMP or a cyber attack, something that puts

out of normal society for more than 30 days, let's say.

The feds just don't seem to get it. Or, as Dr. Stocks has said, or maybe as Rich

or someone, you know, this is hard to do. Rich, I think you were talking about

that. There are a lot of...

A lot of cooks brewing this stew and a lot of people with money and power, and,

of course, that not only breeds conflict but an honest discussion with often few

resulting with seldom results in good success.

I like to suggest that the National Guard is one of the vehicles that this

should embrace to help us prepare for a cataclysmic event and then to respond

for one. Here are a few reasons why I think we should do that.

First of all, 90 % of the time the National Guard is under the command of

governors, and the governor is a powerful political elected leader.

He has immediate call -in to the president. He has immediate

regular discussions with our CODEL, congressional delegations, if you will,

senators and representatives from the state.

He has, through the National Guard, relationships with the Department of

Defense. He has, through his Homeland Security advisor,

relationships with DHS, and it goes on from there. And on the state level, he

has accessed a number of important agencies, such as his fire programs

his Department of Emergency Management, those people that actually plan and

operate the emergency forces during a disaster.

He can access these folks, sell his ideas, the necessity of a properly

defense and then response capability if he chooses to do so. I think that the

mission of this group should, through the Guard and through the governor, just

as Secretary Stockton suggested, to build from the bottom up the message

need to get out and prepare better and prepare our forces to respond.

And I think that if we take that away from our meetings here over the last two

days, we will have accomplished a great deal.

I'll conclude my remarks by saying that Ambassador Cooper and I are going to

visit with the Adjutants General at their February meeting here in

couple months from now, and we plan to discuss this to start the ball rolling.

And I think that from the response that I've received from the few tags with

whom I've spoken, there is a great recognition that this new mission needs

embraced more boldly than it has in the past, and I predict we'll have great

success. Thank you, Rachel.

General, you're what, 10 seconds old?

Take that out of Dr.

Stockett's room. All right, very well. Captain Trubush, sir.

Let's see if this works.

Well, great. First of all, I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you to Chuck Manto and InfraGard for inviting me today. Thanks also for

including me on such a distinguished panel.

I get to work at NORAD and United States NORTHCOM. I work in the Science and

Technology Directorate, and this is one of the projects I've had the opportunity

to spend a little time on.

I want to make three quick points today. Let's see, I have five minutes and ten

slides, so it should be a piece of cake. Okay.

Number one, the health consequences of these threats, EMP, solar

storms, and also cyber attack, are significant, and significant for health

because of the specific vulnerabilities that health -critical infrastructure,

that the public health and medical sector are subject to.

The health sector is not fully prepared, and we could go on with numerous

examples, but I think Superstorm Sandy will highlight particular health care

vulnerabilities and some lack of preparation.

And the third thing, the third very quick point that I hope to make, is that

both of these vulnerabilities require change to policy.

So non -material and material solutions. So changes to infrastructure, hardware,

if you will, alone are not going to do it.

So how did we get started? Well, in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins

Public Health and also the University of Pittsburgh Center for Health Security,

we wrote a couple of papers on this subject. And I will go ahead and make

reference to this.

a book by William Fortune, one second after I describe it as a terrible book,

but in the context of a terrifying, terrible book. And so it

had, and I'm a public health doctor by training, so it had three public health

scenarios through my reading.

The first one, of course, was the effects on people who are in hospital.

or in long -term care facilities, or rely specifically on life -saving

medication.

That group is the first to succumb to such an event or such an environment,

let me say. The second group had to do with considerable loss of life

with social unrest.

And the third had to do with society coming back to the carrying capacity of

land.

The first public health die -off, if you will, was of particular concern to me.

So I mentioned this collaboration with Johns Hopkins and UPMC, and we did a

literature review, and it turned out that there really has not been much.

written about this subject. The Millennium Bug was good for a few

then in 2003 there was also another article about health consequences of a

event. But really this is an unplowed field.

So many of you have seen this slide before. It talks about the

and interdependence.

of critical infrastructure.

I would highlight that both civilian and military capabilities rely upon these

infrastructures. And Dr. Stockton has made this point many times that over 90

of the services to military bases, and so that would be energy,

sewage, food, transportation, et cetera, et cetera, We rely upon

the civilian sector just like you do, and I would particularly also include

fact that our telecommunications, if you will, our IT backbone, we ride on

civilian infrastructure just like the rest of you.

A series of cascading failures could interrupt some mission -critical

of the military, and this was, in essence, the beginning of this project.

tried to link some of the mission -critical functions that our boss,

Jacoby, has here in the homeland, and that would include such things as...

force protection, and by extension, force health protection. Well, that gets

into where we in the medical business, if General Jacoby doesn't have healthy

troops to send in to respond to a disaster, there will be some lack. So

we improve the resiliency of military medical

facilities? That's the essence of this project.

So health is a mission -critical function.

And it turns out that military health care facilities are just as vulnerable

civilian ones.

This one shows there are 16 now, 16 critical infrastructure sectors. It was

mentioned earlier that they rely upon each other, but that health care and

public health is particularly reliant on power and

IT.

It turns out that the way we practice medicine now in the 21st century has

a long ways from even 20 years ago, and now particularly information technology

is embedded in pretty much everything we do in health and medical.

So these are some of the health consequences. And I'll run through this

very quickly, but, you know, there's a requirement now through the Affordable

Care Act that we do electronic medical records basically for all patient

encounters. The medical supply chain and the just -in -time delivery system is

absolutely reliant on web -based systems, pharmaceuticals likewise,

administration.

A friend of mine going to the hospital not too long ago and was asking for

immunizations, and she was told, I'm sorry, we can't give you your kids.

shots. Our computers are down.

So we are very reliant on this. Imaging lab results, certain medical equipment,

health communications, emergency responders, this was mentioned already,

increasingly technologically driven.

And finally, as you can imagine, a dark, hot hospital is a very

unsafe place to be.

So these consequences,

these health consequences may be mitigated.

Most hospitals have a power system. Most hospitals will have auxiliary power in

the form of generators.

But as we saw from Superstorm Sandy, they would tend not to last more than

three to five days if for no other reason than the requirement to refuel.

these systems also need to be maintained.

Longer term, these threats.

solar storm, cyber attack, and aging infrastructure.

And I'm glad to see that the EMP SIG also looks at other significant threats

which could bring down the grid, such as pandemic.

I have one last slide here. Let me just go ahead and say that military is not

immune.

We have some hardening, if you will, but definitely need collaboration,

cooperation, communication with the private sector, and transitioning of

these mitigating projects that we have started in the military to help

make bases more energy resilient.

are the way to go. So I'll leave it with public -private partnerships as the key

message. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

It's very difficult to have this many distinguished speakers talk about an

of this level of importance in the time allotted, but the good thing is that now

you have an opportunity to ask some questions.

So I would like to open this up.

If you have questions, please raise your hand.

Keep it brief so we can get as many questions in as we can.

Yes, as many as we can. And if you could say who the question is addressed to.

Yes, sir.

I'm Alan Roth, and it's addressed to whoever they have to answer this

But we talk so much of a disaster occurring based on, let's say, cyber

attack, EMT, and other things.

But I haven't heard much about multiple tacit attacks.

If China has infiltrated our infrastructure through the Internet

the way I've heard they have, and they're just waiting for the right time,

Wouldn't that right time be when we're having a heat wave or a deep freeze or a

major nor 'easter coming up the coast or other really bad things going on at the

same time?

How much planning, how much thought goes into your work that includes

this factor of having multiple things happening at the same time?

Alan, I think that's a very important consideration, and it's been taken into

account for some time. I believe it needs to be considered even further. So

you've mentioned the possibility that an adversary would have ample warning of a

storm approaching the United States, such as Sandy.

But I would say we also need to think about a combined arms attack.

That is the possibility that a cyber attack would be supported by a

kinetic attack with improvised explosive devices or some other kinetic means on

critical components of infrastructure.

To have those two events occur simultaneously could present exceptional

challenges rather than one threat vector alone.

I'd like to add the thought and to remind you that during the Cold War, we

worried about the Soviet Union attacking the United States. We planned,

literally, to deal with an EMP attack as a precursor attack on the United

States, basically with an attempt to shut down our ability to communicate

our strategic forces. And when I say our, I mean supporting the President's

decision.

We spent an awful lot of money on hardening that system against

pulse. We didn't spend a penny on hardening the critical infrastructures

support the Homeland Defense mission for a whole lot of other scenarios.

And I hope that the current Department of Defense continues to support the

testing and the...

surveys and all the rest that are assured to have maintained, needed to

a hardened system of communication and our strategic force.

But I have to tell you that we've shut down a lot of the testing vehicles that

we used during Cold War to save money or for whatever the other reasons are.

So I worry about whether or not we have maintained even the capability that we

worked enormously hard during the Cold War to achieve.

to deal with a precursor attack.

And as was stated here, if China or someone else is going to use this EMP,

you will, as the primary mechanism, I think you can surely count on cyber and

other activities as a prelude.

Okay, we have a question in the back here.

Frank Turner, I was wondering if the panel would comment, please, on we've

the perspective from DOD, we've heard from the states.

Can you talk a little bit about what you think your specific roles and

responsibilities would be, especially all the way from prevention to response,

and how you would pass command and control back and forth?

Sounds like a guard question, but I'm not sure.

Frank, I think the guard...

as I mentioned earlier, has the responsibility to plan for all

And this is a unique disaster that awaits us. So we need to do better

better interaction. The whole -of -government approach used in the OCONUS

discussions now has application to the states doing this. We need to train with

our fellow responders, whether it's at the federal level or at the state level.

And then we need to exercise to make sure that we can press to test and the

circuits are connected.

I think the key here is this is not business as usual. The events we're

discussing here over the last couple of days are events that are going to task.

perhaps not a state but the entire region, maybe even the entire country.

If we're not prepared for this insignificant training exercises, we're

going to be prepared to take it on when it actually happens. So I think we need

to have a different paradigm when we discuss these types of emergencies and

develop training exercises to ensure that we have the capabilities to do

Thank you, sir. And that's very true because the military...

It does really great at planning for the last war. You stay within your own

comfort level, like a good staff officer will.

But this is really thinking out of the box right now. So this will open a whole

new brain shift. That would be nice.

A whole new paradigm shift of planning.

So this is going to be unique, but it's got to come from the top down.

Or, like I always say as a combat engineer, the best way to take a bridge

of a bridge too far, I think.

The best way to take a bridge, according to Robert Redford, was to take both

ends at the same time.

You attack it from the senior leadership, the 30 ,000 -foot level, and

attack it from the tactical level of people, just an uprising within the

to contact their first responders and say, what are you doing, National Guard

unit commander, what are you doing to protect us from an EMP? What are you

doing? Then have it all go up through the FEMA fusion center and work its way

and work its way down.

We have a question in the middle of the room.

Don Donahue from the Diagenic Group and the American Board of Disaster Medicine.

Dr. Turbush, you touched upon health care and medicine.

And, you know, health care, there are hyper -logarithmic advances in

and there's federal policies that are basically pushing us.

It goes beyond critical infrastructure. It could be down to the individual, my

pacemaker. I don't have a pacemaker, but my pacemaker could be remotely

controlled.

I'd like a broader panel. How do we address that? How do we address it

very individual and broad -based technological challenge?

I can't protect my hospital. How do I protect the 10 ,000 people that I

Well,

thank you for that question.

There are numerous examples of medical equipment which are vulnerable to

hacking, if you will, cyber attack. Pacemaker, you mentioned.

The one example I would use is that Kaiser Permanente, that has a footprint

all over the country, bought some 8 ,000, I believe, IV pumps.

And it turns out that these new sophisticated IV pumps can be programmed

remotely from someone at a terminal and so on. Their IT security

person at Kaiser Permanente, to their credit, decided.

no, we're going to go ahead and instead fat -finger every one of those just to

obviate that possibility.

This comes under the area of cybercrime, and those are issues, but they tend to

be one -at -a -time issues or could be one -at -a -time issues. The more

significant thing is that medical equipment pretty much across the board

computer chip in it.

And if there was something such as an EMP,

or extreme solar weather that could affect a majority of those devices.