Ex-CIA Director: We're Not Doing Nearly Enough To Protect Against the EMP Threat 182
An anonymous reader writes: Last week saw the release of an open letter written to President Obama by a committee of notable political, security and defense experts — which includes past and present members of Congress, ambassadors, CIA directors, and others — on the country's concerning level of vulnerability to a natural or man-made Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP). An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously. Not only would that immediately throw the social order into chaos, but the timeline to repair and restart the grid in most estimated scenarios would take months to a year or more.
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry said, "Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country. ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid. This is unusual, because in the case of every other critical infrastructure, there's an agency in the U.S. government that can require them to take actions for public safety. For example, the Food & Drug Administration can order certain medicines kept off shelves to protect the public safety. ... The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission doesn't have those legal powers or authorities."
EMP (Score:3, Funny)
It's unbelievable. No, wait, that's, uh, ??
Telling it straight (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA.
And, the NERC, which owns half of K Street and has got very deep pockets, has been successful in lobbying against legislation like the Grid Act and the SHIELD Act, both bipartisan bills supported almost unanimously by Democrats and Republicans. They've been able to stall for years and keep these bills held up. One time when we got a bill passed: the Grid Act actually, in 2010, unanimously passed the House. Everybody supported it. But Washington is so broken, one senator put a hold on a bill - if they know which senator to buy, they can buy that one senator and the person can put a hold on the bill so it can't come to the floor for a vote and they can do it anonymously. The senator doesn't have to identify themselves. So, you never know who stopped the bill.
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and the person can put a hold on the bill so it can't come to the floor for a vote and they can do it anonymously
Wait what? Can someone explain this to an outsider? Snide comments aside this sounds like the exact opposite of a democracy. I thought only the President had, what it sounds like, something akin to veto powers over bills.
Re:Telling it straight (Score:5, Informative)
The Senate hold was originally about giving a senator time to gather additional information on an issue, now it's a way to stop bills which a senator doesn't like without needing or allowing a vote on them. It can be defeated by a cloture vote, but this requires 60/100 senators rather than a simple majority. This rule has been used to great effect over the last six years to stop anything and everything. You may have heard that our congress over that time has been the least productive congress ever? This is what they've been using to achieve that. Most famously though, Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd used secret holds to stop an anti-corruption transparency bill (temporarily - they were found out pretty quickly). Stevens was later convicted for corruption related to taking money from oil companies, though that conviction was later thrown out for procedural reasons.
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Re:Telling it straight (Score:5, Informative)
and the person can put a hold on the bill so it can't come to the floor for a vote and they can do it anonymously
Wait what? Can someone explain this to an outsider? Snide comments aside this sounds like the exact opposite of a democracy. I thought only the President had, what it sounds like, something akin to veto powers over bills.
There are two different bills that the GP referenced, the Grid Act and the SHIELD Act.
The GRID act gives special emergency powers to The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to order utilities to do something. This was widely rejected by the industry because some of the powers could force the utility to keep their plants online, even if their machines were being damaged. That's not reasonable. If a grid problem gets to the point where it is damaging generators and other grid infrastructure, we should shut it down. Intentionally damaging a bunch of generators isn't going to keep the grid online if things get to that point.
The SHIELD act was about electromagnetic interference. FERC asked NERC last month [nerc.com] to look into this some more. I would rather a government agency with some knowledge and experience on the matter write the rules, rather than a bunch of politicians who are pushing a bill that a lobbyist wrote.
Re:Telling it straight - burried power... (Score:2)
However coronal mass ejections are very real and very scary for power distribution networks, and I would say that even without phantom evils going bump in the night, hardening power distribution against EM events is an issue all nations should tackle.
As an outsider living in Eu
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"Only costs a few times more"?? Do you say stuff like that often while shopping for a new car or a house to live in?
Re:Telling it straight - burried power... (Score:4, Interesting)
Only costs a few times more to bury them but you won't need to service it for a century! Srsly.
More like 10 times in the country, and much more in the city. I used to work in this industry, did you?
Audio interview... (Score:2)
Just heard a long-format interview with three of the signers the other day. Very interesting. [youtube.com]
Really this should be done (Score:2)
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Not sure it would be very effective on such an unsophisticated military. Maybe burn their trucks out. Certainly cause a lot of misery in the already-miserable cities.
Re:Really this should be done (Score:4, Insightful)
What? And drag them back to the 6th century where they would be more happy?
Such BS (Score:3)
> An EMP has very real potential for crippling much of our electrical grid instantaneously
A *nuclear* one, sure. But that would require someone to explode a nuclear bomb over the US.
Non-nuclear EMPs are a joke, and not getting better.
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EMP not such a big problem (Score:2)
The bigger the tensions in a country the more important that the infrastructure is up and running. If there is an power outage for a couple of days and your inner society tensions are not too big, life would get organized again. Most of the food I consume is produced locally. Real problems would be heating (in winter) and water supply. However, I assume that we could organize that in a couple of days based on existing catastrophe reaction plans. True health care especially hospitals will not work, however,
No, we don't need to 'worry' about EMP (Score:4, Interesting)
Q: Why are we just talking about it and why hasn't the problem been fixed?
Dr. Pry: Okay. Well, the short answer to that is itâ(TM)s called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They are basically the representativeâ" they used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities [...] agency in the U.S. government [...] protect the public safety
Woolsey: [mumble mumble THEY could make a bomb]
I call NO THANKS on this transparent attempt to create yet another regulatory agency arm of DHS, and Jen Bawden who may be as concerned as I am about the grid, but sounds like she wants a boxcar on the gravy train. Mumble mumble THEY could come by boat she says. Then Woolsey and Pry go so far as to declare NERC 'worthless'. Sounds like a gub'mint involvement power grab that has little to do with engineering. To find out how little a political initiative like this will actually improve the grid, just go ahead and create this new agency, just like all the other ones. Before long everyone will be working for the Federal Government and the economy will be supported by a single hot dog vendor in Wash DC. They'll spend their whole budget creating scary power point presentations about bad-people-threats, because they'd rather not go outside.
NERC is populated by people who don't mind going outside to look at things.
NERC does need a kick in the ass though. It needs to worry less about cyberattack (which conveniently does not require you to go outside) and put a more concentrated effort into black start capability --- which is the ability (through planned procedures and simulation) to bring up the grid from complete power down This involves the identification of islands and what are called 'black start resources', stations that can power up first and help others to start. See the working document on EOP-005-x [google.com]. Whatever the disaster and no matter how pervasive its effects, the first priority needs to be a firm plan for getting things going again and isolating sections that need replacement parts.
Do not let that Carrington Event stuff terrify you too deeply. In the 1859 small gauge telegraph wires were strung hundreds of miles to make the perfect EMP antenna, and its effects were what could be expected of a system that was on no way designed to withstand induced EMF. The modern grid is a lightning-arresting monster of conductor. Many old or improperly maintained components may fail in places, but it's not some slate-wiper, the greatest challenge will be merely to isolate problems and restart the rest.
Unfortunately when it comes to telephone communication this generation is pretty well screwed [slashdot.org] by a series of shitty little compromises over 30 years that will result in NO PHONES WORKING a week after major sections of the grid has gone dark, no matter if there are portable generators handy. POTS is gone, control has been centralized to distant places. Don't expect that cell tower to let you call your neighbor.
But the essential components and practice of the power grid remains the same as it was in the 70s, robust and reliable. If NERC would spend more time planning and training for black start capability, THAT is the best, possibly only, thing that would make a real difference.
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Unfortunately when it comes to telephone communication this generation is pretty well screwed by a series of shitty little compromises over 30 years that will result in NO PHONES WORKING a week after major sections of the grid has gone dark, no matter if there are portable generators handy. POTS is gone, control has been centralized to distant places.
POTS lines are still there, I still have one that I don't use and I can still hook my butt set up to it and call 9-1-1. But the switches are all digital and an EMP will blow the shit out of the telcos anyway, so you're talking a load of bollocks. If the ionosphere is unusable, the POTS system likely will be too.
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POTS lines are still there, I still have one that I don't use ...
Nah, you most likely have something else entirely that is terminated in a POTS hand-off. The digital switches you describe and the various DSL or optical backhauls along with the nodes that break them out into subscriber lines at the edge of neighborhoods are they very reason "POTS is dead". You're right though, the POTS of old would make little to no difference in an EMP event.
Don't forget the Carrington Event! (Score:4, Informative)
In 1859 the world was hit by an EMP from a massive solar flare, called the Carrington Event. From a comment by Sampenny in the original article.
More recently in March 1989 we had a geomagnetic storm [wikipedia.org] which caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It was repaired in 9 hours, but a more massive widespread storm could take months.
Oak Ridge National Lab's take on it (Score:4, Informative)
Really interesting reading, found the link at the Wiki article on NEMP.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/et... [ornl.gov]
I think, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle (as the ORNL study points out). A few things to keep in mind:
1. Even a small nuclear weapon can cause a significant EMP. Larger weapons cause a more widespread affect, but even a relatively small 2KT weapon, targeted over a key facility, could knock out power to a large area.
2. The weapon needs to be detonated above dense atmosphere.
As far as electromagnetic pulses in general, shielding is effective ... and those who say it isn't don't understand that there are right and wrong ways to shield and ground. In my work (radio engineer), I have to do some odd-looking things to protect against lightning. A single loop in a feedline to an AM tower, for example, attenuates the lightning that comes back into my facility. Thus, I have big honkin' ball gaps at the tower base, but can get by with a smaller "horn gap" at the entry to my equipment.
Our grid could be protected with reasonable expenditures. We couldn't prevent all damage, but we could limit it. Solid-state electronics have to be protected two ways: overall shielding, and limiting/protection at the I/O points. For example, an old desktop computer in a heavy metal case, with a good ground, probably wouldn't notice the EMP ... *except* for induced voltages coming in on the video, mouse and printer cables. Those would probably send the motherboard screaming into the shrubbery. :)
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...For example, an old desktop computer in a heavy metal case, with a good ground, probably wouldn't notice the EMP ... *except* for induced voltages coming in on the video, mouse and printer cables. Those would probably send the motherboard screaming into the shrubbery. :)
I saw this happen on a small scale a few years ago. There was an overnight lightning storm that affected a small office building across the parking lot from our main site. The fibre connection to the main building was not hurt, but about half the Ethernet transceivers in the small office building were fried. I took some money out of petty cash, walked across the street to the local computer store, and bought enough Ethernet cards to replace the failures.
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It's the in
NASA agrees (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to temper that apocalyptic-looking premise with a quote from that NASA article which may provide a little... comfort.
The worst geomagnetic storm of the Space Age, which knocked out power across Quebec in March 1989, registered Dst=-600 nT. Modern estimates of Dst for the Carrington Event itself range from -800 nT to a staggering -1750 nT.
So, that's 'only' up to 3x as bad as an event that happened in 1989, and we seemed to have got through that okay (their power was cut for 11 hours apparently [wikipedia.org]).
Maybe even NASA is over-reacting a bit on this then..... But like CO2 emissions, it's best not to take the chance. It is possible to protect the grid to a large extent if the world cared enough the risk. I think we're talking in the range of $billions of investment to save $trillions of damage when the inevitable happens (definitely a question of when, rather than if).
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Such an event could send us back to the middle ages
is that hyperbolic or do EMPs cause feudalism?
Re:NASA agrees (Score:4, Funny)
Such an event could send us back to the middle ages
is that hyperbolic or do EMPs cause feudalism?
It's worse than that, I fear. A catastrophic solar storm in the 5th century sent the world as we know it into the dark ages. It took about a thousand years for society to recover from that particular storm, and there are few records left to talk of this catastrophe.
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Whoosh.
Great book on the topic (Score:4, Informative)
If you like the topic of EMP and how it would affect the society, check this fiction from William R. Forstchen. It's called One Second After [wikipedia.org] and it's written from the perspective of the US being brought to its knees after a terrorist EMP strike and its effects on all societal levels.
Society will completely collapse (Score:3)
Your water tap stops because no power to pump water into your nearby water tower. It may have a backup generator, but that takes fuel, which I'll come to next.
You won't be able to put fuel into your car because no electricity to operate the gas pumps at the filling station. Even using siphoning or other ways of pumping the fuel out of the underground storage tanks, the filling station fuel supplies will get tapped out soon.
Not only will you no longer be able to use your car (electric or fuel powered) but there will be no more deliveries. Your local grocery store should be completely picked clean by now.
At this point, people will fight for food, water, batteries, fuel, other supplies. Don't expect help from the police, military of government. They will be having the same basic problems. The people who participate in the police and military will be having the same basic problems with their own families.
By now, you can see where this is going.
EMP isn't the problem (ignoring nuclear war). (Score:2)
The problem is the vulnerability of the power grid. It is pretty easy to bring down transmission towers (with a limited quantity of explosives) and it would be trivial for some terrorist to e.g. place synchronized timer activated explosives on critical points on the grid. Done right the build in redundancy will not help and large areas could be without electricity for weeks to months.
EMP can be a problem but (again ignoring nuclear war) the effects of EMP devices are local, sure that can still be a huge pro
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:5, Insightful)
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
Actually, in the case of a single or small number of nuclear blasts, or a low-atmo nuclear detonation, restoring the power grid is one of the first problems you have.
If you're dealing with total war with a major power, it's pretty much the end of the world anyway. But if you're dealing with a couple of nukes from a newly nuclear nation or as part of a proportional response in a conflict between major powers (game theory in a world where nobody is stupid enough to destroy the world), you have a lot of refugees to deal with and a lot of infrastructure to keep going.
Do you have military needs that take priority? Of course. But you still have civilian needs that you need to provide for and which give your economy the strength to fight a war.
The power grid is very interconnected to provide redundancy. If possible, the major interconnects should *all* be required to be hardened against EMP. I don't know offhand how hard that is, but losing the power grid through New York and DC is a lot better than losing every power plant in the country...
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EMP comes from high atmospheric detonation, not low. It's a result of nuclear bomb's energy interacting with upper layers of atmosphere. It doesn't occur in low altitude detonations.
On your last point, I don't think you quite understand just how much your suggestion would cost. There are far more significant and realistic threats to grid than EMP from nuclear blast, such as environmental disasters (remember tsunami that caused Fukushima's grid to fail, resulting in meltdown?) and in many cases and protectio
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Solar flares. We know they will happen, we know big ones will happen.
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Solar flares are far weaker than high altitude nuclear detonation EMP, and only contain one of it's three main components.
As a result, grid doesn't need anywhere near the same kind of hardening against them.
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus, EMP is fairly exotic, so we can probably spin it into a bunch of more or less open-ended R&D contracts, while most civil engineering is comparatively mature; and the biggest challenge is providing decades of solid, reliable, governance and room for qualified engineers to work without constant political interference. Where's the fun in that?
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A deeply unsexy sort of attack, no terror value whatsoever; but repairs probably cost a hell of a lot more than a magazine or two of totally
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:4, Interesting)
You do not know how nuclear EMP works. It's a result of three main components, two of which require direct interaction with ionosphere . Without this interaction, you're limited to approximately 10-15 km range in your EMP blast effect and these components do not cause inward resonance with Earth's magnetic field, which is where the strength and range comes from.
This is pretty much the same range that kinetic nuclear shockwave detonation would wipe out anyway.
Relevant reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and its sources.
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:5, Insightful)
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
That's why I find this quite sinister. It looks like they are just blatantly misleading the public to get more funding. If they said they are concerned about someone using a nuclear weapon to take out the power grid, everyone would quickly point out that the problem is not protecting the power grid, but that someone has a nuclear weapon. By making it all fuzzy and saying there are natural causes too, they create a new dissociated threat that most people can't really understand. Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen, they can spend endless amounts 'protecting' the grid and we'll never know whether it actually works.
It's just the modern equivalent of selling magic stones that protect you from monsters. I hope these guys are just thick though, and not actually intelligent people knowingly misleading everyone so they can buy flash cars and houses.
There are non-nuclear EMP weapons (Score:2)
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The issue with nukes is that they offer, by far, the
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> Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen
What?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A powerful EMP affecting the entire power grid is inevitable. There has been a lot of discussion about this.
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> Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen
What?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
A powerful EMP affecting the entire power grid is inevitable. There has been a lot of discussion about this.
Which is probably one of the reasons that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (The federal agency "FERC") asked the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (FERC's rulemaking organization "NERC") to investigate this. Less than a month ago. [nerc.com] And their documents look like a common-sense plan.
The quote from Executive Director of the EMP Task Force Dr Peter Pry
"Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They us
Re:Causes on EMP (Score:4, Interesting)
The causes of an EMP are nuclear blast or solar flare, I think in case of the former you would have far larger problems than the grid to worry about.
That's why I find this quite sinister. It looks like they are just blatantly misleading the public to get more funding.
Yep, this guy is full of crap. The telling statement is: ... There is no part of the U.S. government that has the legal powers to order them to protect the grid."
"Well, the short answer to [why we aren't defending against EMPs] is called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities that exist in this country.
That's very misleading. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is a government agency that has powers to make rules regarding the grid. They decided that this is a highly technical industry, so they basically created the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to investigate potential issues, draft rules, and get the industry on board with them. FERC tells NERC which kind of rule they want, NERC drafts it. Then FERC decides if the draft rules should be made law. NERC doesn't have any legal powers to protect the grid, they are just a rulemaking organization. So the statement "no part of the U.S. government that has legal powers to order them to protect the grid" is very misleading since NERC doesn't have the power to protect the grid anyway. That's FERC's job.
If NERC is in the industry's pocket, they aren't in it very deep. They have made rules regarding cybersecurity and IT systems that have cost utilities hundreds of thousands (small utilities) to millions (large utilities). Just look at some of their recent filings (proposed rules.) [nerc.com] Especially this one - The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Report on the Potential Impacts of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Proposed Clean Power Plan—Chapter 7 Reliability Assurance Mechanism [nerc.com]. If NERC was in the industry's pocket, this would be some drivel about how the EPA's clean power plan was rubbish. It isn't. It basically just says "hey this EPA plan might affect grid reliability, we better develop a metric to measure grid reliability". It's very reasonable and obviously written by an engineer, not a lobbyist.
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One, the natural phenomenon of a solar storm figures in prominently to the risk factors.
Two, a lot of noise has been made about 'well if they had nukes, they would just blow us away'. This depends on the goals. If they just want to obliterate without regard for the global response, sure. If they want to conquer (unlikely at this point, but hey), an EMP might be a good way to soften things up and leave infrastructure you want. Also, if they want to do something to the US that would divert attention from
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Yes. If you have only *one* nuke, and you want to do maximum damage, do you blow up one city, or do you shut down utilities and electronics across the entire continent? I know what I'd do if I was a sinister terrorist with a nuke.
And the nice thing with that is... no one would turn my cities to ash over it. After all... I didn't kill anyone... not directly anyway. I just cost you about a trillion dollars. The indirect deaths would just be gravy. Oh and all the planes would fall out of the sky.
I wonder
EMP == Experience Music Project? (Score:2)
Solar flares are a huge risk (Score:2)
Further since an EMP is extremely unlikely to happen, they can spend endless amounts 'protecting' the grid and we'll never know whether it actually works.
What are you talking about? This isn't astrology here; this is well-understood science. We have some EMP data from old atmospheric nuclear tests, and if need be we can create low level (non-nuclear) EMPs for further modeling. This i
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North Korea has nuclear weapons and will soon have the ability to deliver one to the west coast of the USA
On what evidence is this striking assertion based?
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EMP from solar flares is not a common event, but does happen and could easily knock out large swaths of the grid.
The Carrington Event of 1859 was obviously before any sort of mass electrification, but it did affect the telegraphs pretty profoundly, which bodes pretty ill for what it would have done to a grid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[10] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[11] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.
There was a coronal mass ejection in 1989 which took out a significant portion of the Quebec grid for nine hours.
Additionally, there was a storm in 2012 which just miss
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There were some claims that the 'fizzle' nuclear test the North Koreans made a couple of years ago was actually an EMP nuclear device test.
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If the only activity that a post-apocalyptic society need be capable of is firing zee missiles, then yeah, it's not such a hard problem
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THat there are going to be issues is likely but run the cost benefit analysis.
The benefit of having less shit to deal with on doomsday versus the probability of doomsday in the first place... and the relevance of those problems you're talking about on doomsday?
Okay... so EMP... you think there is ONLY going to be an EMP? I rather suspect that you're going to get an EMP PLUS a full nuclear strike. I don't see how you're going to just get an EMP? Are you assuming a terrorist EMP? A terrorist fires a nuke into
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A full scale nuclear exchange isn't in the interests of any rational actor, they'd be MAD to try. Obfuscating attribution, though, is probably technologically easier
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Just a hint: you are a clueless idiot.
Here are the known nations with nuclear weapons:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel
India
Pakistan
North Korea
And here are the nations know to have delivery capability:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel
India
Pakistan
Here are the known nations that have thermonuclear capabilities:
USA
Russia
China
United Kingdom
France
Israel (by inference given the high technical know-how, the advantages of thermonuclear weapons and the time they have had nuclear capabilities)
India (so
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Whatever the economic value of JIT logistics and long-distance supply chains, it seems pretty clear that these dramatically increase the risk of economic disruption, especially in the food supply.
Less economically efficient supply chains with more stockpiling, warehousing and local sourcing seems much more durable.
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Look, do we need to shield every fucking thing from EMP? No. Obviously not. Obviously... Not. BUT a few things really should be shielded. Core military communications, power, and computer systems? Yep.
Oh good. only the single most complicated and expensive things then. Look it's not "hard". It's more like "fucking impossible". It's hard to shield against something when you need to provide some kind of external connectivity which can act as a conduit, you're effectively talking about tuned faraday cages around powerlines. It's not only impractical, it's almost impossible to do completely from a technical perspective.
We can do a lot better than we are doing now, but to think we can actually secure these sy
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A limited number of things in the strategic arsenal... is not... the most... complicated thing... why would you say something silly like that?
Stop saying silly things.
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Oh good. only the single most complicated and expensive things then. Look it's not "hard". It's more like "fucking impossible". It's hard to shield against something when you need to provide some kind of external connectivity which can act as a conduit, you're effectively talking about tuned faraday cages around powerlines. It's not only impractical, it's almost impossible to do completely from a technical perspective.
This has been studied and it is far from impractical. You just need better protection circuits.
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You just need better protection circuits
Oh simple.
You know we can't even properly manage something as simple as a lightning strike without ripple effects throughout a system, and that is a problem a few orders of magnitude more confined to a single area than an EMP. But hey if you can create your "better protection circuit" then do. You'd be a very rich man indeed. Diverting surges is only about the single most difficult and misunderstood thing next to concepts of earthing in electrical engineering, and it's quite fitting that these two complex i
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It is actually, you naive little insect.
Let me explain this to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Maintaining the fault tolerance of the retaliation ensures MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
And that preserves the deterrence of the strike.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
That means the EMP never happens in the first place.
Thus the commercial and private systems are largely protected because things that don't happen
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Except back in 1859 it was not a terrorist or state actor that did it to us; it was SOL and the sun certainly could do it again. While we have some ability to detect and predict when the risk of such an event occurring is higher than usual there ain't much we can do about it either.
So some EMP resilience would be a nice to have. Now the doom sayers are always telling us how after only a few days without electricity we all start dying. Well an EMP is likely to damage transmission lines (because of their l
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Re: Surely this is not that hard... (Score:2)
0. MAD works when you know who detonated the first weapon. We may not know this.
1. MAD also presumes rational enemies, with motivation sufficiently equal to ours, to make their decisions more or less rational. We no longer live in that world. Many of our enemies do not have the same rationale for using nuclear weapons as we and other like nations do.
2. Even if we know who detonated a weapon, of they are stateless, we have limited retaliation opportunities. If any.
MAD is not useful for asymmetric threats
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0. Unless it is a massive strike you'll have time to investigate after the bomb kills whomever. If it takes you months to figure that out... so be it. Once you know... you take whatever steps seem appropriate to resolve the situation.
1. MAD also assumed that both powers could annihilate each other. There are really only two nations on earth with that power. The US and Russia. And the Russian claim is increasingly dubious. The Russians and Americans have large ICBM submarine fleets. If you don't have one of
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If you genocided a country that nuked one of your cities... who is going to try and stop you?
For a start, you would lose all your allies, and no one would trade with you. I know the US is powerful, but it's not more powerful than the rest of the world put together.
In case you hadn't noticed, genocide is not looked on as a legitimate strategy any more.
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MAD is useful against some situations, not others. Argentina invaded the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982 without regard to the fact that Britain could nuke their major cities, no problem. It's of very limited use against one nuke. I spent much of the Cold War worrying about what would happen if the Soviets launched one missile at a US city, and apologized after launch and before impact, blaming it on an accident and promising to fix the system.
0. If it's a large number of weapons, we'll know who sent them
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... Okay... so you think something is a deterrence even if you have no intention of using it as a deterrence?
What you are suggesting is that we basically point unloaded guns at people to scare them away from shooting at us. But if they actually just shoot us anyway... we should drop the unloaded gun and die without firing a shot?
So do you suggest the police do that? Guy whips out a gun and says "I'm going to shoot people"... And then he does. He shoots them. He shoots them dead. Well, your deterrence failed
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No it hasn't.
A deterrence doesn't have to be 100 percent effective to be effective.
An electric fence around live stock doesn't stop all the live stock. Some of them will jump over the fence sometimes. Sometimes they'll just get mad and run right through the fence. They're big animals sometimes. A little bit of wire isn't going to stop them. What stops them is the pain of the electric shock. But if they either leap over the fence or don't care about the pain then the fence isn't going to stop them.
Yet it doe
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No it doesn't. Annihilation can't be escalated. How is a country going to nuke me if they're all dead?
As to neanderthal terms... how about I just fuck your sister? While I'm doing that, you can talk to me about what is and is not neanderthal behavior.
Kindly stop talking to me. You're that internet typical mix of fucktard and arrogant that is a complete waste of oxygen.
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... nuke subs? Cite how many countries have nuclear submarines capable of crossing the ocean without surfacing?
Surface to run your generator and I can see you mother fucker. To attack the US like that, you'd have to run under water the whole way. You can't do that without a nuke sub. And not a lot of countries have those.
Only two countries even build them. The US and Russia. That's it. Anyone else that has one will have ultimately bought it from the US or Russia... I think only Russia since I don't think we
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he deterrent has already failed and as proof we can name every single mass shooting in the US.
What? Perpetrators of recent mass shootings have made it clear that they sought out targets where they knew there would be no deterrence. That's why they pick "gun free zones" when they do crap like that. Because of the lack of deterrence.
... there's no deterrence. On the other hand
It's only a deterrence if it's credibly likely to happen. If you go somewhere that you know nobody is allowed to carry guns, and where there are no armed police and can't be for at least long enough to kill a bunch of people
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Not a single perp has ever said that.
Do your homework. Crazies like the most recent 20-kids-killed school shooter were absolutely obsessive about studying and taking notes about the circumstances of other mass murders, and what would allow such an attack to proceed uninterrupted by someone able to stop him. Just because he was nuts (like the Colorado theater killer, or the Virginia Tech killer) doesn't mean they're unable assess the practicalities of the situation.
Recent attacks have been on military bases
Right. Specifically in places where the vast majority of the people walking ar
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Or do you just mean that the people walking around inside aren't armed, which would be what you expect if you're not on operations somewhere?
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Are you seriously suggesting that there are no armed guards on US military bases?
Are you seriously this uninformed about how large and compartmentalized a "military base" is? And so uninformed about the facts on the ground in a case like Ft. Hood? In both that case and the more recent Navy Yard killings - exactly. The killers sought out areas/victims where there was no immediate chance of someone simply shooting them down to stop them. Just read the accounts, and understand.
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... You really don't get it.
Its only a threat if it is a credible threat.
If the enemy know that you won't fire back on them then it isn't a deterrence.
Fool.
What makes MAD scary for the enemy is that they know we WILL retaliate. We will methodically annihilate them with the nastiest weapons we have at hand. Without hesitation, mercy, or remorse.
That is what makes MAD work. The certain knowledge in the mind of the enemy that should they cross that line... we will annihilate them. Down to the last screaming ch
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Wait wait. So... when the UK was bombed from the air by the Nazis, your response would be to do nothing?
When the US was bombed at pearl harbor, you'd do nothing? When the Soviets were invaded by the germans, you'd have them do nothing?
Or would you have every power in every case retaliate?
You're a retard. Fuck off.
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Wrong.
Will retaliate.
Certain as sunrise. You pull the trigger and we'll pull the trigger. Don't like that? Don't pull the trigger and you won't have to deal with the consequences.
Pull it and the consequences are on you. You knew what we would do. We will do it.
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OK neanderthal, TRY and understand this. An EMP targeted attack does not have to be state-sponsored, and all of your retaliation plans go out the fucking window when that happens, since you're looking for nothing but a state-sponsored attack to be able to execute your plans against said state in retaliation.
An EMP device does not require controlled material. That is the scary part, and why the attack vector is so much larger. This problem is not black-and-white as you make it out to be, nor is the retaliation plan. Creating a nuclear wasteland should not be the automatic go-to answer here in response to an EMP attack. That level of retaliation isn't even equal, and would likely guarantee the end of our civilization instead of leaving the planet and environment intact to rebuild our electronics.
But hey, fuck that, caveman tactics FTW. We "won", that's all that matters.
How many non states do you know that can get a sophisticated, tested, and probably fifth generation or later nuclear weapon in low earth orbit at just the right height over the US while every one of their electronic devices and electronic communications are compromised or intercepted... without being noticed the entire time it's doing it?
Space aliens are the only thing I can think of... Just send a pinterest photo of your cave-painting diagram of how this will happen. We'll wait.
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okay, fuckwit... if it isn't state sponsored, you're saying that a terrorist got their hands on a nuclear weapon, fired it into orbit, and then detonated it over the US? This is your scenario?
Now here is the bit where you say "well what if they didn't put it into orbit"... then the damage area will be very small and help from people outside the blast will be save the survivors. it will suck but it won't be any worse than the damage from a hurricane or something. Not great but not a reason for everyone to go
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No, it has to fail MAD. Anything else increases the risk of people thinking they can get away with a first strike.
You have to make it clear that a first strike will not stop the certain obliteration of your civilization.
Our system is fail safe to the extent that a launch must be deliberate. Our missiles are not launched by robots or computers. They're launched by men. They receive a code. They verify. A minimum of two men must enter in codes and turn their launch keys.
That's how all the launch platforms for
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How would you have enough nukes do that if you're just some nut?
There are only two countries in the world capable of waging MAD... The US and Russia. No other power has the numbers of ICBMs to wipe out any significant fraction of the planet.
Having "A" nuke or two doesn't mean you can trigger a MAD response.
Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
Now exactly how does that end the world? Tota
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Lets say your little shit hole country fires a nuke at the US and it blows up a city or something. Okay... then the US responds by glassing your whole country.
So why didn't the US kill everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan?
What's so special about one city being nuked that it deserves total obliteration of your enemy?
I'm not saying you shouldn't react, but surely the point of MAD is that the enemy is going to wipe out your whole civilisation, not just one city?
Re:Surely this is not that hard... (Score:4, Insightful)
As to the banks... possibly. The issue is rebuilding will be harder if we disagree about who owns what. A free for all with surviving resources will lead to chaos and that will require a command economy if you don't preserve ownership.
And that means... basically whatever remains will turn into something sort of like WW2 England or the soviet union in that everything will be rationed and the government will decide who owns things.
I'd prefer to try and preserve the existing system as it has a lot fewer cons. But to each his own on that one.
As to retaliation, to the contrary that is extremely important.
First, it is retaliation that keeps the enemy from striking you in the first place. If the enemy doesn't think you'll retaliate it makes them more likely to hit you in the first place. So you have to do that.
Second, those fuckers just glassed your cities and if you don't return the favor they're going to be in a world where your people are mostly dead/radioactive ant people... and they're totally fine. Which means they're going to rule the world if you don't knock them back. And if you do... maybe you can save your civilization. But if you don't... your people lose and will never recover.
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No they didn't. They wanted to make the US look weak. Osama said the US was a paper tiger. he made the argument before the war that if they struck the US, the US would do noting more than fume and stamp its feet.
He used as his basis for that, that the US had responded to previous attacks by firing some cruise missiles and doing nothing else. Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
Did he cl
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Had Osama known the US was going to go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, he probably wouldn't have done it. And the local taliban wouldn't have supported it.
No one would have predicted that following 9/11 the US would go for a full invasion of Afghanistan, for the simple reason that it made no logical sense whatsoever. 9/11 was carried out primarily by Saudi Arabians, no Afghan citizens were involved as far as I've heard.
The Taliban certainly seem to have let Osama bin Laden stay in Afghanistan, and it was unlikely they would ever have extradited him to the US, but that is a police/law enforcement issue, not a casus belli. Anyway, on that basis the US shoul
Re:Surely this is not that hard... (Score:5, Funny)
As to some philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, other thinkers occasionally having troubled minds... that is nothing new.
If I told you that the man that invented the airplane was convinced elves lived in his ears... would that mean the plane was an unsound invention?
Your argument is literally ad hominem. You're saying that because something was wrong with the person that made an argument that the argument itself is invalid.
I mean... are you literally retarded? Am I speaking to a someone with a football helmet on his head that types on this forum by banging his head into the keyboard?
I mean... you're an AC... so that is quite likely... most of you seem to have the IQ of a stunned trout. But I mean... how can you not know ad hominem is bullshit at this point? You people baffle me. You really do. Fucking learn... anything.
Also it is spelled "xenophobic"... from the greek... xenos.
Also, MAD has nothing to do with xenophobia. Just fyi... totally unrelated concepts.
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Clearly...look at all the delusional people who believe in magical wizards in the sky that talk to them although no one else can hear them...I'm talking about God here...yet still produce good science. Granted, many are too delusional to do that, but some can put their delusions aside for the narrow area of science they explore.
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more ad hominem? yawn
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If the adversary knows that you'll know it was him if he tries anything, your big huge second strike infrastructure is pretty scary. If you can obfuscate attribution(or, worse, successfully pin it on some innocent party) the theory of deterrence becomes effectively useless.
EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you
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Even if it doesn't make things worse, the trouble with retaliation, 'second strike', MAD, 'deterrence', etc. is that it relies on attribution of warheads being relatively easy. If the adversary knows that you'll know it was him if he tries anything, your big huge second strike infrastructure is pretty scary. If you can obfuscate attribution(or, worse, successfully pin it on some innocent party) the theory of deterrence becomes effectively useless. EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you need to do a reasonably visible launch to high altitude to get the best effect; but if somebody just puts a nuke in a cargo container that was supposed to contain xboxes and it levels one of the world's larger container ports, who exactly are you going to retaliate against?
Answer: all of them. Specifically, ALL of the nuclear-capable threat-states.
The ones that didn't do it, will really really want to share information about who did.
Subs can second strike anybody anywhere, and wait for a time for it to be an accurately determined enemy as they are basically impossible to kill if they are hiding.
Being able to kill off some or all other states after your state is already dead creates allies, not enemies.
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EMPs are probably a moderately favorable case, since you need to do a reasonably visible launch to high altitude to get the best effect; but if somebody just puts a nuke in a cargo container that was supposed to contain xboxes and it levels one of the world's larger container ports, who exactly are you going to retaliate against?
Whoever made that bomb would be my first guess.
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... would you mind clarifying your point? Your citation didn't specifically elaborate on the issue so I don't know what you're talking about.
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Talks a lot about telephone lines, that looks like a VERY good reason that all those copper lines need replacing with fibre optic
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That is a pro with fiber until you realize that the fiber has boosters every few miles and those are complicated electronic doodads.
You'd have to shield each of those and THEN you'd have to make sure those little boxes still got power.
The copper lines are actually more fault tolerant than the fiber unless you can shield and power the boosters.
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Were those insulators designed to handle an EMP or not?
This is like saying because the shore break couldn't handle a typhoon, it is impossible to build a sea wall that could.
Listen. Please. Calm down. I'm sure you're a nice intelligent guy. But you're arguing about nothing here. The point is that you can harden something against EMP with shielding and fuses. Does the shielding and fuses need to be designed to handle EMP? Yep. But they're still shielding and fuses.
Re:The CIA wants its own airforce too (Score:4, Interesting)
Spooks still don't dogfight; but they have plenty of both surveillance and ground attack aircraft.
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First, Mr. Schulz is a threat because he is pro TTIP and TiSA. However, I doubt that the US government is opposed to both treaty negotiations. Second, her is not minister of the parliament, but President of the European Parliament (PEP ;-) (and he did something nasty and undemocratic today). He is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP).