03.15.10

EMP Bomb Wall Street: And how is this a bad thing?

Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism at 11:15 am by George Smith

Worth a chuckle, from some relatively obscure IT publication here:

Tech doomsday scenario No. 2: Wall Street gets e-bombed News flash: In what authorities suspect was the aftermath of an electromagnetic pulse weapon, a rogue attacker took down much of lower Manhattan today — causing equipment failures and power outages on a massive scale and shutting down financial markets across the country.

Though most commonly associated with nuclear explosions, you don’t need a nuke to create an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to do serious damage. EMP devices emit extremely high-frequency signals that fry electronics to a crisp, rendering them useless. An EMP will also wipe out or corrupt any data not stored on magnetic or optical devices. Worse, EMPs are largely untraceable, because the weapon itself destroys any evidence of its use.

A van with an EMP device in the back could effectively shut down big chunks of the U.S. economy simply by driving down Wall Street with the signal turned up, says Gale Nordling, CEO of Emprimus, a (US) company that helps enterprises protect against threats from non-nuclear EMP.

Nordling was last referenced on this blog as a guest at right-wing crazy radio here.

In the Nineties your host edited the electronic Crypt Newsletter. It was a publication that explored the world of computer virus writers and apocryphal wonder technology. It was sort of an anti-Wired, all e-mail and web postings, no glossy pages or advertising. And it new the subject of EMP Crazy well, even in those distant mists of the past.

Around 1998, the House Joint Economic Committee held a long series of hearings on the dread coming menace of electromagnetic pulse weapons.

At once a reader sees how long this sort of rubbish has been regularly bubbling and percolating.

Anyway, a good twelve years ago a retired Army general by the name of Robert L. Schweitzer testified before Congress on how an electromagnetic pulse ray could take down Wall Street. At one time he also made news for a sunken treasure hunt with John Singlaub off the Philippines.

A few years later, he died.

However, electromagnetic pulse rays still have not impinged upon Goldman Sachs, although we all might now wish it.

Here is what the general said, over a decade ago, as originally reported in the Crypt Newsletter:

During the June [Congressional] hearing, Schweitzer made seemingly contradictory claims during the course of his presentation. At different times, Schweitzer claimed that electromagnetic pulse guns could be made for $800, that they could be made for $35, that they had been used against London banks although he was informed this was a hoax, and such weapons were now capable of disrupting Wall Street.

” . . . the cost is about $800 to do this,” Schweitzer said at one point.

As for knocking out Wall Street, Schweitzer later commented to Congressman Saxton, “[It] can be done with going to RadioShack and buying the components . . . And the prices are from $35 to $200 to buy components and do a number on Wall Street.” Schweitzer also alluded to, but did not mention by name, a generic hacker tech catalog that claimed to sell parts and schematics for such a weapon.

Further, Schweitzer testified that London banks were attacked by radio-frequency weapons, a myth that has been touched on in Crypt Newsletter.

“I was told that was a hoax,” Schweitzer said to Saxton. “. . . and it’s disputed in the Intel community and elsewhere but I think, frankly, and having gone into this in great detail, the dispute is to protect the fact it happened.”

Schweitzer added later: “I validated [this]. It isn’t just taking rumors or drivel off of the tabloids. These are solid facts that I’m giving you.”

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These hearings were notorious for the amount of frank lies and trash delivered. While the web was still far too young for authorities to blame all Internet evil happening in the US on the Chinese, the Yellow Peril meme raised its head in another way.

At the time, the Chinese were said to be sending in sleeper agents to contaminate southern California public schools.

Why? To make our kids feel bad.

As an independent example, consider from the same sessions, other testimony — presented by author Dr. Peter Leitner on alleged Communist Chinese “yellow peril”-like subterfuge: “I’ve heard rumors . . . One I found particularly disturbing . . . [and] I haven’t seen any recorded documentation of these incidents . . . where very young-looking Chinese students were going to the United States and placed in high schools in the U.S. except their ages were 24 – 25 years old . . . They were brilliant students . . . Well, it turns out it’s an example of a sleeper agent, somebody who is put in position. He already has advanced degrees before coming in, then is put into the position as a seed and then is allowed to flourish in a totally unfair competition with U.S. student counterparts.”

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