John Pike, a defence analyst and founder of Virginia-based Global Security, said he doubted the test would change Gates’s view. “[Bob Gates] seemed to believe that there was no prospect of the plane engaging targets at ranges of several hundred kilometres, and that engagements at ranges of less than 100 kilometres were not militarily interesting,” he said.
The [Missile Defence Agency] statement did not specify what the range was during the test.
Ivan Oelrich, a physicist and vice-president for strategic security programmes at the Federation of American Scientists, said: “What would be interesting would be how far away it [the missile] is.” He said that to be useful, the laser would have to be able to shoot down missiles from at least 100 miles. It would also be expensive to keep one or more planes on stations waiting for a missile.
Occasionally one comes across an editorial in a US newspaper that almost knocks you out of your chair.
Not often does one see an editorial-like thing condemning the usual imprecations to bomb Iran because that country will eventually launch an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States.
How did the sane person get a permissions slip to opine?
Barry Kissin of the Frederick News Post writes:
I just read “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” by Daniel Pipes, visiting fellow at the prestigious Hoover Institution of Stanford University. When I first read the title, I was certain this had to be satirical. It’s not! His first point: “[Obama’s]counterterrorism record barely passes the laugh test.
It continues:
Pipes then points out that the way for Obama to consolidate popular support is to act tough, you know, start another war. Pipes follows with the polls (Zogby, Pew, Los Angeles Times, Fox News) that all show that a definite majority of Americans favor “using the [U.S.] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon.”
How about this from Pipes: “Eventually, [Iran] could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country.” And: “Taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities … would require few ‘boots on the ground’ and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.” And: “Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year … ” And the clincher: “[T]he chance to do good and do well is fleeting. As the Iranians improve their defenses and approach weaponization, the window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now … “
However, Kissin’s final line is most surprising. It is something most editors simply would not allow into a newspaper in 2010.
This is subhuman idiocy. It is also part of a long-standing pattern of criminal manipulation of the frightened and very misinformed.
By contrast, Pipes’ material immediately gets wide duplication around the country, also immediately flying into the Jerusalem Post.
“I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear and whose policies I work against,” he writes. “But here is a way for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the US and its allies.”
When the electromagnetic pulse crazy/bomb Iran lobby launches a sally — which is does once every few months, the last one petering out in September at the Values Voter summit — it always does so with perniciously admirable efficiency.
Everyone gets on the same page and makes a push into the opinion sections of US and foreign newspapers. And it always works.
In addition, the Cult of EMP Crazy lobby always comes up with a new catastrophic meme to sell the story of Iranian-launched electromagnetic pulse doom.
Usually, it has been the story that the US will be hurled back to the time of horse and buggy transportation, water drawn from the creek and shitting in out houses or trenches filled with lime.
Now, however, there’s a new flavor of Gotterdammerung.
“EMP attack, our version of Haiti quake,” trumpeted Clifford May for the Scripps Howard News Service very recently.
He writes, and this isn’t satire:
President Obama has pledged $100 million to help Haiti recover from its recent earthquake. By coincidence, that’s precisely the amount that the [mumble] recommends be spent on measures it estimates would limit the damage resulting from an EMP event by 60 to 70 percent.
This is delivered in an essay which, as must be the case, brings up the Bomb Iran lobby’s favorite story:
Think of a blackout, but one of indefinite duration — because we have no plan for recovery and could expect little or no help from abroad.
The EMP commission also reported that Iran — which is feverishly working to acquire nuclear weapons — has conducted tests in which it launched missiles and exploded warheads at high altitudes. And the CIA has translated Iranian military journals in which EMP attacks against the U.S. are explicitly discussed.
Might Iran’s rulers orchestrate such an attack if and when they acquire a nuclear capability?
For regular readers of DD blog and longtime observers of the the Washington DC Doom Club, May was warning about anthrax just in November.
“A scenario perhaps even more frightening: terrorists using biological weapons, setting off epidemics of smallpox, Ebola virus or other hemorrhagic fevers; a crop duster spreading 10 pounds of anthrax causing more deaths than in World War II.”
Alert readers will notice May always resorts to writing that potential enemy strikes will cause more casualties than America suffered in World War II.
On electromagnetic pulse attack by Iran, our equivalent of the Haiti quake , May writes:
When you consider that such an event — whether naturally occurring or a “man-caused disaster??? — could cause trillions of dollars in damage and claim more lives than were lost in World War II …
Readers will have also noted that it’s not really a coincidence that Dan Pipes’ Bomb Iran/EMP doom essay also ran in the National Review.
It’s what’s called a rigging. And one can’t help but applaud the EMP Crazy lobby’s talent for it. They’re really good.
In today’s Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, often called ‘the Short Count’ behind closed doors, if he is called at all, writes about how a neocon thinks the Obama administration can save and revitalize the country.
Mr. Obama is floundering as he tries to reset his presidency on economics. Defense is sacrosanct. Either taxes go up, or entitlements go down, or both. On Capitol Hill, it’s still burned toast for the president.
For centuries, leaders faced with insuperable domestic problems found escape in foreign distractions. In some cases, the distractions occurred suddenly and fortuitously, such as World War II, which started in Europe and pulled America out of the Great Depression.
President Obama isn’t looking for such a distraction, but others have no pangs illuminating what they think is the way out of the “clueless in Washington” dilemma. Right-wing scholar-activist Daniel Pipes, a neocon icon, could not be more blunt: President Obama can “save” his presidency by bombing Iran. The fact that this also could cost him the presidency is not deemed worthy of discussion.
Continuing:
“Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. It would have the advantage of sidelining health care, push Republicans to work with Democrats, make Tea Party-ers jump for joy, conservatives and neoconservatives would swoon ecstatically.”
In 2003, President George H.W. Bush appointed Mr. Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
And what better way to promote peace than to advocate bombing. Even the President can get behind that in America.
So what else is there? Electromagnetic pulse crazy, that’s what!
To reinforce the war party’s arguments, Mr. Pipes also says that “the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran” could eventually “launch an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the U.S., utterly devastating the country.” His detractors dismiss EMP alarmism as flimflam. But they are wrong. EMP is a very real concern of those who ponder future asymmetrical threats.
To summarize: One would be hard-pressed to imagine a bigger instance in which a group of people offer themselves up for deserved ridicule.
If a thing is backed up by hard science [like global warming or evolution], the Republican party denies its existence. If, however … something [is] rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is … not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, [like electromagnetic pulse doom], the GOP extreme right believes in it very strongly.
And so The Short Count writes, repeating the electromagnetic pulse crazy/bomb Iran lobby’s favorite script of doom:
One Scud-type nuclear missile, fired from the cargo hold of a freighter off the East Coast, set to explode 75 miles up, could fry everything electrical in one-third of the United States, from every cell phone and computer to aircraft, trains, vehicles, elevators, and the entire government, including the Pentagon.
Not only does a strong majority — 57, 52, 58, 61, and 61 percent in these five polls — already favor using force, but after a strike Americans will presumably rally around the flag, sending that number much higher.
Fourth, if the U.S.limited its strike to taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities and did not attempt any regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground??? and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.
DD had missed this but it’s ably pointed out by Don Emmerich here.
“A North Korean army lab of hackers was ordered to ‘destroy’ South Korean communications networks — evidence the isolated regime was behind cyberattacks that paralyzed South Korean and American Web sites — news reports said Saturday, citing an intelligence briefing,” read an AP wire news story today.
“[SK lawmakers were told Friday] that a research institute affiliated with the North’s Ministry of People’s Armed Forces received an order to ‘destroy the South Korean puppet communications networks in an instant’ … ”
North Korea: We’ll make a handful of your websites load slow!
South Korea: Just wait! Once we get our electromagnetic pulse bomb to work at a range of greater than ten yards …
North Korea: Your EMP-bomb building scientists have nothing on our selfless warriors. They can can modify a five-year-old computer virus as well as Internet script kiddies or maybe even a little better! Tomorrow we strike your Imperialist puppet-master pigdogs at dol.gov as another example that you are powerless! Powerless!
South Korea: Our electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bombs, if exploded, will jam and damage your defence systems! Then you will not be able to rewrite more computer viruses!
North Korea: Tomorrow we will inflict more merciless retribution and pounding on your decadent overlords as well as make the website of your evil Ministry of Agriculture to load slow, if maybe at all. At least five people will be made to work overtime!
“This is how small powers can damage large ones in an era of asymetric warfare.” — frightened at the Booman Tribune.
“If it is verified that North Korea is the origin of the cyber attacks, perhaps it is time to take some action against them — something more serious than begging them to be good. They have shown they are a dangerous outlaw nation.” — some random Blogger blog.
“Attack on government computers draws speculation and shrugs …” Los Angeles Times.
What to do, what to do, about The Pathetic War? Or, “Who Should We Bomb?”
“If the attacks caused harm to anyone ‘you get more serious, and start thinking and talking about it as an act of war or at least state-sponsored violence,’ said Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analysts at the Brookings Institution.”
Appearing in an Associated Press story today, readers will remember O’Hanlon as the famous ‘liberal hawk’ who lobbied vigorously for the Iraq War and, years later, was tossed in the rubbish bin by everyone still possessing even a shred of common sense.
Will O’Hanlon launder himself fresh on the cybersecurity beat?
“And if you go out over the networks to strike back at Pyongyang, how can you be sure you’re not accidentally going to also take down Japan at the same time? You could end up shooting the wrong guy.” — someone with more apparent brains.
However, if readers review an older piece on cyberwar-retaliation at all el Reg, one written by your host, not everyone will be on board with restraint, moderation and good sense. Keep in mind, this article was written as a bit of dry satire.
However, that was well before the triumph of The Pathetic War.
When it comes to carpet-bombing a foreign country’s cyberspatial infrastructure, the proper intelligence will be important, reasons [a US military man]. But no capability should be particularly restricted by details. If the US blows some puny country off the Internet and it turns out that their computers were only being used by others, the retaliation will have had, in any case, a warning effect. After all, a weapon has no deterrence if you keep it a secret. And besides, they’ll probably have had it coming.
“Brute force has an elegance all its own,” the man [said].
DD on McIntyre in the Morning, K ABC AM 790, Los Angeles
Host Peter Tilden: Hey, we have three computers in my house and I can’t get my kid’s to work right on the Internet. Do you know what to do?
DD: Sorry, can’t help you there.
Fast forward to end of segment
Tilden: The least he could have done was fix my kid’s computer.
“Our [South Korean] EMP devices can currently affect systems only tens of meters away, but our aim is to extend the reach to one km by 2014,” Yonhap news agency quoted an official as saying.
“An EMP bomb cannot be considered effective unless its range is at least one km,” an official said.
The development effort, which has been under way for nearly a decade according to the officials …
Did your computer slow down on the Internet yesterday, Daddy?
I always come across slow websites, kid. When I went to log onto the Department of Homeland Security’s website, my MSN browser sent me to Bing instead. Twice. The third time was OK, though.
And my computer crashes at least once a day. I can never tell if it’s North Korean cybermen, China or just me.
And everyone knows you just can’t call up reporters from the New York Times and say stupid mostly made-up shit to them and get it into print, right!?
Now, if you don’t have a sense of humor at the absurd nature of this, you’re going to hurt yourself jumping all over the story.
We just returned from an emergency meeting in Seoul at the Cyber Terror Response Center. Team leader Chang Seok-hwa briefed us that North Korea is stepping up its attacks, probably in advance of a massive physical attack that will roll across the DMZ. South Korea’s military is now implementing the first part of its plan to shut down the country’s major Internet pipelines in order to protect the country from North Korea’s cyber military might. More news as I get it.
Spoiler alert: The above clip is a ‘honeypot,’ installed by one of DD’s pals. Can you guess who it belongs to?
“Cyberattacks that have crippled the Web sites of several major American and South Korean government agencies since the July 4th holiday weekend appear to have been launched by a hostile group or government, [said] South Korea’s main government spy agency said on Wednesday,” reported the Times.
“The opposition Democratic Party accused the spy agency of spreading unsubstantiated rumors to whip up support for a new anti-terrorism bill that would give it more power.”
As usual, in cyberwar, a central plank of critical thinking goes missing. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and substantive argument in support. Or else they’re just more of the usual squawk about s— happening on the Net, the daily crap that everyone must deal with, regardless of who did it or point of origin.
You haff made [a website] run slow. Now I am here to upgrade you.
North Korean ‘cyberattack’ linked to an upgraded a newer version of the old MyDoom computer virus, which dates from 2004 or so.
List of sites ‘attacked’ in the cyberwar — here, at Panda.
List of sites to be attacked, extracted from new version of MyDoom virus — here.
In another manner of speaking, that’s close enough for government work. And it indicates that just about anyone, or any group, could have done this with relative ease, rewriting computer viruses to do your bidding being not much of a feat of arms. The really good news is that if it actually is a North Korean operation (and I have my doubts), then it is the very definition of pathetic. If it’s a usual hacker/virus-writer doing something NK sympathetic and wishing to show how the Great Satan can be struck, it’s also not much to get excited over.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that DD visits dhs.gov and voanews.gov regularly and wouldn’t have known there was a ‘cyberattack’ if the newsmedia hadn’t informed him. And that’s something a Fox News piece also reported: ” … [And] yet the Pentagon wasn’t informed about the attacks until Wednesday — by hearing about it from the media.”
This raises the philosophical question: What happens when you launch a cyberwar and can’t get the newsmedia to notice?
“DHS.gov is just one of the sites slowed down by last weekend’s attack from North Korea, or the MyDoom virus, or both, or possibly neither… ” reads a recent piece from Popular Science.
More DD quote:
“You think this is North Korea? That’s kinda pathetic on their part … They have nuclear weapons, and they choose to attack by making websites slower? If there hadn’t been news stories, would anyone have noticed? Probably not.”
If only we had that electromagnetic pulse bomb now we could use it to stop that cyberwar
“South Korean military officials are developing an electromagnetic pulse bomb designed to incapacitate electronic equipment, a source says,” informs UPI.
“Citing an unnamed military source, Chosun Ilbo reported Wednesday Seoul’s EMP bomb could be used to neutralize missile-guidance systems or other equipment within a 330-foot radius of its detonation …”
Remember, in this version of the electromagnetic pulse bomb story, it’s OUR weapon that’s about to reach maturation, not the terrorist dream (or North Korea or Iran’s) which will return the US, in one mighty blow, to the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
“America’s Strategic Trap?” wonders a recent Chinese opinion piece, translated here. The article was in the context of the recent waterfall of news on cyberwar.
And it continues to show the Chinese have finally (it’s taken them some time) become wise to the practices of western journalists on the cybersecurity beat. The cardinal rule has been: Blame China for malicious Internet activity aimed at the US.
In Asia, they’ve now started to return the paranoia, delusions and hype.
And so it opines:
America’s control of the internet stretches far beyond most people’s imaginations. Once the internet war breaks out, the U.S. government will make use of its terrifying powers over internet technology. Therefore, the United States is tempting other countries to begin the internet arms race. Once begun, America will exert its own online prowess on other, weaker countries, dragging them down.
“Meanwhile, the United States wants to lure other countries into participating in an online ‘arms race,'” it concludes. “Acting as the ‘international police’ of cyber world, the U.S. could utilize certain clauses and excuses to infringe on the sovereignty of other countries or intervene in their domestic affairs.”
Technically, there’s so much badness floating about, it invites a rhetorical comparison with a sewer.
As a thought excercise, imagine you’ve been tossed into an ocean of raw sewage and been told that’s where you’re going to be doing business for the rest of your life.
Whoaa … who does that river of excrement belong to? Organized crime? Spammers from India? China? US cybermen? Do you even care about the distinctions?
It was yet again another example of the practice in which a journalist accepts uncritically anything he’s told by a small number of sources. Then the news agency runs with it because it sounds so cool and it’s a little short on Jacko pieces today.
In the late 1990s, a computer specialist from Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service hacked into the mainframe of the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of Tel Aviv.
It was meant to be a routine test of safeguards at the strategic site. But it also tipped off the Israelis to the potential such hi-tech infiltrations offered for real sabotage.
“Once inside the Pi Glilot system, we suddenly realized that, aside from accessing secret data, we could also set off deliberate explosions, just by programing a re-route of the pipelines,” said a veteran of the Shin Bet drill.
Of course, we’ve seen crapola about causing explosions remotely before.
“China could launch a devastating computer-run sabotage operation by attacking U.S. oil refineries, many of which are grouped closely together in areas of Texas, New Jersey and California.
“A [Chinese] computer attacker could penetrate the electronic ‘gate’ that controls refinery operations and cause fires or toxic chemical spills . . . “
This was back in 1999. It appeared in the Washington Times. And DD recapped it here on the old blog a couple years ago.
It wasn’t true then.
And common sense and a normal sense of skepticism would point you in the direction of it still not being so, for any number of reasons, like: the reporter was being lied to as part of an operation to make Iranians paranoid, relation of a story by a third party who was, in reality, recalling the equivalent of watercooler gossip and old wive’s tales, someone imagining grandiose things one can do with cyberwar because they’ve read it so many times elsewhere, etc…
The important truth test remains unfulfilled.
In national security affairs, extraordinary claims require extraordinary and substantive proof in support of them. Absent that, they’re just gossip. And ten or twenty or thirty people or sources repeating the same gossip does not automatically transform it into truth.
If you decide to discard such critical thinking, like the US, you get what later becomes obvious to all. You believe your own fairy tales, get yourself off to a disastrous war, receive years and years of rude and unpleasant shocks, and have your reputation trashed.
But DD digresses.
“To judge by my interaction with Israeli experts in various international forums, Israel can definitely be assumed to have advanced cyber-attack capabilities,” one person told Reuters. This was a fellow advertised as “director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, which advises various Washington agencies on cyber security.”
The US Cyberconsequences Unit is not a government agency. It is another of many small companies interesting in selling cyberwar and cybersecurity defense plans and consulting. It has one whole web page to mark its existence, not counting the contact form and confidentiality guarantee.
“Technolytics Institute, an American consultancy, last year rated Israel the sixth-biggest ‘cyber warfare threat,’ after China, Russia, Iran, France and ‘extremist/terrorist groups,” continues Reuters.
Like the forbidding US Cyberconsequences Unit, Technolytics is a small cybersecurity consulting shop, located in McMurray, PA. See a handful of press releases here.
At the end of the Reuters piece, the equivalent of the kook’s kitchen sink is tossed in, the electromagnetic pulse bomb.
“Jesus H. Christ!” DD hears you mutter.
DD covered this aspect of the EMP crazy story earlier this year. And that’s the part where the electromagnetic pulse bomb is a gadget of the US military. (One of the endlessly fine things about electromagnetic pulse crazy is that it works two ways. It can be the terrorist’s dream, capable of sending the country back to the time of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with one mighty blow. Or it can be our weapon, capable of taking down the electronic infrastructure of enemies without shedding blood and smashing things to bits like we usually do.)
The electromagnetic pulse bomb — our flavor — is best described as the weapon that is always said to be coming and coming, it’s almost here now, it’s here (!), wait — no it isn’t, and — finally, nope, still not here.
Sometimes, however, electromagnetic pulse bombs or things said to be EMP bombs are dimly seen or tested. That’s been covered, too. Think of them as regular bombs with fancy parts/rubbish added on — with the fancy stuff designed to do the electromagnetic part not working so well.
Sadly, the electromagnetic pulse bomb is NOT in the building, ladies and gentlemen. In a news article, however, it is an indication that a journalist is grasping at straws.
“State of War,” a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen, recounted a short-lived plan by the CIA and its Israeli counterpart Mossad to fry the power lines of an Iranian nuclear facility using a smuggled electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) device.
And everyone knows you just can’t call up reporters from the New York Times and say stupid mostly made-up shit to them and get it into print, right!?
“A massive, nation-wide EMP attack on Iran could be effected by detonating a nuclear device at atmospheric height,” adds Reuters.
Yes, shooting an ICBM at Iran bolt-out-of-the-blue, whether it detonates on the ground or in the atmosphere, would really be a fantastic thing, marvelled at by all worldwide.
Update:
All our friends want the bomb that’s never quite here. According to the Korea Times:
“The South Korean military will have an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) bomb in five years that is capable of crippling an enemy’s command-and-control, communications and defense radar systems.
“The state-funded Agency for Defense Development (ADD) plans to complete the development of the bomb by 2014, agency officials said Tuesday.
“EMP offers a significant capability against electronic equipment susceptible to damage by transient power surges …”
Concerned about EMP attack closing the guns & ammo shop early? Look at the bright side: It would end the creep toward socialism and healthcare reform.
If a thing is backed up by hard science and poses a real danger for everyone on the planet, [like global warming], the Republican party denies its existence. If, however, the threat is something rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is something not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, [like electromagnetic pulse doom], the GOP believes in it very strongly.
So it was written earlier this week in a piece on how the Republican Party has taken years to ensure that it has the vote of every single person concerned about devastating electromagnetic pulse attack.
It is a voting demographic entirely lost to the Democrat Party.
“In recent weeks, I have attended two lectures that discussed what could be the greatest existential threat to the U.S: EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, attacks,” wrote Brett Joshpe at the American Spectator on July 1. Upon logon, the publication shoots a pop-up at you, one featuring comedian, actor, global-warming denier and non-believer in evolution, Ben Stein. That would cover all the important bases.
“Although an EMP attack would utilize conventional nuclear weapons, it is an infrequently discussed aspect of our nuclear policy, and one for which we are woefully unprepared,” continued the Spectator lede.
If [the threat of electromagnetic pulse doom] is not enough to wake up members of Congress and a seemingly unaware public, then recent activity by American adversaries should,” Joshpe warned. “The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Russia, China, and other countries have ‘penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system.’ ”
First, Carlini quotes from ol’ DD without crediting (I’m sure he didn’t mean to).
“If you read some of the extremists from both sides, you get a range of comments. For example:”
New America paranoids have a very special flavor of craziness. It’s the belief that the country will be devastated by an electromagnetic pulse attack and not enough is being done to combat the grave threat.
Then he quotes from one of the first ranks of the EMP crazy side — the Heritage Foundation — which does get a credit.
Since it’s the stock EMP crazy rubbish though, it doesn’t count much. All EMP nutter stuff is written the same, tolerating no deviance from the script’s numbing repetition.
As proof, from the Heritage Foundation piece’s first graf:
A major threat to America has been largely ignored by those who could prevent it. An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could wreak havoc on the nation’s electronic systems—shutting down power grids, sources, and supply mechanisms.
Yeah, yeah, heard it, been there, broken record.
But back to Carlini, who opines that EMP attack could cost the country more than a few ‘TARPs’. He writes plaintively:
There is a time for fear mongering and a time to wake up to the facts. Now is the time to wake up to the facts. The media should be covering EMP bombs rather than the latest political sex scandal.
DD has a suggestion: More electromagnetic pulse doom news, less Jacko!
Alert readers may have sussed that the current spurt from electromagnetic pulse nutters derives some perspiration and inspiration from North Korean missile testing. Lost, however, is the reality that North Korea’s atomic tests have been fizzles, although the more recent one was less of a failure.
North Korea, it seems, just can’t get things quite right. It carefully prepares the stage, explodes its bomb … and then western analysts spoil the party.
Nevertheless, it has spurred talk of electromagnetic pulse attack and news stories in South Korea on the government planning for the same.
“South Korea plans to improve defenses by 2014 against nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks that could devastate power grids and electronic systems,” reported the Korea Herald this weekend.
The ministry announced a 178 trillion won ($141 billion) mid-term defense plan for 2010-14, aimed to bolster response to North Korean nuclear and missile threats.
The military will spend about 100 billion won to ready measures to shield strategic assets from a possible EMP strike from North Korea. About 6 billion won has been earmarked to fund the project design in next year’s budget.
No electromagnetic pulse doom abatement plan would be complete without the purchase of American arms to seek out and destroy an enemy’s weapons:
“The Defense Ministry also said yesterday it would purchase U.S. high-altitude unmanned spy aircraft called ‘Global Hawk’ in 2015 … U.S. bunker-busting bombs capable of destroying underground enemy targets will be introduced next year, officials said.”
And here’s even more from yet another handful of EMP loons at the Heritage Foundation. Yes, at Heritage they just can’t repeat the same script enough. You’re just not listening people! Ninety percent of Americans could die!
In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That’s how long it would take for an enemy ballistic missile launched from the other side of the world to hit the United States. If it carried and detonated a nuclear weapon high over the center of the country, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would literally fry the nation’s electrical grid and all of the circuitry that powers our homes, businesses, hospitals, phones, cars, planes, traffic lights, ATMs, water supplies, and anything else not “hardened” against such attacks. The EMP Commission chairman has testified that, within just one year of such an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation and disease.
What’s the answer? Spend more on missile defense. Stop funding those parasitic social welfare/entitlement programs. Stop wasting money improving fuel efficiency by trying to get ‘clunkers’ off the road! More EMP attack abatement, dammit!
The EMP crazy lobby also has videos.
Here are a couple featuring William Forstchen. For the first, on Fox, he declares North Korea to be fully capable of imposing electromagnetic doom on the US.
The second is an excerpt from “Coast to Coast,” a famous radio show devoted to UFO kooks.
And here’s a home video on how to protect your stuff from EMP doom. Put those old ammunition cans to good use.
And here is another dude from the EMP lobby, RP Eddy, also on Fox News.
Here’s a video staging of how EMP doom would occur, your bank account kaput, our country sent back to a pre-industrial age, a living American nightmare. It’s put together by defense hawk and EMP crazy Frank Gaffney, of the Center for Security Policy.
Electromagnetic pulse crazy eminence grise Newt Gingrich, on Fox News. Mark Sanford, pre-news of Argentine love frenzy, dragged in, too.
The Delilah Bomb, because it would steal our strength, like she stole Samson’s. Welcome to the 1880s!
“Contrary to media reports, it is not true that an EMP attack from a typical strategic weapon would completely shut down the electronics within a country. First, the effect is statistical in nature – some systems will not notice the pulse at all while identical counterparts will be affected. Second, the most likely effect from an EMP attack is ‘upset’ rather than destruction …”
Oddly, found here. Indicating the chorus of busted GOP wristwatches is occasionally interrupted by someone quoting from an actual expert source.
“Brief analysis shows that our computerized, electronically-dependent society offers any rogue nation a perfect target: an EMP-vulnerable power grid susceptible of a sucker punch to the heart of our infrastructure,” writes a columnist at the star journal for right-wing crackpots, Human Events.
The electromagnetic pulse attack lobby is now exclusively the property of the GOP. It’s a dumping ground for a rich a variety of Republican crazies, a constituency which DD mapped for many years. Like those who believe global warming to be a hoax, the Republican right has electromagnetic pulse fear all locked up.
If one thinks about this paradox, it has a neatly confounding internal anti-logic.
If something is backed up by hard science and poses a real danger for everyone on the planet, the Republican party denies its existence. If, however, the threat is something rather abstract to almost all Americans, rests almost entirely on theoretical prediction, is something not likely to ever occur at all, and then only in the context of what would promise to be an all out nuclear war, the GOP believes in it very strongly.
To paraphrase Paul Krugman characterizing GOP attitudes towards global warming: You could call this crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists.
“The nightmare scenario of [EMP attack] is this: A rogue nation like North Korea or a stateless terrorist like Bin Laden gets hold of a nuclear weapon and decides not to drive it into a large city but rather to launch it on a Scud-type missile straight into the atmosphere from a barge off the East Coast,” wrote one brilliant theoretician at Slate a couple years ago.
“In fact, [a congressionally chartered commission] discovered that knowledge about EMP is widespread in such places as: China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia,” wrote defense hawk and EMP crazy Frank Gaffney for the Washington Times, also a couple of years ago.
“Several of these nations, and perhaps terrorists that they sponsor, could launch a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a ship – the sort of attack that poses an especially grave threat to the United States.”
You see, EMP crazy theory has always been immortal Fortress American paranoid voodoo, crap — in other words, a threat which can be glued on anyone: teen hackers, Russia, Cuba, China, North Korea, Iran, al Qaeda, plus miscellaneous other suspects and a half dozen enemies we have yet to find and publicly vilify, like maybe you.
“There is reason to believe the Iranian regime is working toward [an EMP] capability that could destroy America as we know it,” wrote Gaffney in the same opinion piece. He was citing an old GOP stalwart and infamous kook, now run out of Congress and mostly forgotten, Curt Weldon from southeast Pennsylvania.
“One to three missiles tipped with nuclear weapons and armed to detonate at a high altitude — to achieve the strongest EMP over the greatest area of the United States — would create an EMP ‘overlay’ that triggers a continent-wide collapse of our entire electrical, transportation, and communications infrastructure … Within weeks after such an attack, tens of millions of Americans would perish … We most likely would never recover from the blow,” wrote famous Newt Gingrich, also a card-carrying electromagnetic pulse attack crazy, in March, here.
“The incentive to attack America through EMP is high because the cost to America would be catastrophic,” confirms Kathryn Gaines at Human Events.
“If America were hit with an EMP over the course of one year 90% of Americans would be dead. America would be reduced to third world status,” she adds.
Quite naturally, it is now the Democratic administration’s fault that not enough has been done to defend against electromagnetic attack.
“The current administration is failing to imagine, and so resists planning for an EMP attack,” concludes Gaines. “The government is failing in its primary task of protecting the citizens.”
