The excerpt below is from an opinion article written by Dr. Peter Pry for The Hill, which originally appeared on March 28, 2019. The original article in its entirety can be read here.
THE HILL: Finally, a presidential EMP order that may save American lives
The Commission to Assess the Threat from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, also known as the Congressional EMP Commission, has warned for nearly 20 years that a nuclear EMP attack, or natural EMP from a solar superstorm, could destroy our electronic civilization and kill millions.
“During the Cold War, the U.S. was primarily concerned about an EMP attack generated by a high-altitude nuclear weapon as a tactic by which the Soviet Union could suppress the U.S. national command authority and the ability to respond to a nuclear attack — and thus negate the deterrence value of assured nuclear retaliation,” the Commission wrote in July 2017 in its report, “Assessing the Threat from EMP Attack.”
It continued: “Within the last decade, newly-armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack would give countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to critical national infrastructures, to the United States itself as a viable country, and to the survival of a majority of its population.”
The Executive Order on Coordinating National Resilience to Electromagnetic Threats, signed on March 26 by President Trump, is an excellent first step toward achieving national preparedness. It seeks to implement core recommendations of the Congressional EMP Commission on an accelerated basis.
Among the best and strongest features of the EMP Executive Order is putting the White House in charge of national EMP preparedness, rather than relying on the Department of Energy (DOE) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lead.
Read the original article in its entirety here.
