An unusual alliance of national security experts that include a former CIA director and one-time spy Valerie Plame are warning the administration and Congress to act fast to block a growing “cybergeddon” threat from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran that could wipe out modern life for up to 18 months.
Once considered a space-aged joke, the experts claim that the U.S. foes have added “electromagnetic pulse” weapons and cyber strategy to their war plans but that Washington is ignoring the threat.
What’s more, according to R. James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993-1995, defense against an EMP attack would cost just $2 billion, which the U.S. gives to Pakistan every year.
AP Photo
“Ignorance of the military doctrines of potential adversaries and a failure of strategic imagination is setting America up for an EMP Pearl Harbor that could easily be avoided–if we would only heed that terrorist sabotage of electric grids and cyber attacks are early warning indicators. In fact, in the military doctrines, planning, and exercises of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, nuclear EMP attack is the ultimate weapon in an all-out cyber operation aimed at defeating nations by blacking-out their electric grids and other critical infrastructures,” Woolsey told Congress last month.
Plame, meanwhile, citing the recent China hacks into the Office of Personnel Management files, said a cyber threat to the U.S. electric grid is real. “If there was to be a massive attack– cyber attack– it would affect our infrastructure. We couldn’t get money from our ATMs, the stock market would stop trading and so on. It would really grind everything to a halt to say the least,” she told Larry King on his online OraTV show “PoliticKING with Larry King.”
“I think about what if they were to get into the electric grid, or into a nuclear plant. I live down the hill from Los Alamos. I’d hate to think what would happen if a foreign intelligence power got into that computer network. It is significant. And the government really needs to step up and provide guidance on how we’re going to keep safe this really sensitive information,” she added.
Woolsey has been leading the fight to win Congress’ focus on EMP warfare. He said it can occur in an atmospheric nuclear attack — or even naturally from a huge solar flare.
He blamed inaction in Washington and challenges from the electric power industry on the failure to protect the nation’s electric grid from a blackout.
Meanwhile, he revealed that Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are working to develop EMP strategy and that Iran is implementing its own anti-EMP system.
“Ironically, while electric power lobbyists are fighting against EMP protection in Washington, Texas, Maine, Colorado and elsewhere, the Iranian news agency MEHR recently reported that Iran is violating international sanctions and going full bore to protect itself from a nuclear EMP attack,” he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. His testimony is provided below.
He added:
“The EMP threat is as real as nuclear threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Nuclear EMP attack is part of the military doctrines, plans and exercises of all of these nations for a revolutionary new way of warfare that focuses on attacking electric grids and civilian critical infrastructures–what they call Total Information Warfare or No Contact Wars, and what some western analysts call Cybergeddon or Blackout Wars.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
