In 2008, the statutory Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack delivered over 100 recommendations to Congress to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures — including communications, transportation, energy, business and finance, food and water. We were hopeful the job would get done.
Following an EMP attack, 326 million Americans could not long survive bereft of the electronic civilization that sustains their lives. EMP would be a civilization killer. In 2008, the statutory Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack delivered over 100 recommendations to Congress to protect the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures — including communications, transportation, energy, business and finance, food and water. We were hopeful the job would get done.
Following an EMP attack, 326 million Americans could not long survive bereft of the electronic civilization that sustains their lives. EMP would be a civilization killer. The EMP commission reports are “good news,” because they prove there is no excuse for the nation to be vulnerable. Electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures can be protected — affordably. For example, the 2008 report estimates that the electric grid’s bulk-power system can be hardened to survive for a few billion dollars.
So, in 2008, when the EMP Commission delivered what we thought then was our final report to Congress, we were hopeful America soon would be protected.
However, by 2015 — 20 years after the first open congressional EMP hearing in 1995 — the U.S. Government Accountability Office testified to Congress that not a single major recommendation of the EMP Commission had yet been implemented. Not one.
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