Sleepwalking With the Bomb (32 page)

The second report issued by the EMP panel examined 10 specific infrastructures and detailed their potentially greatest vulnerabilities. It should be noted that one major change in the past half century has increased societal vulnerability: the shift from vacuum tubes to silicon chips inside America’s electrical infrastructures. The latter are less resistant to EMP damage.

Electric power
drives virtually all infrastructures in the United States. Backup is provided by generators whose life typically is 72 hours or less, along with batteries with a life of a few hours at most. Even a short blackout can cause losses of between 18 and 60 percent of production in the affected area.  

Note that in the past 20 years the margin of redundant capacity for emergency needs has halved, from 20 to 10 percent. Increasing use of wind power, a mode that relies on the vagaries of fickle weather, can place unpredictable demands upon the system, increasing reliability problems. Overseas factories often produce (and customize) high-power transformers that step up and down voltage levels as electric current travels between power generation and customer distribution. But these transformers are not an immediate-term solution; the lead-time to order one is about a year, and there are 2,000 transformers in the U.S. electric grid.

As with computers, digitally controlled power systems can suffer extensive damage if shut down without the proper procedures. Thus the electric grid transmission system that links generators and consumers is, the panel said, “highly vulnerable” to EMP.

Telecommunications networks
are another major potential weak spot. Backup power typically lasts 4 to 72 hours. (One significant exception: EMP can’t hurt fiber optics, which lie outside the frequency range EMP effects occupy; but computers, telephones, etc. are electrical, and thus the end points of fiber networks are susceptible.)

Banking and finance networks
are highly automated electronic digital systems. These networks are impossible to operate without communications connectivity. In the past three decades, the transaction volumes that these networks carry have jumped by several orders of magnitude. A generation ago, a
10 million
–share trading day on the New York Stock Exchange was huge, whereas today trading volume averages
several billion
shares per day. The public securities markets trade trillions of dollars of securities annually; other specialized financial networks also trade trillions of dollars in value. In all, financial communications networks daily carry several times the amount of data held in the entire print collection of the Library of Congress. 

The financial industry is well protected against localized outages, with significant backup redundancy. But the industry’s assets are not hardened against EMP, and likely are highly vulnerable. The industry is so automated that reversion to a cash economy may not be feasible in event of a protracted outage; the United States might have to revert to a barter economy. A major disruption for even one day, let alone weeks or months, could be devastating. The Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission agree that even a single day without power could cause wide-scale disruption and risk to critical markets. In a situation where an EMP crippled electronic systems needed to recover lost data, the panel warned that an “irrecoverable loss of critical operating data and essential records on a large scale would likely result in catastrophic and irreversible damage to U.S. society.”

Petroleum and natural gas
flow through an extensive physical infrastructure in America. Backup systems can run this energy infrastructure for a few days, but energy transport systems, run by easily fried specialized digital control systems known as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), are vulnerable. (It is SCADA systems that were damaged by the Stuxnet cyberwar software. When the SCADA systems went haywire, they caused Iran’s delicate centrifuge equipment to operate erratically, ultimately rendering nearly 1,000 inoperable.)

Transportation
is another source of vulnerability. Coal supplies currently on site at some power plants could last up to a month; other plants have only days’ worth of coal on site. Repair and recovery of railroads would take days to weeks, with manual control able to operate at only 10 to 20 percent of normal capacity. 

Modern vehicles have up to 100 microprocessors controlling operations, so an EMP attack could disable most of the nation’s over 200 million vehicles, including the ones that carry about 80 percent of manufactured goods between manufacturer and consumer. 

Some 100 deep-draft ports (capable of handling large ships) move 95 percent of overseas trade (75 percent by monetary value); typically, ports have 10 to 20 days’ fuel on the premises. 

Aircraft have lots of redundancy. Modern airliners and regional jets carry hydraulic backup, driven by pressurized fluid power and unaffected by EMP or other electrical interference. EMP would zap electrical systems and radar, but planes could fly on hydraulic power and land under visual flight rules, weather permitting. Spacing of landing aircraft would be a problem; air traffic control radars have limited redundancy. Once on the ground, though, planes would stay there until power is restored, save for emergency missions. As food and water ran low and communications closed down, a major EMP strike could bring most air travel to a standstill.

Agriculture
requires immense water table and electric grid support. The grid is also essential for food processing, primarily for refrigeration. 

Supermarkets are the weakest link—the current reliance on justin-time delivery (using electronic databases) means that supermarkets have one to three days’ supply of food. In 1900, almost a third of Americans were farmers. Today the figure is 2 percent, meaning that there is a shortage of skilled farm personnel to help in a crisis. (Farm productivity, meanwhile, is up fiftyfold.) There are not enough workers to process food in the low-tech ways of earlier times. Gas ranges would work, but most gas-powered ovens built since the mid-1980s would not, as they are made with components more vulnerable to EMP disruption. And these newer models cannot be ignited with a match. 

Starvation, in the event that the food infrastructure collapses, would impair mobility and strength within a few days. After four or five days judgment would be impaired. After a fortnight people would be incapacitated. Death would result in one to two months. 

The water infrastructure
includes over 75,000 dams and reservoirs; thousands of miles of pipes, aqueducts, and distribution and sewer lines connect buildings with many thousands of water treatment facilities. Filtration and disinfectant systems require electric power. So do the pumps that raise water against the pull of gravity (as in skyscrapers). Irrigation and cooling are 80 percent of water consumption. As for drinking water, stores typically carry one to three days’ supply. Overall, because it relies heavily on electricity and digital control systems, the water infrastructure is highly EMP vulnerable. 

Emergency services
are provided in the United States by some 2 million firefighters, police, and emergency medical personnel. Emergency communications have enhanced backup, but they depend upon other infrastructures functioning. (A minor east coast earthquake in 2011 generated such a huge surge in cellphone traffic that congestion prevented most callers from getting through. An EMP strike would be far worse.)

Space systems
orbiting at low altitudes are vulnerable to EMP (as well as to other radioactive elements dispersed by a nuclear explosion, should their orbit take them through an affected zone). However, many vital satellites—such as communications and broadcasting satellites in their geosynchronous orbits, 22,300 miles above earth in deep space—are EMP safe.  

Government
depends upon all the above services, and is thus vulnerable. It would need to handle public dissemination of information following an attack. People may panic in the face of remote but unexplained dangers: after the 2001 anthrax attacks people took precautions against the disease, despite the astronomical odds of their becoming victims. After an attack, people would want to know about their family, understand what had transpired, and be assured that the authorities were managing the situation. Otherwise panic, or even posttraumatic stress, could result. After Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami megadisaster caused several partial nuclear plant meltdowns and released locally lethal radiation, Americans on the West coast bought iodine tablets, fearing that they otherwise would get thyroid cancer. Many people ignored statements from public health authorities that such precautions were unnecessary (because by the time the iodine crossed the Pacific its toxicity would have been drastically reduced).

T
HE COMMISSION
concludes that while an EMP attack on civilian infrastructure is “a serious problem,” it can be managed by public and private cooperation. This may prove optimistic. America may well need other countries to serve as “edge communities” and come to our aid.

A modest investment along the lines indicated in the commission’s report—hardening of key facilities and stockpiling of critical infrastructure components—would surely represent a small fraction of potential exposure and could add a lot to America’s security. The panel listed a set of remedial measures that appear to cost in aggregate perhaps $5 billion. At many times that amount the investment is a bargain.

Hardening vital infrastructures would also protect our lives and trillions in economic value from one phenomenon against which a deal with Moscow will not help: geomagnetic storms from the sun, which interact with the Earth’s magnetic field as does EMP. In 1859 a powerful geomagnetic storm inflicted major damage worldwide. With today’s vast infrastructures global catastrophe could result if another such storm occurred.

Missile defense—intercepting missiles before they reach detonation altitude—could amplify this protection. The threat is hardly theoretical; as indicated above, Iran has successfully tested a missile in EMP mode. A big and unanswered question is when Iran will have an ICBM ready, to cover the 6,350-mile distance between Tehran and Washington, D.C. One report has Iran already having purchased a pair of Chinese DF-31 ICBMs, whose range is 5,000 miles. These have sufficient range to cover all of Europe.

Iran has already launched small satellites into space. Doing so requires accelerating a rocket to an orbital velocity of five miles per second, faster than the four-mile-per-second velocity achieved by ICBMs that traverse space en route to their targets. Iran’s ICBM quest awaits two milestones: when it miniaturizes nuclear warheads, so they are small and light enough to be carried by Iran’s ballistic missiles; and when it achieves sufficient accuracy to put those missiles close to intended targets. Because Iran’s likely targets will be cities, the ICBMs they deploy need not have the pinpoint accuracy, within the radius of several football fields, achieved by U.S. ICBMs.

Currently Iran has the intermediate-range Shahab-3, with a 1,200-mile reach. To reach the continental United States, a Shahab-3 would have to be launched from a base inside the Western Hemisphere. And as it happens, Iran has found just such a base in Venezuela, courtesy of Venezuela’s anti-American president Hugo Chavez. From Caracas to Miami is 1,000 miles, well within the range of the Shahab-3. But being smaller than an ICBM, Shahab missiles will require warheads of greater miniaturization than those for an ICBM. Chavez may succumb to cancer before 2012 ends, but if his followers seize power, then Iran’s basing option will remain open. Meanwhile, six Persian Gulf states have indicated interest in deploying a missile defense shield backed by the U.S., to counter the growing Iranian threat.

Currently deployed missile defense systems can shoot down intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), which travel at about two miles per second. At twice that speed ICBMs are far too fast for existing defense systems to reliably track and destroy. America’s current deployment is minimal, and not effective against an EMP launch.

Such launches pose an additional as yet unmet challenge: they follow a steep trajectory that today’s missile defense systems are not designed to intercept. Existing systems intercept warheads as they descend. But an EMP warhead is detonated at maximum altitude, and will have done its work before today’s systems can perform their defensive mission.

What is ultimately needed is a system like the recently cancelled Airborne Laser, which was carried on a Boeing 747 aircraft and aimed at missiles as they rose off the launch pad or in early stages of flight. The ABL was ended because its technology was considered not good enough. We must put American ingenuity to work anew on this vital task. New directed energy systems—especially those based on ships, which would draw from the vast electric power produced aboard ships (far greater than that generated in any aircraft)—offer promise for improved missile defense in the medium and longer term.

Missile defense needs were examined in the Rumsfeld Commission report, which presented four unanimous broad conclusions:

1. Nuclear missile threats posed by hostile nations to America and its allies are growing.

2. Emerging offensive missile capabilities are “broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly” than realized in the intelligence community.

3. The ability of our intelligence to provide “timely and accurate” estimates of these threats is eroding.

4. Warning times are shrinking and may in some cases be minimal.