With the United States waking up to the threat posed to the electric grid and electronics from cyberwarfare, Russia is mastering systems that can already overcome the latest protections to keep the lights on, according to one of the nation’s leading experts.
The latest intelligence indicates that Russia has specialized a “super-electromagnetic pulse” weapon and warhead capable of traveling at Mach 20 that could put the U.S. in the dark with little notice.
Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, also said China has leapfrogged U.S. developments in electromagnetic pulse warfare.
What’s more, administration critics claim that President Biden’s decision to lift former President Trump’s ban on China involvement in the U.S. grid gives the communist foe a backdoor opening to attacking the nation’s electric supply.
“Washington’s impotence and irresolution will invite future, increasingly aggressive cyberattacks,” said Pry, who has worked with Congress, past administrations, the electric industry, and the Pentagon to prepare for an attack.
He recently warned that the political turmoil in Washington is a “golden opportunity” for an EMP strike.
During the Trump administration, he and others had success getting the White House and the Pentagon to focus on the issue and begin protecting key facilities. But the energy industry has been slow to act.
Proponents of preparing for an EMP attack believe that Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran see the U.S. as an easy target and one that could quickly be brought to its knees because so much of the economy relies on electricity, communications, and the internet, all of which would cease in an attack.
In his new report on Russia, Pry provided details in advancements in EMP warfare, or “cybergeddon,” Moscow has pushed, including a new weapon and high-speed delivery.
Unlike conventional warfare, he said that EMP weapons are exploded high enough up in the atmosphere to wipe out the electric grids and computers in huge sections of the country. The outages could last over a year.
He said enemy nations with the weapons “could black out North America and NATO Europe and win World War III at the speed of light.”
His report came on the 26th anniversary of Russia’s nuclear war scare in which the Kremlin mistakenly believed a Norwegian meteorological rocket was an incoming U.S. EMP attack, the closest the superpowers ever came to nuclear war.
