title: CONGRESS WARNED Threat of Nuclear EMP Attack Has Never Been Higher: “N. Korean EMP Attack Would Kill ‘90% of All Americans’
text: While fecklessness towards the emerging North Korean threat characterized the Clinton and Bush  43 administrations, we find ourselves needlessly exposed to its present magnitude in no small measure because Obama s so-called strategic patience was characterized by inaction on two, vital fronts: advancing the U.S. missile defense capabilities and protecting the grid against electromagnetic pulse and other perils.Barack Obama and his subordinates brought to office a visceral enmity towards missile defense, born of an ideological attachment to the obsolete Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union, which prevented the United States from having any effective anti-missile systems. While George W. Bush formally withdrew us from the ABM Treaty in 2002, the capabilities of such defenses as have been put into place have been deliberately limited   so much so that they were reportedly not up to the task of shooting down the ballistic missile Pyongyang fired over Japan last week.Team Obama was convinced that it would rid the world of nuclear weapons and so declined to take seriously, let alone do anything appreciable about, the danger that one or more detonated outside the atmosphere over the United States could destroy our most critical of critical infrastructures: the electric grid. Late in his presidency, Mr. Obama did evince concern about a similar, nation-ending effect being caused by intense solar storms, but did little to make the grid resilient against that source of destructive electromagnetic pulses, either.   Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Reagan administration, and President of the Center for Security PolicyWashington Examiner   Congress was warned Thursday that North Korea is capable of attacking the U.S. today with a nuclear EMP bomb that could indefinitely shut down the electric power grid and kill 90 percent of  all Americans  within a year.At a House hearing, experts said that North Korea could easily employ the  doomsday scenario  to turn parts of the U.S. to ashes.In calling on the Pentagon and President Trump to move quickly to protect the grid, the experts testified that an explosion of a high-altitude nuclear bomb delivered by a missile or satellite  could be to shut down the U.S. electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans. Two members of the former congressional EMP commission said the threat to the U.S. has never been higher, in part because of the current high level of saber-rattling by both sides and North Korea s surprising display over the past six months of its ability to deliver on its threats. With the development of small nuclear arsenals and long-range missiles by new, radical U.S. adversaries, beginning with North Korea, the threat of a nuclear EMP attack against the U.S. becomes one of the few ways that such a country could inflict devastating damage to the United States. It is critical, therefore, that the U.S. national leadership address the EMP threat as a critical and existential issue, and give a high priority to assuring the leadership is engaged and the necessary steps are taken to protect the country from EMP,  the experts told a House Homeland Security subcommittee.Watch the discussion about the threat of an EMP attack on the United States with congressional members here: 