The Next Fake Threat

Cars won't start. The electricity and phone lines go out. Electronic devices have their circuits fried. When the aliens first appear in this summer's remake of the 1950s sci-fi flick War of the Worlds, they are accompanied by an intense electrical storm that generates what is known as an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Of course, the aliens then proceed to wreak further havoc slaughtering humans from their towering, spider-like machines.

However, EMP itself is not science fiction. A congressionally-mandated commission last summer went public with their unclassified executive summary that envisions terrorists detonating a nuclear warhead above the continental United States, unleashing an EMP of catastrophic proportions and thrusting our 21st century information society into darkness. Their report's main recommendation is to spend anywhere from $20-200 billion in the next twenty years to "harden" America's critical infrastructure (e.g. the power industry, telecommunications) from EMP.

Another one of their recommendations is that the United States should "have vigorous interdiction and interception efforts to thwart delivery." Acting Commission Chairman physicist Lowell Wood confirmed that the recommendation included a national missile defense. As the Commission argues, one missile could shut-down the entire United States, which is a powerful argument for missile defense.

The members of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack (EMP Commission) have impressive credentials, yet they are also deeply tangled up with pro-missile defense organizations and the defense industry. Given their conflicts of interest and the controversial assumptions behind their report, questions about their credibility arise. Is the EMP Commission's scenario realistic or is it scare mongering to rally support for a pro-missile defense agenda?

According to Charles Ferguson, a nuclear terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, terrorists would have trouble obtaining a nuclear weapon or the fissile material needed. Moreover, terrorists would likely use simple delivery means like a truck and just blow up a city to produce mass casualties, rather than launching a warhead into the sky hoping to produce EMP. (The EMP Commission vastly understates the price of a SCUD missile, which they tout as a possible delivery means. They have publicly stated that SCUDs can be purchased for $100,000. Steve Zaloga, a missile expert at the Teal Corporation, a defense consulting firm, says for a working model it would cost at least $1 million, and more for the launch system.)

The Commission has also spotlighted Iran as contemplating an EMP attack on the United States. Before Congress, EMP Commission senior staff member and ex-CIA analyst Peter Pry refers to an Iranian political military journal article translated by the CIA to support this allegation. He employs ellipses in an artful, but deceitful way to weave together quotes from this article. Problem is that this journal article doesn't mention EMP or nuclear weapons at all. It discusses attacks on communications, but by computer attacks, not by EMP -- a blatant misuse of documentation to support the EMP Commission's case.

Perhaps the most controversial of the EMP Commission's claims is their insistence that a Hiroshima-sized nuclear detonation (10-20 kilotons) could produce enough EMP to fry circuits across a continent. The EMP Commission points to one of the few case studies available -- the Starfish Prime atmospheric nuclear test of 1962. A 1.4 megaton thermonuclear weapon detonated 250 miles above Johnston Island in the Pacific affected street lamps, circuit breakers, cars and radio stations in Hawaiian, 800 miles to the north. Still, even there the effect was far from comprehensive. Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Michael P. Bernardin said that "the 30 strings of failed streetlights [from Starfish Prime's EMP] represented only about one percent of the streetlamps on Oahu at the time." And noted physicist Richard Garwin said the Starfish detonation "had barely noticeable effects on military systems."