Terminal Blackout: Critical Electric Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and Civil-Military Resiliency

摘要

Threats to the electric grid (cyber, solar, non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse NNEMP) and high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse (HEMP), as well as the potential consequences of significant damage to grid components by terrorists and other natural disasters, have increased incrementally since 2001; but details releasable to the public at the unclassified level were rare prior to 2008. Efforts by the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP Attack) to declassify data relevant to American society within their final 2008 report were successful1 (albeit limited, as much remains classified), and subsequently heralded during a major conference at Niagara Falls, sponsored by a new non-profit non-partisan organization, which hosted highly influential experts and proponents of critical electric infrastructure protection. Participants included sitting and retired Congressional members from both parties; former Directors of the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Nuclear Agency; counterterrorism analysts; commissioners; nuclear and electrical engineers; scientists; academics; and a wide variety of first responders. The Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP Attack): Critical National Infrastructures, the proceedings of a National Academy of Sciences workshop entitled Severe Space Weather Events: Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, a series of Metatech Corporation research publications, and several other official documents written within approximately the same timeframe (2008- 2010), all noted the extremely vulnerable state of our electric grid to high- altitude nuclear detonations, great geomagnetic storms from Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), and cyber attack.