EMP Awareness Advocacy

A couple weeks ago I published at article at Right Web on EMP awareness ddvocacy, the idea that an electromagnetic pulse attack presents a clear and immediate danger to the United States. I've received several good responses to the article, including one correspondent who discussed the wide variation in EMP preparation onboard new US naval vessels, and another who posed some serious and difficult technical questions about the feasibility of any EMP attack. The science of EMP is quite complex and is the subject of bitter disagreement among experts. I think it would be fair to say that there is no clear scientific consensus on a) the amount of damage that a concerted EMP attack could cause to the United States, or b) the size of the nuclear warhead(s) needed to cause a substantial EMP effect. One key reason for this uncertainty is simply that there are hard limits on what can be learned about the effect of EMP in the absence of an actual EMP attack, and certainly in the absence of atmospheric nuclear weapon testing.

Because of the limitations of the science, I'd like to focus on the strategic question. EMP awareness advocates argue that an EMP attack provides the perfect opportunity for China, a rogue state, or a terrorist organization to strike a devastating blow against the United States. Rather than simply destroying one city, the story goes, an EMP attack could wipe out the entire US economy, and even (according to the wildest estimate) lead to the deaths of 90% of the US population within a year. The EMP attack probably wouldn't eliminate the ability of the United States to respond, but because of the initial lack of lethality, the story goes, it would be difficult to launch a devastating nuclear counterstrike. While the US could respond with its own EMP attack, China and the various rogue states have economies less dependent on modern technology than that of the United States, and accordingly could weather a counterattack.

Alright, deep breath. Here are the parts of the story that I find strategically implausible:

1. That any adversary could believe that an EMP attack on the United States would not incur retaliation. If the Chinese launched several ICBMs as part of an EMP attack against the United States, how could they be certain that a devastating American counterstrike wouldn't be delivered even before any damage was done? The same goes for any rogue state; the idea that an EMP attack wouldn't incur retaliation assumes an extraordinary level of risk acceptance on the attacking state. There may be other reasons to believe that rogue states are immune to deterrence, but the idea that EMP is key to this belief seems implausible.
   
2. That any adversary would willingly endure the impact of an EMP counterstrike. China hasn't spent the last thirty years developing a modern economy to risk its destruction overnight. It may in some abstract sense be true that the Chinese could weather an EMP assault better than we, but such an attack would still leave the Chinese economy a global basket case. Same goes for any rogue state.
3. The idea that a rogue state or terrorist group would use one of its small, scarce atomic warheads in an attack with an extraordinarily low chance of success, and with extraordinarily high costs whether the attack succeeded or failed. The technical details matter here; EMP awareness advocates have argued that a 12-20kt warhead could, if properly used, have a massive EMP effect. There is approximately zero evidence to back this up, but then it's hard to prove that it couldn't happen. Awareness advocates would have us believe, however, that Iran, North Korea, or a terrorist group would be so confident of the success of the attack that they would use one of their very few weapons to launch an attack for which they have done no testing. To reiterate, the story is that a terrorist group would prefer to launch its nuke into the atmosphere on the chance that it could destroy US electronics, rather than use the weapon to attack a US city. I think that using the term "radically improbable" to describe this scenario is a bit of an understatement.

I have doubts that any state would attack the United States with nuclear weapons in the face of overwhelming retaliation. I have further doubts about the ability of a terrorist organization to procure a nuke, procure a missile, put the nuke on a missile, put the missile on a boat, and successfully launch it from off the US coast. But even if I were to accept that either or both of these scenarios were plausible, the idea that the attack would take the form of an EMP assault seems, well, ludicrous.

Now, I suppose you could argue that, in spite of the fact that such an attack is unlikely, the United States should be prepared to counter all manner of threats. I don't find this argument terribly plausible; any strategic analysis ranks potential threats, and preparedness for extremely unlikely events is discounted. More importantly, as noted above the United States already has the capacity to respond to, and accordingly to deter, the most likely forms of EMP attack.

All of this makes it terribly difficult for me to take EMP awareness advocacy seriously as anything other than as a front for arguments in favor of missile defense and preventive war. There are plausible arguments in favor of both, but neither involve electromagnetic pulse. As I suggest in the article, the weak science feeds hysteria-mongering; since no one knows exactly what might happen, advocates are emboldened to make claims about barge launched MRBMs and the death of 90% of the American population within a year. The appearance of EMP in several major Hollywood films (The Matrix trilogy, Ocean's Eleven, Goldeneye) would seem to make EMP fertile ground for political fearmongering.

What's perhaps most interesting, however, is that the EMP hype has failed utterly to catch fire. The EMPACT Niagara Conference was covered by approximately no one, despite the presence of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. That a pair of GOP heavy hitters could show up a a conference and still earn very little coverage tells you something about how seriously the media takes EMP. Moreover, this disdain isn't limited to the mainstream media. I couldn't find any articles at the New York Post, the Washington Times, or even Fox News on the Niagara conference. I'll let an editor at the Weekly Standard, with whom I spoke in service of the article, give the final word:

No…I don't go for that EMP stuff. Kind of more interested in dangerous scenarios that might actually happen. It's a f****** ludicrous scenario.