While many would say our country is currently doing a good job of destroying itself, experts warn that we could have some frightening help — in the form of a Chinese surprise “Pearl Harbor” attack on our electric grid using stolen American technology. An “electromagnetic pulse” (EMP) assault would, many say, plunge us into a massive, long-lasting blackout and halt modern life.
As the Washington Examiner reports:
According to the report from the independent EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, China has built a network of satellites, high-speed missiles, and “super-electromagnetic pulse” weapons that could melt down the U.S. electric network, fry critical communications, and stifle aircraft carrier groups.
According to the report, written by the task force’s executive director, Peter Pry, long an expert on EMP warfare, China developed the weapons as part of its “Total Information Warfare” that includes hacking raids on computers.
What’s more, despite China’s promises to attack only after being attacked, Pry revealed new data to show that the communist nation is lying and eager to shoot first with “high-altitude electromagnetic pulse,” or HEMP, weapons launched from satellites, ships, and land.
“China’s military doctrine — including numerous examples presented here of using HEMP attack
to win on the battlefield, defeat U.S. aircraft carriers, and achieve against the U.S. homeland a surprise ‘Pearl Harbor’ writ large — is replete with technical and operational planning consistent with a nuclear first-strike,” said Pry in his report, provided to Secrets.
… He added that while some believe China’s promise not to fire first, there are key U.S. officials who don’t buy it. For example, he cited February 2020 testimony from the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard, who said that he could “drive a truck through” China’s no-first-use policy.
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Assuming an EMP attack could disable our electric grid long term (and I’ve read contrary theses) — thus plunging us into 19th-century conditions — it would be devastating. For a “highly computerized open society like the United States is extremely vulnerable to electronic attacks from all sides,” Pry related, citing a Chinese Army news article.
“This is because the U.S. economy, from banks to telephone systems and from power plants to iron and steel works, relies entirely on computer networks.” The article called such an attack a modern-day “Pearl Harbor.”
Of course, such an event would cripple food production and delivery and the operation of water systems as well.
Thus do some estimates hold that an EMP attack could cause 90 percent of the United States’ population to die within a year due to starvation, lack of clean water and medical care, and violence. And what’s for certain, do note, is that 331 million people (our current population) can’t live off the land.
In fact, I once read that one square mile is required for one person living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Even if this figure is off — and even if a collapsed electric grid didn’t quite reduce us to living like Mowgli — we still wouldn’t fare well. Note that our current population density is 93 people per square mile.
Pry issued a 14-page report outlining the capabilities China has that are relevant to this situation. Aside from a “super-EMP” weapon born of stolen American technology, the nation also has hypersonic weapons that can deliver warheads at five times the speed of sound, and has pursued the development of nuclear-armed EMP satellites that would remain in space for years. The Examiner provides the report in toto.
Reactions to the above will range from fright to fear-mongering accusations. So to add perspective, while we perhaps can’t say precisely where Chinese military capability will stand relative to ours a few years hence or what Beijing’s immediate intentions are, one thing is certain: China is like no other civilization on Earth.
Beijing absolutely wants to be the world’s hegemon, and to this end has been projecting “soft power” by way of censoring our movies (video below), bullying our businesses into doing its bidding, putting Chinese propaganda in our schools, and using economic manipulation and technology theft.
Below is a video about the propaganda in schools.
And below is one in which Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) discusses technology theft.
Moreover, China not only has nothing approximating Western political correctness, but still has that historically common mentality: considering one’s own culture and race superior. In fact, Beijing appears to consider world dominance its birthright.
The Telegraph’s Kevin Myers wrote about this attitude in his 2003 article “The giant who lives at 590 Yongia Road”:
Nothing in human history compares with the spellbinding phenomenon of Chinese genius, Chinese vision and a uniquely Chinese scale being simultaneously harnessed towards the one goal: the restoration of Chinese hegemony over the known world. This is the position which all Chinese leaders, from the Emperor Ch’in to Mao, have felt to be rightfully theirs.
…One would never judge modern Rome’s potential by the precedents set by the Caesars, nor use the conduct of the Aztecs as a useful guide to Peru’s intentions. But China is different, because it has repeatedly been in the forefront of human endeavour; and its multi-millennia-long continuities are deeply embedded within the consciousness of those who govern it. Moreover, the Chinese are more than nationalistic; they are a people for whom the concept of Herrenvolk is not some passing and malign idiosyncrasy, but a defining condition of identity. To their eyes we are barbarians whose historical eminence is due entirely to our infuriating mastery of the savage arts of war.
…Racial superciliousness remains deep within the character of the Chinese people, as their economic take-off occurs.
Of course, talk of world conquest seems so, well, antiquated. But apart from Winston Churchill, this is precisely what pseudo-elites tended to believe during Adolf Hitler’s rise. Yet while the rest is history, what’s not history is Hitler’s personality type. Megalomaniacs exist in every time and place, and all that’s necessary for a major conflict is having an ambitious and reckless one in a great nation’s seat of power.
Then again, “When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, stay out of his way,” goes the famous saying. Although this wasn’t actually said by legendary Chinese military figure Sun Tzu, the Chinese today, watching us, may very well conclude that all they need do is stay out of our way.
Photo: FrankvandenBergh / E+ / Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, The Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
