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S. Hrg. 114–483 

PROTECTING THE ELECTRIC GRID FROM THE 

POTENTIAL THREATS OF SOLAR STORMS AND 

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

HOMELAND SECURITY AND 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 22, 2015 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov/ 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 

( 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin Chairman 

JOHN MCCAIN, Arizona 

ROB PORTMAN, Ohio 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming 

KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire 

JONI ERNST, Iowa 

BEN SASSE, Nebraska 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

CLAIRE MCCASKILL, Missouri 

JON TESTER, Montana 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

CORY A. BOOKER, New Jersey 

GARY C. PETERS, Michigan 

KEITH B. ASHDOWN, Staff Director 

GABRIEL S. SUDDUTH, Senior Professional Staff Member 

JEFFREY A. FIORE, Government Accountability Office Detailee 

GABRIELLE A. BATKIN, Minority Staff Director 

JOHN P. KILVINGTON, Minority Deputy Staff Director 

ABIGAIL A. SHENKLE, Minority Professional Staff Member 

HARLAN C. GEER, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member 

LAURA W. KILBRIDE, Chief Clerk 

LAUREN M. CORCORAN, Hearing Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Johnson ............................................................................................... 1 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 25 

Senator Ernst .................................................................................................... 26 

Senator Ayotte .................................................................................................. 28 

Prepared statements: 

Senator Johnson ............................................................................................... 45 

Senator Carper ................................................................................................. 47 

WITNESS 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2015 

Hon. R. James Woolsey, Former Director of Central Intelligence, and Chairman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; accompanied by Peter Vincent 

Pry, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Task Force on National Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 3 

Joseph H. McClelland, Director, Office of Energy Infrastructure Security, 

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ............................................................ 4 

Richard L. Garwin, Ph.D., Fellow Emeritus, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research 

Center .................................................................................................................... 6 

Christopher P. Currie, Director, Homeland Security and Justice, U.S. Government Accountability Office .................................................................................. 9 

Bridgette Bourge, Senior Principal, Legislative Affairs, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association ................................................................................ 10 

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bourge, Bridgette: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 10 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 97 

Currie, Christopher P.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 77 

Garwin, Richard L.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 69 

McClelland, Joseph H.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 62 

Woolsey, Hon. R. James: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49 

APPENDIX 

Charts submitted by Senator Johnson ................................................................... 102 

Statement submitted for the Record from American Public Power Association 104 

Statement submitted for the Record from National Center for Policy Analysis 106 

Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record: 

Mr. Woolsey ...................................................................................................... 109 

Mr. McClelland ................................................................................................. 111 

Mr. Currie ......................................................................................................... 116 

Mrs. Bourge ....................................................................................................... 119 

(1) 

PROTECTING THE ELECTRIC GRID FROM THE 

POTENTIAL THREATS OF SOLAR STORMS 

AND ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2015 

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY

AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Johnson, Ayotte, Ernst, Sasse, Carper, 

McCaskill, and Peters. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN JOHNSON 

Chairman JOHNSON. Now that I have my cup of coffee, this hearing will come to order. Senator Carper will be a little bit late, so 

he told me that I could start the hearing without him. 

Let me first welcome our witnesses. Thank you for your thoughtful testimony. I have read it all. I hope every Committee Member 

has read it all. I hope everybody in the audience has, and I would 

encourage members of the public to read this testimony and pay attention to this hearing. 

I was first made aware of the potential threat of electromagnetic 

pulse (EMP), disruptions to our electrical grid and geomagnetic disturbances (GMD) well before I ever became a United States Senator. But I think like most members of the public, it is one of those 

scary things that is, ‘‘Ah, that is just science fiction. What are the 

chances of that?’’ 

When I became a United States Senator, I was briefed by a couple gentlemen who gave me a booklet that I read that made me 

pretty concerned. This was probably a couple of years ago, and I 

started talking to other Members, and a lot of those Members 

never really even heard of this threat. 

I have raised this in secure briefings with members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and I have been told, ‘‘OK, 

we are on that. We are looking into it.’’ 

But the fact of the matter is that this was first made public and 

declassified in 2004, and we had a congressional commission on 

that. And then we had another commission in 2008, and the dangers posed by EMP and GMD have been well known really for decades but made public now for over 10 years, and we literally have 

not done anything. 
2 

So the purpose of this hearing is to basically stop and pull our 

head out of the sand, and start paying attention to this very real 

threat. We are going to be debating a nuclear deal with the State 

of Iran. We already know we have North Korea with both nuclear 

weapon capability and ballistic missile technology, and that ballistic missile technology is improving in North Korea. 

We know that Iran has those exact same ambitions, and I guess 

now we have a deal that is going to end an embargo on their ballistic missile technology. There are satellites that are orbiting overhead that could potentially deliver a nuclear explosion that would 

cause something like this. So this is a threat that is real and that 

we need to acknowledge. 

Now, as I was made aware of this and I started talking to colleagues, a lot of time people’s opinion of this was marginalized by, 

‘‘Well, those are just lobbyists that want to sell the Federal Government some protections.’’ I think we need to keep our eyes open for 

that type of conflict. But it is no reason to not be addressing this 

and taking a look in a very serious fashion. 

So today we have I think, a good panel of witnesses, starting 

with Ambassador James Woolsey and Joseph McClelland and Richard Garwin and Chris Currie and Bridgette Bourge—am I pronouncing that correctly? 

Ms. BOURGE. Yes, Senator. 

Chairman JOHNSON. That is actually unusual that I get it right 

the first time.—some people that will give us the truth and give us 

the information on this. So I am looking forward to your testimony. 

When Senator Carper gets here, we will give him an opportunity 

to make an opening statement as well, but let us just start by 

maintaining the tradition of this Committee, which is that we do 

swear witnesses in. So if you would all rise and raise your right 

hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this 

Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 

truth, so help you, God? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I do. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I do. 

Mr. GARWIN. I do. 

Mr. CURRIE. I do. 

Ms. BOURGE. I do. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. Please sit. 

Our first witness will be Ambassador James Woolsey. Ambassador Woolsey is the former Director of Central Intelligence and 

Ambassador to and chief negotiator for the Conventional Forces in 

Europe Treaty from 1989 to 1991. He is currently the Chairman of 

the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is a venture partner with Lux Capital Management. Ambassador Woolsey. 
3 

1The prepared statement of Ambassador Woolsey appears in the Appendix on page 49. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE R. JAMES WOOLSEY,1

FORMER DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE, AND 

CHAIRMAN, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES; 

ACCOMPANIED BY PETER VINCENT PRY, PH.D., EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR OF THE TASK FORCE ON NATIONAL HOMELAND 

SECURITY 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of our 

6-minute limit, I will summarize quickly several major points. 

First of all, the Earth has been being bombarded by electromagnetic pulses for about 41⁄2 billion years, so in one sense, this 

is not a new issue. And I am not going to get into the details of 

the difference between the different wavelengths from electromagnetic pulses versus those created by the Sun and the like, but 

will generalize more in the interest of time. 

We have a very serious problem with exactly what you described: 

lack of willingness to admit or understand at the beginning that 

this could be as serious as it is given how horrible it is. People tend 

to want to shove those types of issues aside. 

But, in fact, there are ways in which electromagnetic pulse 

threats are more serious than a conventional version of a nuclear 

threat. For example, deterrence may not work at all with respect 

to electromagnetic pulse. The reason is we may not know where the 

pulse came from. If everything goes dark, it may be a solar event, 

and it may be North Korea. 

Furthermore, a satellite can be launched into orbit with a southern trajectory, so it misses, at least initially, all of our radars and 

other sensors that are focused north. And, second, it could be 

launched—a Scud with a warhead could be launched from a 

freighter off one of our coasts. We recently had a North Korean 

freighter picked up by the Panamanians that had two air defense 

missiles in it, each capable of putting something into orbit. 

So we have a very serious problem from the point of view of deterring particularly a country such as Iran or North Korea that is 

not playing by anywhere close to the standards of rationality that 

one would see even in, let us say, China or Russia when we are 

having tense relations with one another. 

So I think that is the first and biggest problem. We do not just 

have a probability issue the way one would have if we were only 

worried about the solar EMP events. That could be bad enough because we are due for a very large pulse event. The last one occurred over a century and a half ago, and we are due for another. 

But that could come anytime or not come for some time. 

The decision by a North Korean leader or an Iranian leader that 

it is time to destroy the electric grid of the United States is a different matter. We do not know what they are going to do and 

when. People say, ‘‘Well, they are not crazy.’’ But sometimes individual government leaders such as Adolf Hitler are mad north by 

northwest. They have horrible objectives, and they pursue them 

very diligently. The objectives are not something any of us would 

sympathize with. 

The same could well be true of an Iranian missile, which they 

have now, and an Iranian nuclear weapon, which I think even 
4 

1The prepared statement of Mr. McClelland appears in the Appendix on page 62. 

under this agreement they are likely to have or be able to have 

within months to perhaps a year or two. 

The use of electromagnetic pulse has been embodied in writings 

in the East, Russian and Chinese particularly. I would call 

everybody’s attention to the work of the Russian General Vladimir 

Slipchenko in his military textbooks which focus on EMP together 

with cyber as the new mode of warfare. An EMP for the North Korean, Iranian, Russian, and Chinese point of view is part of cyber 

and a particularly deadly part. 

There have been a number of efforts for us to find some way to 

take positive steps to do something about electromagnetic pulse, 

whether from a nuclear weapon or from the sun, and they have all 

been thwarted. Washington is completely dysfunctional on this 

issue and has been for some time. The amount of money involved 

is relatively small by infrastructure need standards. According to 

the EMP Commission, about $2 billion, about what we give in foreign aid to Pakistan every year for dealing with the essentials of 

the electric grid, $10 to 20 billion, according to the Commission, 

would protect all of the critical infrastructures from nuclear EMP 

attack. 

From the point of view of the cost of improvements in our infrastructures that are badly needed, that is not a great deal of money. 

But so far the resistance in the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation (NERC), and in industry has been solid and 

total. They have been able to prevent steps by individual States 

that have wanted to take action, and they have done everything 

they possibly can to keep the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act 

(CIPA) and the reestablishment of the congressional EMP Commission and the SHIELD and GRID Acts all bottled up and not being 

able to be passed by the Congress. 

One, perhaps two pointed observations by Texas State Senator 

Robert Hall, a former Air Force colonel and himself an EMP expert, characterizes the behavior of the electric utilities and their 

lobbyists on this matter, Mr. Chairman, as ‘‘equivalent to treason.’’ 

Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Ambassador Woolsey. 

Our next witness will be Joseph McClelland. Mr. McClelland is 

the Director of the Office of Energy Infrastructure Security (OEIS) 

at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). His office 

provides leadership, expertise, and assistance to identify, communicate, and seek comprehensive solutions to potential risks to 

FERC-regulated facilities from cyber attacks and physical threats 

such as electromagnetic pulses. Mr. McClelland. 

TESTIMONY OF JOSEPH MCCLELLAND,1 DIRECTOR, OFFICE 

OF ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY, FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Thank you, Chairman Johnson, for the privilege to appear before you today to discuss threats to the electric 

grid in the United States. In the interest of time and pursuant to 

your request, I will skip over the section that details the E1, E2, 

and E3 threats. 
5 

My name is Joe McClelland, and I am the Director of the Office 

of Energy Infrastructure Security at the Federal Energy Regulatory 

Commission. I am here today as a Commission staff witness, and 

my remarks do not necessarily represent the views of the Commission or any individual Commissioner. 

Under Section 215 of the Federal Power Act, the Commission is 

entrusted with the responsibility to approve and enforce mandatory 

reliability standards for the Nation’s bulk power system. These 

standards are developed and proposed by the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation. 

Section 215 of the Federal Power Act provides a statutory framework for the development of reliability standards for the bulk 

power system. However, the nature of a national security threat by 

entities intent on attacking the United States through its electric 

grid stands in stark contrast to other major reliability events that 

have caused blackouts and reliability failures in the past. Widespread disruption of electric service can quickly undermine the U.S. 

Government, its military, and the economy, as well as endanger 

the health and safety of millions of its citizens. 

Therefore, to provide a significantly more agile and focused approach to these growing cyber and physical security threats, the 

Commission established our office in late 2012. Our office’s mission 

includes responses to geomagnetic disturbances and electromagnetic pulses. 

Just briefly, in 2001 Congress established a Commission to assess and report on the threat from EMP. In 2004 and again in 

2008, the Commission issued reports on these threats. One of the 

key findings in the reports was that a single EMP attack could seriously degrade or shut down a large part of the electric power 

grid. Depending upon the attack, significant parts of electric infrastructure could be ‘‘out of service for periods measured in months 

to a year or more.’’ And some would say that is optimistic. 

In order to better understand and quantify the effect of EMP and 

GMD on the power grid, FERC staff, the Department of Energy 

(DOE), and the Department of Homeland Security, all three agencies, sponsored a single study conducted by the Oak Ridge National 

Laboratory in 2010. The results of the study support the general 

conclusion of prior studies that EMP and GMD events pose substantial risk to equipment and operation of the Nation’s electric 

grid and under extreme conditions could result in major long-term 

electrical outages. Unlike EMP attacks that are dependent upon 

the capability and intent of an attacker, GMD disturbances are inevitable with only the timing and magnitude subject to variability. 

The Oak Ridge study assessed a solar storm that occurred in May 

1921, which has been termed a 1-in-100-year event, and applied it 

to today’s electric grid. The study concluded that such a storm 

could damage or destroy over 300 high-voltage electric grid transformers and interrupt service to 130 million people with some outages lasting for a period of years. 

To help address these matters, the Commission has used both 

regulatory and collaborative actions. 

Under its regulator authority, the Commission ordered NERC to 

develop two GMD reliability standards for the bulk power system, 
6 

1The prepared statement of Dr. Garwin appears in the Appendix on page 69. 

requiring new operational procedures and vulnerability assessments. 

Under its collaborative programs, the Commission actively participates with Federal agencies and industry members to establish 

action plans, develop risk assessments that identify key energy facilities, and prioritize best practices that exceed regulatory requirements at those facilities for cyber and physical security matters, including both GMD and EMP. 

In addition, the Commission continues to facilitate threat briefings to industry members and cooperate with our international 

partners to compare ongoing initiatives. 

Internationally, over a dozen nations have GMD and/or EMP programs in place or are in the early stages of addressing or examining the impacts of GMD and EMP. For the United States, although GMD baseline standards and some best practices are being 

established for portions of the electric grid, few entities have taken 

steps to address EMP on their systems. 

In conclusion, these types of threats pose a serious risk to the 

electric grid and its supporting infrastructures that serve our Nation. 

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and I would be 

delighted to answer any questions you have. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. McClelland. 

Our next witness is Dr. Richard Garwin. Dr. Garwin is a Fellow 

Emeritus at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, testifying in his personal capacity. He brings significant experience on 

issues related to electromagnetic pulse. In what is now the Los Alamos Laboratory, he outlined the first design for a hydrogen bomb 

and wrote the first paper on the electromagnetic pulse from nuclear 

explosions in the atmosphere. He has served as an adviser to the 

Federal Government for decades on national security issues, including by serving on the JASON Defense Advisory Board. He is a 

member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and 

Medicine, among other organizations, and he has received the 

Enrico Fermi Award, the R.V. Jones Award for Scientific Intelligence, and the National Medal of Science. 

Dr. Garwin, when we met earlier, I remembered reading a briefing that Enrico Fermi referred to you as one of the only true 

geniuses he had ever met, so I think that is pretty good praise from 

somebody that is also a genius. We are looking forward to your testimony. Dr. Garwin. 

TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. GARWIN, PH.D.,1 FELLOW 

EMERITUS, IBM THOMAS J. WATSON RESEARCH CENTER 

Dr. GARWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Actually, Ambassador 

Woolsey created the R.V. Jones Award, which was later awarded 

to me. 

The spectacular images of Pluto this week from the National 

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) New Horizons probe 

provoked great interest in our solar system. But our solar system 

is a matter for concern, as well. The 1,200 people injured in February 2013 at Chelyabinsk, Russia, from a bolide—a meteor— 
7 

brought substantial focus on low-probability, high-consequence 

events. Among these are particularly intense magnetic storms from 

space—weather events or coronal mass ejections from the Sun, possibly even more intense than the 1859 Carrington Event in the preelectric grid era. 

Another potentially great impact on the electrical grid and modern society is the electromagnetic pulse from high-altitude nuclear 

explosions, on the order of 100 kilometers or more above the 

Earth’s surface. 

The United States has been a leader in long-distance transmission of electrical power, but its system differs in characteristics, 

management, and organization from those of other advanced 

States. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from and by the 

United States in working to make our electrical grid robust and economical in the modern era of technological threats and opportunities. 

I begin with my recommendations to ease and essentially solve 

the severe problem posed by geomagnetic storms induced by space 

weather—specifically by the routine ejection from the sun of enormous blocks of plasma that travel out within the solar system and 

reach the Earth typically in a couple of days. Most of these coronal 

mass ejections do not reach the Earth. They go in other directions. 

When they do reach the Earth, they cause displays of the Northern 

Lights and Southern Lights, and, more importantly, the magnetized plasma and its incorporated magnetic field merge with the 

magnetic field of the Earth and change it by a relatively small 

amount, which, however, can create large currents on long electrical conductors such as pipelines, telegraph wires in the old days, 

and the electrical power transmission system—the Bulk Power System. 

Very serious consequences are estimated for such an event of a 

magnitude that can be expected to occur at random once per century. 

I emphasize that a once-per-century event might occur next 

week; it has a probability of 10 percent of occurring within the next 

10 years—a time in which we can and should take measures to reduce and essentially eliminate its impact on the Bulk Power System of the United States. But events expected to occur once in 20 

years can cause significant damage and disruption. 

My recommendations regarding the Bulk Power System: Missing 

in Federal policy and practice is a program to: 

One, train and equip utility and transmission operators to bring 

down within seconds—that is, to switch off—transmission lines 

that are at risk of being damaged; 

Two, implement ‘‘rapid islanding’’ of the grid, to maintain a large 

fraction of the power consumers in operation by the use of whatever island—that is, local—generation capacity exists; this also facilitates restoring the Bulk Power System to operation, in contrast 

with a so-called black start. 

Three, fit transmission lines on a priority basis with ‘‘neutral 

current-blocking devices’’—capacitors—in the common neutral-toground link of the three-phase transformers of extra-high-voltage 

transmission systems at one end of the line—whether three-phase 

transformers or three single-phase transformers. Where trans-
8 

formers at both ends are autotransformers, this may not be possible, in which case series-blocking capacitors in the power lines 

themselves should be installed and could be kept shorted until an 

EMP event is recognized, or a geomagnetic storm. 

Four, alert grid operators and others to a high-altitude nuclear 

explosion within thousandths of a second of the event (by detection 

of the unambiguous very brief E1 pulse). 

In my supplemental testimony submitted for the record, I provide 

support for these recommendations and explain why they would 

largely and immediately also eliminate long-lasting damage to the 

extra-high-voltage transmissions system that might otherwise result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion. 

So if we solve the problem that is sure to arise from space weather and geomagnetic storm, we will solve the long-distance transmission problem from high-altitude nuclear explosions, which may 

or may not arise. 

Those are also deterrable if they are from a place like North 

Korea or Iran, and, it is better to plan to deter them by means of 

our projected response, as well as to prevent damage from their 

happening. But those are two arms of the response. 

I should say that in 2011 I was a co-author of a study by the 

JASON group, ‘‘Impacts of Severe Space Weather on the Electric 

Grid,’’ and on pages 3 to 5 of that report, there are recommendations that include the ones I am giving now. 

Also, interestingly, there is the so-called E–PRO Handbook, the 

electric protection handbook, Executive Summary 2014 and International E–PRO Report of September 2013. That specifically advocates geomagnetic storm-induced current blockers, the neutral current ground interruptors, series capacitance in lines, reducing 

transformer loads, and real-time threshold-based transformer protection. 

Finally, I say that series-blocking capacitors in the power lines 

themselves are poorly understood. These are small devices, not like 

the enormous fields of transformers, of capacitors that are deployed 

for power—factor correction. But it is a little difficult to understand 

them because they have to be bigger in capacitance but smaller by 

a factor of 100 or 30 altogether because they have less energy storage, less mega-volt ampere ratings than the power factor correction. But maybe as a result of this hearing, they will get more attention. 

Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Dr. Garwin. And that obviously 

is the purpose of this hearing. 

Our next witness is Mr. Chris Currie. Mr. Currie is a Director 

of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), where he leads the 

agency’s work in evaluating emergency management, national preparedness, and critical infrastructure protection issues. In this role, 

Chris has led reviews of numerous Federal programs and efforts to 

prevent, plan for, and respond to natural and manmade disasters 

and terrorist attacks. Mr. Currie. 
9 

1The prepared statement of Mr. Currie appears in the Appendix on page 77. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER P. CURRIE,1 DIRECTOR, HOMELAND SECURITY AND JUSTICE, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Mr. CURRIE. Thank you, Chairman Johnson and Ranking Member Carper and other Members that are here today. We appreciate 

the opportunity to be here today and testify. 

Within the United States there are 16 critical infrastructure sectors, for example, water, transportation systems, agriculture, and, 

of course, energy. The energy sector ties all of these sectors together, and without it, the others just cannot function. This makes 

protecting it a national security priority. So I think the others on 

the panel have done a really good job of setting up the EMP and 

the solar weather threat. Both could cause power outages across 

large parts of the country for a long period of time. 

That threat was so great that Congress established a whole Commission on EMP in 2001, which issued reports in 2004 and 2008, 

and had many recommendations. 

GAO is currently evaluating the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to address EMP threats and electromagnetic threats 

in general, and today I would like to share our preliminary findings 

in two areas: the first is the extent to which DHS has addressed 

the 2008 EMP Commission recommendations; and the second is 

DHS’ efforts to coordinate with other Federal agencies and industry 

stakeholders to mitigate risks to the electric grid. 

So far, we have found that DHS has taken some actions to mitigate the threats to the grid. These include developing mitigation 

projects and planning for the consequences of an event like an 

EMP, among other things. So two quick examples of these actions 

are: 

DHS is developing an R&D prototype transformer that would 

allow utilities to replace critical large transformers within a week, 

as opposed to the months it could take now, and it is currently testing that. 

Also, for example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency 

(FEMA) is developing a specific Incident Annex to deal with a longterm power outage, and while this is not specific to electromagnetic 

threats, this plan would address one of the biggest side effects of 

an EMP or solar event. 

In regard to coordination, we have found so far that DHS has coordinated with stakeholders to address some but not all risks to 

the electric grid. Some of these actions address electromagnetic 

threats. For example, DHS participates in interagency working 

groups that are designed to prepare and respond to space weather 

events. However, our preliminary work shows that DHS has not 

fully coordinated with stakeholders in areas like sharing threat information, identifying key infrastructure assets, and identifying research priorities, just as examples. 

So, for example, within those areas, energy industry officials told 

us that they lack sufficient threat information to determine if they 

should take actions to mitigate against an EMP. They also said 

that this information would help them justify these investments to 

their management and shareholders. And this is similar to our past 
10 

1The prepared statement of Ms. Bourge appears in the Appendix on page 97. 

work and recommendations related to cyber threats. In that work, 

we found that Federal agencies’ efforts to share information did not 

always meet industry expectations, in part because of restrictions 

on information that can be shared. And DHS has since taken steps 

to implement those recommendations in that area, including granting security clearances and establishing a secure mechanism to 

share cyber threat information. 

In another example, we have found that DHS and the Department of Energy have not identified the most critical energy substations and transformers on the grid. This was a key recommendation of the EMP Commission, and this information would help 

prioritize investments to mitigate against the largest 

vulnerabilities. 

There are a couple final and overarching points I would like to 

make based on our work. 

First, while DHS has taken some actions, as I have mentioned, 

there has been no integrated effort to address the EMP Commission recommendations. In fact, we have seen some confusion within 

DHS about who is responsible for taking lead on this. 

Second, although DHS is not required by law to implement the 

Commission’s recommendations, many of the recommendations 

align with responsibilities that DHS and DOE already have for protecting critical infrastructure and coordinating these efforts, such 

as under the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. For example, 

DHS and DOE have not identified roles and responsibilities for addressing electromagnetic impacts to the grid. 

As we complete our review, we will continue to evaluate the extent that DHS has implemented the EMP Commission recommendations and determine where specific coordination efforts 

could be improved, and we expect to issue our final report later this 

year. 

This completes my prepared remarks, and I would be happy to 

answer any questions you have. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Currie. 

Our final witness is Ms. Bridgette Bourge. Ms. Bourge is a senior 

principal for legislative affairs at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), where she leads the work on homeland security policy issues. She previously served as a consultant 

to the Department of Homeland Security on critical infrastructure 

issues. Ms. Bourge. 

TESTIMONY OF BRIDGETTE BOURGE,1 SENIOR PRINCIPAL, 

LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS, NATIONAL RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION 

Ms. BOURGE. Thank you. It is an honor to be here to testify today 

on behalf of the industry about the threat of solar storms and electromagnetic pulses on the bulk power system. 

As the Chairman mentioned, I do work for the National Rural 

Electric Cooperative Association. I advocate for best security practices that recognize the reality of the threat environments on behalf of a service organization that serves over 900 not-for-profit 
11 

electric utilities providing reliable power to over 42 million people 

in 47 States. 

As member-owned, not-for-profit utilities, electric cooperatives 

focus on providing reliable electricity at the lowest reasonable cost. 

Anything that undermines that mandate undermines our members. 

Our member owners bear every cost. There is never any debate 

over whether a proposed project benefits cooperative stakeholders 

or cooperative customers. They are one and the same. 

I am not going to get into defining EMPs or GMDs. I think we 

have gone into that quite a bit here. I do want to stress, though, 

that we are a little concerned that there is some misinformation 

out there that fails to reflect the reality and factual danger of either phenomenon. These two are entirely separate threats, both in 

nature and in execution, with different causations and impacts. Yet 

they are, nevertheless, regularly conflated as the same. 

GMDs are common, relatively common natural events that can 

result from a solar storm. We actually had a few weeks ago a 3- 

day occurrence of GMDs at a G3 level. You saw no impact from the 

bulk power system. You felt nothing from that. We have standards 

and processes in place to address the GMDs at those levels. 

As you heard from Mr. McClelland, we are in the process of waiting on an additional set of standards that will help us plan for the 

100-year event scenario. So industry does address the GMD. We 

are aware of that issue and highly engaged on that issue, and we 

are continuing to address that issue. 

Electromagnetic pulses from a nuclear detonation are a little different, from our perspective. They require a different technology solution. They also require different planning, different mitigation, 

different preparation. I would actually like to read from the EMP 

Commission here where it says, ‘‘It is not practical to try to protect 

the entire electrical power system or even all high-value components from damage by an EMP event. There are too many components of too many different types, manufacturers, ages, and designs. The cost and time would be prohibitive. Widespread collapse 

of the electrical power system in the area affected by EMP is virtually inevitable after a broad geographic EMP attack, with even 

a modest number of unprotected components.’’ 

So basically the EMP Commission even had the same view of 

protecting the grid will not guarantee the grid stays up. So we 

have to look at this, separate the issues. A GMD is a solar storm. 

It is something we do work on, we do address. 

EMPs are something we also address through policy and planning, not so much through the technology solution, because we do 

not see it as something we can guarantee survival on. We do try 

to protect it, and we do want to look toward planning scenarios so 

that we can recover from it. When you hear people talk about spare 

transformers, that is an idea that we think is very valuable and 

should be looked at most certainly. And you see some bills actually 

over in the House proposing that type of concept, and the Department of Energy, I believe, just recently put out a request for information on how they might be able to do such a thing. That is an 

area of focus where industry thinks that we would be very beneficial to turn toward. 
12 

We have to remember when you are conflating the EMPs and 

GMDs, you have the chance of impacting existing standards, existing processes, existing mitigation efforts. GMDs are something that 

impacts the electric grid. It is something that impacts communications systems. EMPs are something that impacts all critical infrastructure. If you have a microprocessor, more than likely you are 

going to feel an impact. You are going to have an impact on our 

hospitals, on our transportation, on our fuel lines. These are interdependent critical infrastructures. They rely on us, but we also rely 

on them. If we have no fuel, if we have no water to cool, we will 

not function. 

So when you say everyone else needs electricity to work, electricity needs others to work as well. So simply finding a way to 

harden a grid that will, per the EMP Commission, still likely come 

down, when no one else is hardened, when we still will fail because 

there are no protections anywhere else does not seem like the best 

focus of our energy and time. We want to focus on that recovery 

scenario for the low-likelihood, high-impact events like an EMP, 

which we do see as distinctly different than the GMD. 

That is the conclusion of my testimony. If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer them. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Ms. Bourge. 

I will start the questioning, but before I start the clock, I did a 

pretty good job of convincing all the panel members not to describe 

E1, E2, E3, and GMD, so nobody did. So I guess what I would like 

to do is I think Mr. McClelland might be the best person to, please 

just kind of walk us through really what we are talking about here, 

because it is, EMP is different from the GMD, although there are 

certainly similarities in terms of some of the effects on some of it. 

So if you would just kind of educate us on that, and then I will 

start asking questions. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Sure. Mr. Chairman, I will read, because I 

have summarized it very succinctly, and I think comprehensively. 

So within a paragraph, I think I can address it here at your request. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. GMD and EMP events are generated either 

from naturally occurring or manmade causes. In the case of geomagnetic disturbances, or GMDs, solar magnetic disturbances periodically disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field, which in turn can induce currents on the electric grid that can damage or destroy key 

transformers over a large geographic area. 

Regarding manmade events, EMPs can be generated by devices 

that range from small, portable, battery-powered units through 

missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. In the case of the 

former—the battery-powered units—the equipment is readily available that can generate localized high-energy bursts designed to disrupt, damage, or destroy electronics such as those found in control 

systems on the electric grid. The EMP generated during the detonation of a nuclear device is far more encompassing and generates 

three distinct effects: a short high energy radio-frequency-type 

burst called E1 that destroys electronics; a slightly longer burst 

that is similar to lightning termed E2; and a final effect termed E3 

that is similar in character and effect to the GMD targeting the 
13 

same equipment including key transformers. Any of these effects 

can cause voltage problems and instability on the electric grid, 

which can lead to prolonged wide-area blackouts. 

So the key distinction between the two, geomagnetic disturbances and we will go with the nuclear because it covers the 

range—the nuclear EMP is that nuclear EMP generates two other 

effects: E1, which damages and destroys electronics; E2, which is 

similar to lightning, and the common belief in the community is 

that E2 has been mitigated or is readily mitigated by the lightning 

practices of the utilities today; and then E3, which is a longer-term 

effect which generates those geomagnetically induced type currents 

that destroy key pieces of transformers. 

So if you mitigate against GMD, you have mitigated really 

against everything but E1, the E1 effect from a nuclear detonation. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Let me just ask the open question: Does 

anybody disagree with that basic description? Or would you want 

to tweak it in some way? Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I do not disagree. Most of what I know about 

these issues I have learned from Joe McClelland. But I want to 

stress that the EMP Commission did not—repeat, not—conclude 

that it is futile to protect the grid. The Commission recommended 

protecting the grid in such a way that it would fail gracefully, essentially, so it could be quickly recovered. But the industry across 

the board has gotten very, very good at pointing the finger at other 

parts—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. And, again, we will get into that discussion. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. All right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, right now I just want to lay the 

predicate in terms of this is what we are talking about. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Got it. 

Chairman JOHNSON. E1, E2, E3, EMP versus GMD, and GMD 

and EMP with the E3 that is a similar effect. OK. I just wanted 

to get—and I also did want to—you talked about a G3 level happening all the time. What would be the level of the 100-year event 

or the Carrington Effect? What is that on the scale? Anybody? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. That is going to be like a K8, K9 effect, and 

we have not seen one. So we have not seen a 1921 level effect. We 

have seen two others, and they are very interesting. One is in 

1989. We saw about a half of a 1921 event, and it collapsed the 

grid of Canada. The Quebec grid collapsed very quickly. We also 

saw a fraction of that event in South Africa in October 2003 that 

destroyed over 12 large bulk power system transformers. It was 

very small, so it did not collapse the grid, but it was off for a prolonged period of time, destroyed that critical equipment at a very 

low level. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. So you had the Carrington Effect, 

which was, what, 1859? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. 1859. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And that in this G-scale would be a G8 or 

G9? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Well, I would say K9. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK, K9. Again, not that this really means 

anything to anybody, but it just kind of gives order of magnitude. 

So you had the Carrington Effect, which was kind of once in a cen-
14 

tury, but that has been 150 years. Then we had the 1921 event, 

what would that have been on that scale? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I have the nanoteslas, but as far as relating 

it to the K-factor, I am sorry, I would not be able to answer that 

question here. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Way more than a G3, though? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. How about on a scale of 1 to 10? I am just 

trying to get some sort of idea of the magnitude of these things, 

from a Carrington to what we are seeing, almost background noise, 

but this is happening all the time. And we have all seen disruptions to TV signals, satellite signals, that type of thing, but kind 

of the minor annoyances. 

I think it is also true that Lloyd’s of London says that on average there is about $2 billion worth of damage from these G3 types of 

effects annually. 

Again, so Carrington was massive; 1921 was not quite as massive as the Carrington Effect. Correct? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. The next one was in Canada? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Yes, in 1989. 

Chairman JOHNSON. In 1989. Do you have that on a scale? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I do. I can pull it up for you. If the 1921 event 

was 5,000 nanoteslas, the Canadian event was about 1,100 or 1,200 

nanoteslas, so about a fifth. I would say about a fifth. 

Chairman JOHNSON. It was a fifth of the 1921 event, and it shut 

down all of Canada’s electrical grid? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. It shut down Hydroelectric of Quebec, the entire Quebec grid, shut down in 93 seconds; 6 million customers 

were out of power for about 10 hours. The estimated cost, I have 

heard cost estimates of $1 to $2 billion, but very minor equipment 

damage. So they were able to restore very quickly, but still the cost 

was very significant. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But a fifth the size of the 1921 event, which 

smaller than or less intense than the Carrington Effect. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And then the last one was, you said, in 

South Africa? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Right. That was the South African event. 

Again, in orders of magnitude, that was probably about half to a 

quarter of the Canadian event. It was a very low level event, but 

it stayed on for a period of days. The grid did not collapse. It did 

not cause consumption, overconsumption, reactive power flow. So 

the grid stayed on. Equipment saw prolonged exposure to this 

event, and months later, over a period of months, 12 transformers 

were lost due to that event. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Then it was true that in 2012 there was a 

coronal discharge or a solar flare, whatever we want to call it, that 

was pretty massive. Dr. Garwin, can you comment on that? 

Mr. GARWIN. No. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. 

Mr. GARWIN. Some of these things are not really on an appropriate scale because, activity on the Sun is not necessarily reflected 

in a geomagnetic event on the Earth. It depends on the polarity of 
15 

the plasma that is ejected. And many of the things that happen on 

the Sun are spectacular, but their coronal mass ejections go in different directions. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. I saw a satellite picture of us missing 

this by about 9 days. Anybody know anything about this and can 

comment on it? Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I just got tipped from my friend who is the Chairman or the Staff Director of the EMP Commission, and he tells me 

that on July 23, 2012, there was a Carrington-level event. It 

missed us by 3 days. 

Mr. GARWIN. That means it just went off in a different direction. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Correct, but had the Earth been in its—had 

it affected the Earth, it is going to only—does it only affect the side 

facing the Earth? 

Mr. GARWIN. No, the entire Earth, especially the polar regions, 

but even down into the mid-latitudes Carrington—the only long 

wires in those days were telegraph wires. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Right. 

Mr. GARWIN. So no grid to bring down, no pipelines, but it did 

play havoc with telegraph wires, burned up some telegraph offices, 

and it would be much worse. It would collapse societies. But if the 

transformers are off, they are not damaged, and so the worst that 

would happen, if you take proper preparations, is that you would 

have to turn off transformers which have not been sufficiently mitigated. But the ones that have been mitigated or which do not have 

the connections that make them vulnerable—so-called Y connections instead are delta connections, which work just as well—those 

are immune to geomagnetic storms. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Go ahead. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman. To answer your 

question, because I do have the numbers here, the July 2012 event 

was about a quarter or about 25 percent of the size of the 1921 

event. The 1989 event that collapsed the Quebec grid was about a 

tenth of the size of the 1921 event. And the event is called ‘‘the 

Halloween Storm of 2003 for South Africa.’’ That was about a 50th 

of the size of the 1921 event. And I do have those numbers and can 

provide that information. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But, again, the granddaddy of them all was 

the Carrington in terms of our history that we have witnessed. Do 

you have any kind of relationship to that? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I am sorry. I do not have that information. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But bigger than 1921? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Yes, bigger. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Joe or Dick could correct me if I am wrong, but 

1921 affected, I think, North America only; whereas, the 

Carrington Event of 1859 affected the entire world. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Ms. Bourge, again you are making a 

distinction between EMP and GMD and to a certain extent implying that, boy, there is just not much we can do about EMPs, so, 

you know—— 

Ms. BOURGE. Well, I certainly do not mean to be implying there 

is not much we can do about EMPs. I think planning and talking 

at a national level across the critical infrastructure in identifying 
16 

interdependencies, figuring out where government can help industry and where industry can help industry and what are the most 

logical ways to go about addressing this low-likelihood, high-impact 

situation, as we would with many others. Whenever you are talking about a catastrophic situation, sometimes protection and mitigation has to be looked at, but so does recovery. And you have to 

balance how much effort should be put on ahead of time and how 

much effort should be put on that recovery situation instead. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Garwin, you have made four recommendations. Have you ever seen any kind of cost estimate of 

what it would cost to implement your recommendations? 

Mr. GARWIN. The EMP Commission has those $2 billion. They do 

not exactly align with these recommendations. But the neutral current-blocking device which solves the problem on the EHB, the 

bulk transmission system, those might cost about $100,000 per 

transformer. That is cheap compared with the several million dollars per transformer, and it is very cheap compared with the damages that would be avoided. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Do you know how many transformers would 

have to be protected? 

Mr. GARWIN. A couple hundred in a priority—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Literally, $100,000 times a couple hundred? 

Mr. GARWIN. Yes, that is right. You know, $100,000, that is—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. That does not even show up in the Federal 

budget. That is pocket change. 

Mr. GARWIN. Right. But we do not have the census. We do not 

have from the transmission companies the details as to which 

transformers are most vulnerable, so we do not know where to 

start. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So we have not even done that, which 200 

transformers should have $100,000 worth of protection? 

Mr. GARWIN. Yes, and there are some that will not help because 

they are autotransformers, and so you cannot separate their 

ground—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. McClelland, you—— 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I am sorry. I guess it really does depend—the 

substation number does depend on the outcome that one is pursuing. If it is grid stability and continuity, then it is a small, relatively small number of substations. So 55,000 critical substations, 

as Dr. Garwin has indicated, would number in the hundreds. If, 

however, it is to preserve the integrity of the Department of Defense or the offsite power supply to nuclear power stations, then 

criticality of load becomes an important issue. In that case, you 

may escalate from a few hundred to a thousand or more substations. 

In addition, it is important to state that Dr. Garwin I think focused on just one aspect, geomagnetic disturbance. Electromagnetic 

pulse requires E1 hardening, too, and—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. I understand. So the point being is let us 

not make perfect the enemy of the good. Let us not sit back and 

go, ‘‘Well, if you cannot protect everything, protect nothing.’’ Let us 

start protecting things. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Right. 
17 

Chairman JOHNSON. Literally, $100,000 times 200, was it? What 

is the math on that? I made a mistake earlier. I need a calculator. 

It is not much. 

Somebody described the Commission is established, starting in 

2004 when we declassified what we knew dating back to the 1960s, 

right, when we were doing nuclear testing and we realized, whoa, 

something pretty strange is happening or something pretty damaging, and we classified that. We declassified in 2004, correct? And 

we set up a Commission—this is for Dr. Garwin. 

Mr. GARWIN. No. It was long before. It was recognized in 1962 

by a high-altitude nuclear test. It was explained a couple years 

later, never was classified. The only thing that is classified is the 

details of the construction of the nuclear weapons that caused this. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So it was just ignored. It was something 

pretty scary, and we did not want to acknowledge it, so we put our 

head in the sand, and our head is still in the sand, by and large. 

Mr. GARWIN. Well, people tried and, of course—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. I am not blaming you. I am just saying that 

is the position—— 

Mr. GARWIN [continuing]. And the EMP Commission has been 

trying, but here is what the EMP Commission said, if you look on 

page 6 of my submittal for the record. So E1, this very sharp pulse 

that has no counterpart in a natural phenomenon, does not affect 

people, no direct harm to humans or animals, gasoline-fueled automobiles, 3 stopped running out of 37, but all restarted without incident, and then, in particular, the electrical grid. 

But Ms. Bourge is right. The country runs on other than electricity, and so you have to protect more than the electrical grid. 

But our subject is the electrical grid, and to protect the electrical 

grid even against E1 is not the big problem that protecting all of 

society is. 

So electromagnetic relays that send current and voltage were immune to E1, and the electronic protective relays, they were the 

toughest devices tested, and they could be even tougher, according 

to the EMP Commission, with minor filtering on them. 

So it is something that is doable, is to protect the bulk power system not only against the geomagnetic storms and against E3 from 

high-altitude nuclear explosions, but also against E1. That would 

not solve the problem of society because we depend upon a lot of 

other things. And if all of our furnaces and water pumps and so 

on go out because of the personal computer type things that are 

used in them, that is a bad day. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But we can protect ourselves against something like the Carrington Effect, the 1921 effect, and we can do 

that for a relatively low cost. And, again, it is something that has 

a 10 to 12 percent probability of happening every decade, and we 

escaped something massive by a couple days in 2012. Am I stating 

that correctly? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Yes. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

[Witnesses nod in agreement.] 

Chairman JOHNSON. So, again, let us go back to 2008, and I 

want to start with you, Mr. Currie. I am going to go through Recommendations A through O of the 2008 EMP Commission, and I 
18 

really want just a simple yes or no on these. Have we done this? 

OK? Do we understand the system network level vulnerabilities, 

including cascading effects? Do we understand that? Has DHS done 

that? 

Mr. CURRIE. No, DHS has not done that. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So we do not even understand the system 

or network level vulnerabilities, including cascading effects? 

Mr. CURRIE. Not for geomagnetic threats. No, DHS has not done 

that. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Well, that was the first recommendation. So, again, this is in 2008, and now it is 2015, and I can actually do that math in my head. That is 7 years. OK. 

B, Evaluate and implement quick fixes. 

Mr. CURRIE. They are evaluating some quick fixes, like the 

project I mentioned, the transformer quick fix project, and that 

is—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. So do you think seven—I am not beating up 

on you. Seven years later, that is not exactly a quick evaluation of 

a quick fix, is it? 

Mr. CURRIE. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So we still have not done that. We are kind 

of evaluating it. Seven years to evaluate a quick fix that could cost 

minimal dollars, that would go a long way toward protecting the 

absolute critical substations and transformers of an effect that we 

know will happen again with 100 percent certainty, right, Dr. 

Garwin? We will be hit by one of these solar flares with 100 percent certainty? 

Mr. GARWIN. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sometime in the future. 

Mr. GARWIN. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. We have known about this publicly since 

2004. In 2008, these recommendations. Seven years later, we have 

virtually done nothing in terms of some quick fixes that would cost 

$100,000 per transformer—when, by the way, we spent $800 billion 

in 2009 and 2010 on a stimulus package looking for shovel-ready 

projects. This would have been a pretty good shovel-ready project, 

wouldn’t it? 

Mr. GARWIN. Well, the criterion was too severe because it takes 

longer than a year to go from something which is there actually to 

get it running. You have all that planning and budgeting, and it 

should have lasted longer, and we should have fixed our infrastructure more widely. 

Mr. CURRIE. Senator Johnson, can I mention one thing? 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure, Mr. Currie. 

Mr. CURRIE. One of the things that makes it hard—and this has 

made our work really hard—is there is no one at DHS that sort 

of line by line tracks what efforts coincide with these recommendations. 

Chairman JOHNSON. No, I will stipulate the dysfunction with 

government, OK? And, again, we are describing dysfunction. This 

is a serious threat; 100 percent certainty this will happen, and we 

have done nothing, having known about this publicly since 2004, 

we have done nothing. We have spent minimal amounts of dollars 

on a quick fix to protect a big chunk of our iron structure. Not per-
19 

fect, not protecting everything, but just doing the bare minimum, 

we have done nothing. 

Let me go on. C, have we developed national and regional restoration plans? Yes or no. 

Mr. CURRIE. According to our work, DHS has not done that. 

There may have been discussions about that in the Sector Coordinating Council. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So 7 years later, we have not developed national and regional restoration plans. 

By the way, if anybody wants to challenge this, pipe in. We have 

plenty of time. I am the only questioner, which is kind of nice. 

Ms. BOURGE. Chairman Johnson—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. I wish every member of the Committee were 

here to hear this, though. It is unfortunate they are not. But, 

again, if anybody wants to challenge this, step in. Do you want to 

say—have we developed a national or regional restoration plan? 

Ms. BOURGE. Actually, I want to go one back from there. I want 

to talk about whether or not we have done nothing, because I think 

the issue got a little conflated here on the EMP versus GMD. Industry has done things on GMDs. We have standards implemented. 

We are in the process of pending approval from FERC on a second 

set of standards to build toward the 100-year event. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Have we installed anything? Have we actually protected anything? So industry, great, God bless you, I love 

industry. So industry has done some studying. The government has 

not. 

Ms. BOURGE. I could not say what DHS has done specifically or 

not. 

Chairman JOHNSON. That is why we have GAO here, and he said 

government has not done anything. So God bless industry. I am 

glad you are moving forward. We should start installing some of 

these things. 

D, have we assured the availability of replacement equipment. 

Have we done that? 

Mr. CURRIE. No. It is being researched, but there is no assurance. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Ah, research. Love research. Some of these 

transformers are 2 years out in terms of lead time, correct? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Two years out. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. And the last time I looked, Mr. Chairman, they 

were made only in—the big ones, only in South Korea and Germany. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So anybody with a brain in their head looking at this would go, what we ought to do—again, we are going to 

spend $800 billion looking for shovel-ready projects and shovel 

about $2 billion into some replacement transformers and just keeping the spare parts. Wouldn’t that have been a rational response, 

take $2 billion and buy a bunch of transformers and store them so 

that we can restore power from that—— 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Some transformers are not fungible. You cannot 

just take one and put—but people here who know more about 

that—— 
20 

Chairman JOHNSON. That would, of course, require some research and some planning, which we did not do that either. So let 

me keep going on. 

Mr. GARWIN. As they say, the good is the enemy of—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. No. The perfect is the enemy of the good, I 

know. And just government does not work, and I think this is pretty obvious. 

Mr. GARWIN. You can make replacement transformers that are 

modular and stack them up, and that is a good way to do it. But 

it is very difficult to get people to agree on a particular course. And 

in industry and commerce, you have competition, so people buy 

what is most effective and what—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Right, and, of course, the point of this hearing is to lay bare how ridiculous it is that we have done nothing, 

and we have let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and we have 

allowed governmental dysfunction to prevent us from even doing 

the basic first little quick fixes to begin protecting our critical infrastructure. That is the purpose of this hearing. 

Let me go on. E, assure availability of critical communications 

channels. Have we done that, Mr. Currie? 

Mr. CURRIE. So we focus on the energy sector, and one thing that 

was not mentioned is that the EMP Commission report actually 

covered other sectors, like telecommunications and banking and finance and raised threats in those areas, too. I do not have knowledge of the communications area. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Well, again, and I agree with your assessment in your testimony, too. We have 16 critical infrastructures, 

and they all depend on energy. So, again, we are trying to 

prioritize what you are trying to address—again, not going to solve 

all of them. In other words, do nothing, so try and start solving 

something. The top priority would be protect our electrical infrastructure, correct? 

F, expand and extend emergency power supplies. Have we done 

that? 

Mr. CURRIE. That is not something we have looked at as DHS because they would not be responsible. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I will take that as a no. 

Extend black start capability. 

Mr. CURRIE. It is something that they have looked at as their research and development for installing these transformers that can 

be easily replaced, but I am not aware of—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. So looked at it. Then that would be what we 

would have to do. Pre-purchasing some of these replacement transformers is really what we are talking about, right? And getting 

those in a position so that we do not have to rely on transportation 

to put them in service. Mr. McClelland. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. If you do not mind, Mr. Chairman, I would 

like to revisit just a couple—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Not from the DHS perspective, but from 

FERC’s perspective. Regarding item No. 1, identify critical facilities, the Commission did finish comprehensive network modeling, 

has identified the most critical substations and nodes on the electric power grid, conveyed that information to the industry, and 
21 

then offered assistance. And this is in conjunction with DOE and 

DHS, so they were our partners on this. We did collaborate, so we 

have identified those critical nodes, met with the subject matter experts who own and operate those critical nodes, and offered assistance, joint assistance for cybersecurity with DHS and also assistance on both GMD and EMP mitigation procedures and techniques. 

We have also collaborated with our partners at the Department 

of Defense (DOD) to identify mission-critical facilities and essentially perform the same function for our partners at DOD. 

So work has been done. I cannot speak to independent efforts by 

DHS. The work was not specifically driven by GMD and EMP. It 

was driven in the threat context and used for both cyber GMD and 

EMP. 

On the second item, I do not want to overrepresent it. I think it 

is important to say that the NERC standards are a baseline approach, so they are a foundational approach. They are certainly not 

best practices, and they certainly would not represent best practices that the industry could bring to bear. However, NERC did put 

operating procedures in place so that when they receive alerts and 

bulletins from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) folks regarding space weather events, they are given 

an alert, and they can take operational action. That is just operational action, though. It does depend on human beings to actuate 

procedures in order to protect the system. 

There is a second phase of that standard. The second phase of 

that standard regards a self-assessment by the industry to determine whether or not they need to take protective measures, automatic protective measures against GMD. And the Commission has 

questioned some of the aspects of that standard in regards to the 

1-in-100-year event and the baseline that NERC submitted for the 

Commission’s review. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. So that is good news. I would have assumed we would have been looking at this. I am sure there is, with 

all the paper being produced around here, there are some studies. 

We need to start implementing some protections, though, and 

prioritizing those things. Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, just one illustration. It takes 

NERC sometimes quite a while to come up with these standards. 

In 2003, after the Great Northeast Blackout in Canada—and it 

started, I think, in Cleveland, with a tree branch touching a 

wire—NERC undertook a Vegetation Management Plan. It took 

them slightly over 10 years, until 2013, to come up with that. The 

United States was engaged in World War II for 3 years and 8 

months, so that is essentially three World War II’s that it took 

NERC to figure out what to do with vegetation. I do not know how 

long it took them to handle a much more complex problem, like, 

say, squirrels. 

Ms. BOURGE. Mr. Chairman, if I could add one thing—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Squirrels are a 100 percent probability as 

well. [Laughter.] 

Ms. BOURGE. The NERC process has been changing and growing 

and establishing itself over the years, and that was more in its infancy. At this point we have gotten better with standards. I am not 

going to say we are perfect, but we have gotten better in the proc-
22 

ess of getting them done, and for an example, we had a request 

from FERC to create physical security standards last year, and we 

did that, I believe, in 82 days. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, this is a different example, but I 

know the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has established standards in case the Ebola virus ever came to the United States, and 

the first time it happened, we had some young nurses contract 

Ebola because—again, you can write up standards, but if you do 

not test it, if you do not actually have the protective gown and 

equipment in place, the standards, the piece of paper does nothing. 

Let me just continue, because I just want to—and, again, anybody can answer this. If it is yes or no or, maybe or partially, let 

me know. 

Prioritize and protect critical nodes. Have we prioritized and protected critical notes? Mr. McClelland. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. The studies that FERC has performed do 

prioritize the critical nodes for the industry. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So we prioritized but no protection. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. No, the protection is voluntary. There is no 

EMP standard, and the Commission has said on numerous occasions that for national security the standards are not adequate. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. So, listen, I am somebody who hates 

overreaching government, overregulation. But let us face it: Voluntary is not working so good. From my standpoint, this is something that needs to be addressed, and if government has to pay for 

it, again, that is why I go back to the old stimulus, $800 billion, 

we could have done a lot of protection with just a small little fraction of that, and it is just a shame, it is just unconscionable we did 

not. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I can just add to that quickly. We have seen 

just a handful of utilities move forward with EMP mitigation. One 

or two have been very proactive. The cost for both GMD and EMP 

mitigation at those stations is relatively small. It has been 1 to 2 

percent—for EMP mitigation included. 

Chairman JOHNSON. When the administration in 2009 was looking for those shovel-ready projects, did NERC ever raise its hand 

and say, ‘‘We have one here’’? 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I do not know. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I wish they would have. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Not to my knowledge, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. GARWIN. There is a generic problem in the government, as 

evidenced by our late friend Jim Schlesinger when he was Secretary of Defense. They needed a fiscal stimulus, and Schlesinger 

came up with $5 billion to be spent. He said, ‘‘We do not need it 

for defense, but I am the only one in the government, the only Cabinet Secretary, allowed to have contingency plans for spending 

money we do not have.’’ 

And so we spent that $5 billion on defense. Schlesinger said we 

did not need it, but it was a good thing to do, according to the administration and the Congress. We ought to have contingency plans 

lined up for things that we do not have money to do, and you have 

to be able to say no to them to stay within the budget. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Well, again, the purpose of this hearing is 

to raise this issue, this contingency and a real high—this is not a 
23 

contingency. This is an imperative. This is a top priority from my 

standpoint. 

I, Expand and assure intelligent islanding capability. Dr. 

Garwin, that was part of your testimony. Have we done anything 

there? 

Mr. GARWIN. I do not know. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. McClelland. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I would say not, no. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Assure protection of high-value generation assets. 

[No response.] 

No? Correct? I guess we will just assume no unless somebody 

wants to—OK. 

Assure protection of high-value transmissions assets. 

[No response.] 

No. Assure sufficient numbers of adequately trained recovery 

personnel. Have we done that one? 

[No response.] 

No. Simulate, train, exercise, and test the recovery plan. Have 

we done that? 

[No response.] 

No, we have not done that. 

Develop and deploy system test standards and equipment. 

[No response.] 

Have not done that. 

The final one, you can all breathe easy now, establish installation standards. 

[No response.] 

So this is pretty remarkable. From 2008, we had all these recommendations, seems like pretty common-sense recommendations, 

things that responsible individuals would have hopped right on and 

said, ‘‘This is a problem, this is a threat, this needs to be addressed, this is a priority.’’ And we have virtually done very little. 

We have done some. We have done some studies. We need to start 

using those studies. 

We are, by the way, going to be introducing a piece of legislation—and I have it here somewhere. Oh, I know. This passed in the 

House. One of the reasons we are holding this hearing now is I 

wanted the House to move first. It is called the ‘‘Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.’’ To me, this is just bare minimum. And it was 

amazing to me. Ambassador Woolsey, can you describe the problems we had even passing this in the House? It is going to require 

DHS to prepare a strategy to protect critical infrastructure against 

electromagnetic threats. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I think this is the one that go through the House 

and was stopped in the Senate—Peter Pry has followed the legislation on this more closely, if we can ask him, former Chief of Staff 

of—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure. Why don’t you come forward? I will 

let you provide the information without being sworn in. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Progress, particularly in the House, of CIPA. 

Mr. PRY. Well, it was passed in the House, but like in the last 

week of the last Congress. It passed unanimously, as a matter of 

fact, but we just ran out of time. I think the bills you are thinking 
24 

about are the SHIELD Act and the GRID Act which were held up 

for years in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. One of 

them, the GRID Act, did pass the House unanimously in 2010, and 

it came over to the Senate. But one Senator anonymously put a 

hold on the bill, and then it died. And that is the closest we came. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I actually was going to get to the SHIELD 

and GRID Acts. Right now we are just talking about CIPA, because 

I think the House—is it Homeland Security?—has actually reported out of Committee, and hopefully the House will pass it. And 

I want to bring this up and report it out of our Committee as well, 

and it is one of the reasons I held this hearing, was to get Committee support for just a bare minimum. Again, this is sort of a 

study as well. But we need to move past studies as quickly as possible and develop a strategy and start implementing it real quick. 

And I think some of these things we are talking about here, the 

$100,000 for some of these critical transformers, I do not think we 

need a strategy or a study. I think we should just do it, quite honestly. I will amend this bill to authorize the dollars to do just that. 

Mr. GARWIN. One problem is that some of these remedies are so 

cheap, so that is the reproduction cost. But the design, the test, 

that costs really a lot of money, and then you put it into production. But you have to decide what it is you put into production. So 

that is why there has not been a lot of supply-industry interest in 

this, because the market is not all that big. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Mr. Currie, do you want a quick—— 

Mr. CURRIE. Yes, sir. On the cost issue, one of the things that 

we are looking at—when we talk about this, we tend to talk about 

just replacing existing equipment now. Another option that is easier and cheaper is, as you redesign systems, as they need natural 

replacement, that you consider hardening in this, too, which can be 

cheaper and easier to do as well. 

Chairman JOHNSON. That is fine. But, again, that is replacing. 

That is further out in the future. Let us take a look at what we 

have now. Let us address that. Let us offer some protection now. 

I think I will yield back my time remaining, my 7 minutes here. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator CARPER. I will say you have made the most of it. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I have it right here. It says all 7 minutes, 

so I have not even begun. 

I will say I wish we have had really good attendance at these 

hearings, and this is probably the least attended hearing, and it is 

unfortunate. I will ask—— 

Senator CARPER. They are all waiting in the anteroom until you 

finish. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I will ask that you review what has already 

been stated here, Senator Carper. This is unbelievable. It is just 

unbelievable. So if you have an opening statement, I am happy to 

have you make it now. But I really want you to review the testimony, and I want you to review the initial questioning here, and 

what we have not done is pretty jaw-dropping and how little it is 

going to cost to just offer some basic protection, this is something 

we need to prioritize. We need to get moving on this now. But why 

don’t you make your opening statement? Then we will continue on 

with questions. 
25 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER 

Senator CARPER. OK. Thanks. I apologize to our witnesses. First, 

my train was running about an hour and a half late. That is 

enough of a trouble. And the Northeast corridor was shut down for 

a while. And I got here, and I got distracted on another big issue 

that we are facing in the Senate today. But, Mr. Chairman, thanks 

very much for holding this hearing, and thanks to our witnesses as 

well for joining us. 

Threats to the homeland have evolved, as we all know, considerably over the last 15 years. In the months after 9/11, the most 

pressing threat to our homeland came from al-Qaeda terrorists 

planning attacks from remote caves in Afghanistan. Today the terror threat has become far more diverse. 

Some terror groups are still seeking sophisticated attacks against 

high-profile targets. Other groups, such as the Islamic State of Iraq 

and Syria (ISIS), are attempting to inspire extremists all over the 

world—including right here in the United States—to carry out simple attacks within their own communities, sometimes lethal attacks. 

We are also being attacked daily in cyberspace. In many ways, 

we are dealing with an epidemic of online theft and fraud. This epidemic is growing at an alarming rate and touches many of the people in this room, including on this side of the dais, as attacks become more sophisticated and more disruptive. 

And the challenges we faced with the recent Ebola outbreak and 

our ongoing efforts to counter the spread of avian influenza remind 

us that threats to our homeland are not just manmade. To address 

these evolving threats, we must always look to stay at least one 

step ahead of the bad guys or, in some cases, Mother Nature. 

At the same time, we have to reluctantly accept the reality that 

our Nation cannot protect against every threat, or potential threat, 

out there. Though we should always strive for perfection, we simply 

do not have the resources to achieve 100 percent security all of the 

time. I know that, and I think we all recognize that. That is why 

it is so critical that we prioritize our homeland defenses. We must 

focus on those threats that our experience and intelligence tell us 

are most likely to occur and would have the gravest effects if, God 

forbid, they should become a reality. 

Today’s hearing gives us an opportunity to assess two different 

potential threats to our electrical grid: man-made electromagnetic 

pulses, and geomagnetic disturbances caused by space weather. 

Each of these threats poses some degree of risk to our communities. That much is clear. Our job, however, is to assess that risk 

and figure out where these threats rank in the spectrum of everything else that our country faces. For example, we must determine 

how likely electro-and geomagnetic threats are to occur given our 

existing preparations and deterrents. And if they were to occur, 

how would they impact our homeland? 

The answers to these basic questions become all the more important and urgent amid the horrific reminders of the existing challenges we already do face from domestic terrorism and homegrown 

violent extremism in our own communities—attacks like those that 

occurred recently in Chattanooga and in Charleston. 
26 

I hope today we can make some progress on this front and that 

our witnesses can provide us with a clear-eyed assessment of these 

threats. I look forward to questioning, but I am going to yield on 

my questions to Senator Ernst and Senator Ayotte and then maybe 

pick up the chance to ask my own questions in a few minutes. 

Thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Senator Carper. Senator Ernst. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ERNST 

Senator ERNST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Ranking Member Carper. 

I would like to start, of course, with a discussion. I know the 

DOD was brought up earlier—and, first, I apologize. I want to 

thank all of you for being here today as well. I know many of us 

are dashing from meeting to meeting. But the DOD was brought 

up as far as our military is concerned, so, Director Woolsey, I 

would like to direct this to you first. I am interested in your 

thoughts on the potential impact of whether it is a natural or manmade EMP on our military capabilities, and if you could I guess detail or general observation, either, on where we are most vulnerable and how we should prioritize our efforts to harden these areas 

in our military and mitigate some of the threats that have been 

discussed here today. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, 99 percent of—maybe it is like 97 percent 

of the military are on the grid. That is where they get their power. 

Senator ERNST. Correct. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I think in California there is one hot water steam 

facility, but that is it. So since we have 16 critical infrastructure 

and they all in one way or another depend on electricity, although 

electricity depends on them—they are interacting. But if the grid 

goes down, there is no special arrangement for the military. They 

are hungry and thirsty just like everybody else. And so in a real 

crisis one might look to the National Guard or whatever to maintain order. They are going to be worried about their families starving and not having water just like everybody else. 

So we have a very fundamental problem that the infrastructure 

at least in this country is essentially completely integrated, and 

one good thing is that Defense often has less difficulty making decisions and moving out, and sometimes they have a bit of extra 

money, so sometimes if you have a cooperative arrangement between Defense and other parts of the government, and particularly 

on something like this, Defense could kind of take the lead, particularly in areas like the corridor in the middle of Texas, which 

has several major military bases on it as well as several cities. And 

it would be a way to move out relatively quickly, perhaps, on getting some of these changes to the transformers and the rest that 

we have been talking about here. 

Senator ERNST. So you would say they would be a priority; they 

would need to be a priority. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Absolutely, but, I mean, hospitals are going to be 

a priority because they will not have electricity, et cetera, et cetera. 

The military would certainly be front and center. 
27 

Senator ERNST. Certainly. And do you believe that we could adequately protect our installations here? What about post bases that 

we have overseas? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, there are different threats, both for geomagnetic—except for the really huge Carrington Effect 1859 event, 

the events like even the railroad one of 1921 occur only over part 

of the Earth. So if something like that hit us, unless it was a gigantic Carrington event, it might well not hit our bases in other parts 

of the world. And if they were hit, then they might not be in the 

United States. 

But whether it is in Britain or Germany or here, we cannot assume that our military is going to have electricity and power and 

function any different really than the rest of society. They are 

going to depend on British transformers in Britain. 

Senator ERNST. Based on those host countries. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes, I am sure they have generators and fuel that 

will last for 2 or 3 days or something like that, like a lot of businesses do. But we are used to planning for weather-caused outages, 

which will last 2, 3, or 4, maximum 4 or 5, let us say, days. And 

that is not what this would be. This would be an outage for a very 

long time. 

Senator ERNST. OK. Mr. McClelland, I think you had some information. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I do. In 2008—and, actually, Mr. Woolsey was 

a part of this initiative. It was the Defense Science Board Task 

Force that wrote a report in February 2008 called ‘‘More Fight, 

Less Fuel.’’ The primary objective of that task force, as I remember, 

was to evaluate battlefield needs and dependency on fuel. They inadvertently found, however, they came up with two primary determinations. The second was very serious and was a surprise, and I 

would just like to read an excerpt from the memorandum from Dr. 

Schlesinger. 

Senator ERNST. Please. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. He said, ‘‘The task force concluded that DOD 

has two primary energy challenges,’’ and this is the second: ‘‘Military installations are almost completely dependent on a fragile and 

vulnerable commercial power grid, placing critical military and 

homeland defense missions at an unacceptable risk of extended 

outages.’’ 

And so that report went on then to detail the findings as well 

as recommendations to help correct that circumstance. 

Senator ERNST. So in your assessment then, it would be important that not only are we ensuring our troops are prepared for war, 

but also that they would be prepared in situations like this to make 

sure we can eventually step up into military operations. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Absolutely. 

Senator ERNST. OK. Thank you very much. I have very little 

time remaining, but I do want to thank all of you for participating 

today. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Senator. I will use your time, 

because we have not adequately described this. 

Ambassador Woolsey, you said ‘‘a very long time.’’ Lay out exactly what would happen in a massive GMD or an EMP. Lay it out. 
28 

Describe what this is going to look like. This is not a 2-week or a 

3-week power outage. Talk about the electrical grid going down and 

everything shuts down. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Well, I will take a quick stab at it and then lateral it to Joe and Dick, if they want to add, because they both 

know a great deal about this issue—more than I, really. 

You have the short wavelength effects that operate line of sight, 

so if you—— 

Mr. GARWIN. Short time. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Short time. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I really do not want to impinge too much on 

Senator Ayotte’s time here. Kind of get by the technical aspects to 

now the grid is down. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. All right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And just describe what happens to society 

when the grid is down for—you said ‘‘a very long time.’’ We are 

talking a year or two, because we cannot get these transformers. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. It is briefly dealt with in the Commission report 

of 2008, and there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and 

from social disruption. One estimate is that within a year or so, 

two-thirds of the United States population would die. The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population 

would die. We are talking about total devastation. We are not talking about just a regular catastrophe. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I think that made the point. Senator Ayotte. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AYOTTE 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you, Chairman. 

Ambassador, you certainly made the point, which brings me to 

my question. I serve on the Armed Services Committee as well, and 

in February, our Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the 

Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) both testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding worldwide 

threats. It is our annual worldwide threats hearing. And this was 

obviously intended to be a comprehensive assessment, yet neither 

of them even mentioned the EMP threat in their lengthy written 

testimony provided to the Committee or in the oral testimony. 

So, Ambassador Woolsey, what explains this notable silence? If 

you look at collectively your tremendous experience in so many key 

positions in our government, how would you assess our awareness 

about this threat? And do you worry that there is a gap in terms 

of the intelligence community’s (IC) and our overall focus on this 

devastating threat? 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Senator, it is a great question, and it is one of the 

things that perplexes everybody who looks at this. How could this 

be such a terrible threat and nobody has paid attention to it for 

quite a while, sometimes even in DIA and DNI testimony? I think 

there are two things going on. 

First of all, all parts of government and individuals are strapped 

for cash these days, and so to stick one’s neck out in a bureaucratic 

situation in which you say, ‘‘I understand that. That is my agency’s 

responsibility. We will take charge, and here we go,’’ you may find 

that it is being taken out of your hide. And so you do not have any 
29 

real prospect to get added resources to do something, even if the 

resources are a couple of billion dollars, very small in these terms. 

So that is, I think, one thing that is going on. 

Another is that it has enough of a technological component that 

people tend to think of it as science fiction. I gave a speech to a 

group of very distinguished scientists, and one came up afterwards 

and said, ‘‘Come on, Woolsey. You cannot mean this. Newt Gingrich 

writes novels about this.’’ I said, ‘‘Well, Tolstoy wrote a novel about 

the war in Europe in Napoleonic times. It did not mean it did not 

happen.’’ 

But people get into the mode of thinking that this is so horrible 

if it goes the way it might—and there are books, there are good 

sort of dystopian books—one called ‘‘One Second After’’—about this, 

and so people get into not wanting to think about it, not wanting 

to worry about it because it is too terrible. 

I think that those two phenomena—and, finally, we kind of first 

knew about this—and, Dick, correct me if I am wrong—as a result 

of the atmospheric or high-altitude nuclear test just before the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty came into effect, we and the Russians. 

And we dealt with the problem from the point of view of protecting 

the Strategic Air Command’s assets, bombers, radar aircraft, and 

so on. But everybody kind of thought of it as, well, this is one thing 

that would be terrible if we had a nuclear war with the Soviets, 

so it is kind of a lesser included case. And the problem is that it 

is not now a lesser included case. If Iran gets one nuclear weapon, 

relatively primitive, just like what we dropped on Hiroshima, and 

can put it into a simple launcher, a Scud—they give Scuds to the 

Houthis in Yemen—a Scud and put it into orbit at, say, 100 kilometers, which is the easiest thing to do in space, the first thing we 

did, the first thing the Russians did, launch a little satellite into 

space. They get into space, and it is low-Earth orbit, and it is going 

around the Earth a couple of times a day or so, it crosses the 

United States. If you have that up there and you are the Iranians 

and that morning you wake up and think you really mean the 

‘‘death to America’’ business, then you can pickle it off and go, 

‘‘Boom,’’ and knock out the American grid. 

It is not just a lesser included case of strategic—and, by the way, 

the Iranians are rather good at deception. They might try to make 

it look like it was North Korea or something. 

Senator AYOTTE. And North Korea otherwise could do it. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. North Korea otherwise could do it. 

Senator AYOTTE. They are not know for—— 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Try to make it look like it is Iran. 

Senator AYOTTE [continuing]. Really rational leaders all the time. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. So there are several factors, but when you put 

them all together, the government—and I guess finally with respect to electricity, the functions of government with respect to the 

electric grid, particularly after it was in part—competition introduced into it around 2000—is you have FERC, you have NERC, 

you have State authorities, you have different kinds of ownership 

practices in industry. You have chaos from the point of view of trying to have anybody in charge of a coherent policy. There is only 

one person, I think, who can set this priority for the Nation and 
30 

get people going, and that would be the President of the United 

States. 

Senator AYOTTE. And from what I hear from your testimony, you 

would say that it is very important that the President do that, 

whether it is this President or the next President, but as soon as 

possible. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. I absolutely think as soon as possible, because 

even if you are willing to hope that things will work out OK with 

North Korea and with other nuclear powers that could orbit a satellite, Iran is explicitly genocidal with respect to both us and Israel, 

and they are, I think, months maybe—I hope years, but quite possibly months away from having a nuclear weapon. 

Senator AYOTTE. Well, and, of course, under the agreement that 

has been released, the U.N. Resolution against intercontinental 

ballistic missiles (ICBM) and their missile program will be lifted in 

8 years, but the intelligence estimates have been that they would 

have ICBM capability this year, is what we have heard. So we 

know that, yes, the Scud would be the more primitive form, but 

they are also working on more advanced forms that could deliver 

these types of weapons and could have the same effect. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Absolutely right. And the thing that is a problem 

here is that this is easier, an EMP shot is easier than launching 

a long-range missile at a target on the Earth. The shooter does not 

have to worry about reentry, does not have to worry about accuracy, none of that. They just need to get into orbit and detonate 

when the orbit takes the satellite over the United States. 

Senator AYOTTE. Well, I want to thank all of you for being here. 

I did not get to a question which I will submit for the record, but 

there is some really important work being done on this issue at the 

University of New Hampshire (UNH), and they are actually a leader in the field of heliophysics and researching this area, and also 

the impact of actually building space aircraft instruments to predict and detect solar eruptions, but also other types of events are 

important that we have referenced today. So I am going to submit 

a question for that, and I want to give UNH a shout-out for their 

important work on this. 

And I think this is a wakeup call, Mr. Chairman, for important 

work we could do on this Committee to really raise the attention 

level of what would be a devastating impact on our country. So I 

thank you all for being here. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Senator. It definitely is a 

wakeup call, although the wakeup call was first broadcast in 2004, 

then 2008. And, by the way, I did do a quick calculation using my 

iPhone here: 200 critical transformers at $100,000 would be $20 

million. That is it, $20 million and we would go a long way toward 

at least protecting a good chunk of our electrical grid. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. About a third of a fighter aircraft. 

Chairman JOHNSON. $20 million, that is it. We are going to include that on our CIPA bill. 

Mr. GARWIN. Could I reduce some confusion here, perhaps? 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure. 

Mr. GARWIN. Jim Woolsey and I worked together in 1998 on the 

Missile Threat Commission, and we said there it is not only the 

ICBMs but it is short-range missiles, cruise missiles, or ballistic 
31 

missiles from freighters that could threaten the United States. 

Now, some people do not like to hear that because they like to 

build defenses against ICBMs, and it is hard to defend against 

these little things—even harder to defend against ones that do not 

have to actually reenter but could detonate over the United States. 

However, never mind radars. We do see every launch of a significant ballistic missile, even Scuds, with the warning satellites. And 

so we know where it is fired from. If it is a long-range missile fired 

from Iran or North Korea, we know. There are easier ways for 

those countries to commit suicide than to send a nuclear weapon 

to do EMP that does not kill anybody directly but may kill tens of 

millions of people indirectly. 

But among those would be many Iranians and North Koreans, 

and, one ought to say that, in my opinion. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Well, thank you, Dr. Garwin. Senator Carper. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks again, everybody. 

I think I would like to start off my first question with Mr. 

Currie—thank you for being here—and Dr. Garwin. Here is my 

question: We have heard about high-altitude nuclear detonations 

and the EMP threat that they could pose. Where do manmade 

EMP threats rank in the spectrum of all homeland threats? Do you 

want to take a shot at that, Mr. Currie? 

Mr. CURRIE. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question. 

So that is the responsibility of DHS to assess those types of 

threats, and one of the things we found in our work is that DHS 

has not done that. They have not sort of incorporated the EMP or 

geomagnetic threat into their assessments yet. And there has been 

some confusion at DHS, too. When we asked them the question of 

who is responsible for doing that, there has been some confusion 

around who is supposed to do that. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Dr. Garwin. 

Mr. GARWIN. Nuclear weapons are not very widely available, and 

to add to that, the capability of launching them over the United 

States is also not something they find in the ordinary terrorist cell. 

So that is a blessing. 

The suitcase battery-operated EMP generators, they can cause 

damage at a substation, but there are a lot of other ways to cause 

damage at a substation by shooting the transformer—— 

Senator CARPER. We saw that near San Jose. I saw it with my 

own eyes. 

Mr. GARWIN. Yes. Or, for instance—— 

Senator CARPER. Metcalf. 

Mr. GARWIN [continuing]. Nuclear power plants. You use a little 

bit of explosives on the towers, and you bring down all the offsite 

power. That is why nuclear power plants have backup diesels, and 

we have taken that much more seriously after the Fukushima 

Daiichi meltdowns. But it took awhile to realize that the U.S. 

plants did not have sufficient battery capacity, did not have sufficient protection of their diesels. 

So the high-altitude nuclear explosion EMP threat is real. It is 

very special. We have many other problems of homeland security: 

disease spread by terrorists, for instance, as was mentioned; many 

other problems; widespread just shooting in marketplaces, which is 
32 

endemic in the rest of the world—fortunately, not so common here; 

bringing down the commercial aviation sector by various means. So 

Homeland Security has a lot of things to think about. 

Senator CARPER. I like to say it is a busy neighborhood. 

Mr. GARWIN. And EMP, we should fix the E3 threat. We should 

fix the solar storm threat. And then we should move on and do the 

E1 hardening and tell people that they are going to be out of business if such a thing happens, and that is an unnecessary vulnerability of the country. 

Senator CARPER. Ms. Bourge, do you want to comment on what 

Mr. Currie and Dr. Garwin just said, please? 

Ms. BOURGE. Thank you, Senator. What I would add to that is 

that the EMP threat is a lower-likelihood threat, but it is one of 

the highest-impact threats that you can find out there. And I think 

that is one reason that even though it is a very low likelihood, it 

is a very important issue, and a lot of people talk about it. Maybe 

not as many as should, and hopefully we are moving toward getting to public-private partnerships across the infrastructures to do 

so. But for now, it is a low-risk, high-impact threat. And as industry, we address those type of threats in a defense-in-depth approach, and so we take into consideration all threats, but then we 

do have to also factor in the likelihood, the ability to protect 

against it, the cost and impact on the consumers, and many other 

considerations as we are doing that to decide which threats we are 

going to address which ways. And so just because it is a low likelihood does not mean we do not think about it, but it means that 

it is one of the ones that is not the first that we are fixing. 

Senator CARPER. All right. My followup to you, if I could, we have heard today that it could take as little as $20 million to upgrade 200 transformers in the United States. Would you like to address that number or that assertion? 

Ms. BOURGE. So I have heard that number before in the past. 

Usually, I have heard it in reference to—— 

Senator CARPER. Do you have any idea how many transformers 

there are in the country? I do not know. Roughly. Are there 

100,000? Are there 50,000? 

Ms. BOURGE. I believe you are looking at around 20,000 of the 

major transformers. 

Senator CARPER. Major. 

Ms. BOURGE. But I would have to confirm that number. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Ms. BOURGE. Joe might be able to—— 

Mr. GARWIN. I think there are only about 700 extremely high 

voltage (EHV) transformers, the ones that carry power over many 

hundreds of kilometers at voltages above 500,000 volts. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Mr. GARWIN. Those are the primary ones that would be damaged 

and should be protected. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Good. Thanks. 

Mr. GARWIN. But the $20 million that is the reproduction cost. 

Senator CARPER. The what? 

Mr. GARWIN. The cost of building these things once you decide 

what it is and you do all of the homologation—that is, you make 

sure it is suitable, it passes all the requirements of the various 
33 

councils that are involved, and that is a good many million dollars 

before you get the first one. Now, some of that work has been done 

in Ontario Hydro and elsewhere. 

Senator CARPER. We interrupted what you were saying, Ms. 

Bourge. Do you want to finish? I do not want to be rude. 

Ms. BOURGE. Oh, no. No worries at all. I believe I had actually 

pretty much finished all my statement. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Let me go back and ask a followup to my 

first question, Mr. Currie, to you and Dr. Garwin. How likely is it 

that a country, like Russia, like China, like North Korea, would 

detonate a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere above the United 

States? Do we have any deterrence in place to the launching of a 

high-altitude nuclear blast? 

Mr. CURRIE. Sir, from a GAO perspective, I do not know the answer to that. We have done some work, a couple of years ago on 

DOD’s efforts, the Department of Defense’s efforts to mitigate 

against this and plan for this, and that is completely classified. So 

we would be happy to give that report to you or your staff. 

Senator CARPER. OK. That would be good. Thanks. 

Dr. Garwin, do you have any—first of all—— 

Mr. GARWIN. There are two aspects to what Ms. Bourge mentioned. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Mr. GARWIN. She said explicitly what would be the cost to the 

American public, the consumer, of such an event if it happened, 

and we do not really know that. We need many more and more precise and more public estimates of that. Then anybody can supply 

the probability, which is not really a probability because it is affected by people’s decisionmaking process, and in the case of China 

and Russia, that is deterrable. We would deter that. This is not 

something that they could do lightly without realizing that they 

would suffer nuclear response, not just high-altitude EMP. So it 

would be very bad for their militaries, and you might say that 

could cause all-out war. So it could. And it would not help to put 

the blame on the one who started it. We have to think these things 

through. 

So what is the probability? Difficult to answer. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thanks. 

Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I know you went on for a 

while, and I would like to go on—not for that long but for a while. 

Is that OK? 

Chairman JOHNSON. Can I come back to you? I just want to clarify a few things. 

Senator CARPER. Sure. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Dr. Garwin, 700 total transformers that are 

kind of the critical ones, the long term; $100,000, that would be 

$70 million. Again, that does not even show up as a rounding error 

in the Federal budget. We are talking about $70 million. But I did 

want to ask you a question. Are those capacitors that you are recommending already designed? Or is that something that would 

have to be developed? 

Mr. GARWIN. The neutral current-blocking devices exist. They 

have been tried. A company, Emprimus, is offering them for sale. 

Who knows how much they are charging for it? I think that you 
34 

can use one device on several transformers, and that is where this 

$100,000 or $150,000 per transformer comes from. 

The series blocking capacitors in the power lines themselves, 

those have not been designed. Those are also of the same order of 

cost. It depends whether you put them in substations on fiberglass 

stands, whether you actually hang them on the lines, what kind of 

control systems you put around them so that they do not cause any 

power problems when there is no electromagnetic pulse or solar 

storm. 

So those have not been designed. I wish to call attention to the 

fact that they exist. It is hard for an electrical engineer even to get 

her mind around the fact that you make a great big value of a capacitance, a lot of millifarads. And it still costs less than the ones 

that we are accustomed to having because the voltage across them 

is lower. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So, again, these are estimates. I am just 

trying to get a feel for how much we are talking about, how much 

of the electrical grid would it protect, and how quickly could we actually install these things. As a business guy, that would be my 

first questions. How much is it going to cost? How quickly could we 

install them, in what kind of phasing? And, how much development 

really has to occur on this? Anybody else can jump in. 

Mr. GARWIN. You could do it in a couple of years. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But could you start installing some of these 

things tomorrow? 

Mr. GARWIN. Yes, you could install neutral current-blocking devices. You could have some military base at the end of a long transmission line, install series-blocking capacitors. Yes, you could go 

ahead, and if it did not work, you would take it out of service. But 

you need to do analyses of the stability of the networks, electrical 

stability of the networks, and then you need to have competition 

to perfect these things. But, yes, you could get a good ways within 

a couple of years. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So, again, for this not even pocket change 

to the Federal Government, would this make sense for us to quickly authorize just a bare minimum level of protection, authorize, $20 

to $70 million—again, no need to ask for an offset for that small 

amount—start installing these things, maybe they are not perfect, 

we can always upgrade them. And I guess I want to ask you, Mr. 

McClelland, and you, Ms. Bourge, is that something that we could 

support and get done and do it tomorrow? We will do other strategies. We will do other reports. But is this something we could do 

tomorrow, get that in motion so we can start installing these things 

as quickly as possible? Mr. McClelland. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. I would say yes. I would also make a recommendation that we stay flexible. Neutral blocking may not be 

the only solution. It may not be a good fit for that particular site, 

and you will hear that from industry members that evaluate 

their—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. But if we are paying for it—— 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Right. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I mean, is there going to be much reason for 

them to squawk? 
35 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. No. And I would even say that there may be 

cheaper solutions, so instead of a neutral blocker, you could trip 

the transformer off. 

And just to put one other item in context, if you will allow me, 

the 1989 Quebec event, there was virtually no equipment damage, 

10 hours of off time for the grid, cost between $1 to $2 billion. If 

you work backward and if you just inflate the cost to half a million 

dollars, you are equivalent then to $1 billion, the lower end of that 

cost for that relatively benign event, versus a much more severe 

event that is inevitable. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, so what I am going to try and convince our Ranking Member is to join me in authorizing up to $100 

million to quickly install these as a first step. Could you do these 

things in a series? Again, we are talking about such a minimal expenditure with such a great risk. And, by the way, we do know 

GMD, it is 100 percent certainty that this will occur. Maybe not tomorrow, 10 percent every decade, but it will occur. It is 100 percent. And so we need to protect ourselves against that. 

Ms. Bourge, would industry have any problems if we authorized 

spending the money to install these types of controls, realizing they 

are not perfect and there may be better solutions, lower-cost solutions in the future, but let us at least do this minimal amount now 

and continue to look at this in the future? 

Ms. BOURGE. I think the overall concept would not be so concerning, but there would be some concerns about the flexibility of 

what type of technology solutions are going to be applied and 

where we are applying, because the longitude or the closeness to 

water, things like that impact what type of protections are best recommended for an individual facility. 

So I am not sure if we would be comfortable with the idea of it 

just being a mandate, here is the money, but you need to install 

this specific technology on every part of the system; so much as 

here is some money, work together with DOE, figure out how best 

to install it—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Happy to provide that flexibility, but I 

want to get the thing moving. So I do not want to say, well, until 

we have it all designed and we know exactly what we are going to 

put on all 700, we are going to do nothing. Let us take a look at 

if there are 500 which are pretty obvious, let us get the things installed. And it may not be perfect, and we will come back and authorize a better solution. Mr. Currie. 

Mr. CURRIE. Yes, sir. I will say one thing that could be a stumbling block, again, is this prioritization of the most high risk places 

or transformers, and it sounds like FERC has some efforts ongoing. 

Based on our work at DHS, we have not seen anything that has 

really fleshed that out yet or any entity at DHS that really knows 

that information. So that would be critical before you could ever 

figure out how to spend money. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But, again, FERC, you have done a fair 

amount—you have already done some studies, so you think this 

could be implemented pretty rapidly. So I will come to you guys, 

and I will leave DHS out of this for the time being, because you 

are little more prepared, or I will ask you to give the information 
36 

to DHS. What a concept. We can actually get these things done. 

Senator Carper. 

Senator CARPER. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. 

Again, another question, if I could, for Ms. Bourge, and maybe, 

Dr. Garwin, you take a swing at this one as well. A fellow named 

Yousaf Butt—I think that is the correct pronunciation—a nuclear 

physicist and former researcher with the Harvard-Smithsonian 

Center for Astrophysics, recently wrote the following—this is what 

he wrote. He said, ‘‘If terrorists want to do something serious, they 

will use a weapon of mass destruction—not mass disruption. They 

do not want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which 

the physics is not very clear.’’ That is what he said. 

Let me just ask, is a high-altitude nuclear EMP a weapon of 

mass destruction or a weapon of mass disruption? If you believe it 

is a weapon of mass disruption, do you agree with Dr. Butt’s statement? Ms. Bourge, please. 

Ms. BOURGE. It is most definitely mass disruption when you are 

talking about a high-altitude nuclear EMP. The reason someone 

would detonate a nuclear bomb or device in the air like that is for 

the EMP effect. Otherwise, they are going to do a ground detonation. 

From our perspective, we tend to see it from a risk scenario. The 

most likely scenario is that a nuclear bomb would be detonated on 

the ground, not in the air, because a nation state would be doing 

an act of war. A terrorist is also going to be trying to kill as well 

as cause terror. So you would have some groups that would do a 

high-altitude detonation, but their intent has to be that mass 

panic, that mass destruction, without the mass casualties immediately. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Again, Dr. Garwin, I will quote Dr. Butt 

again. He said, ‘‘If terrorists want to do something serious, they 

will use a weapon of mass destruction—not mass disruption.’’ Then 

he went on to say, ‘‘They do not want to depend on complicated secondary effects in which the physics is not very clear.’’ 

Mr. GARWIN. He asserts a better understanding of terrorists than 

I have. Yes, having a nuclear weapon, exploding it at ground level 

in a city, I have written about that a lot. That is a real problem. 

It is a lot easier to do, really, than sending it up without killing 

anybody immediately. But you will kill lots of people. 

Now, a first-generation nuclear weapon produces a very significant E1 and destroys all kinds of electronics. It does not do very 

much for the E3, that is, the geomagnetic storm-like pulse. But it 

will kill a lot of people, not instantly, and, that is up to the terrorists’ taste. It is easier for them, in my opinion, to detonate a nuclear weapon in a city. But that does not mean we should not protect against the other. 

Senator CARPER. I have several other questions. If you would, 

just bear with me, please. A question on predicting space weather, 

if we could, and I do not know if this is a fair question to ask of 

you, Ms. Bourge, but I will start with you if I could. 

When it comes to space weather-generated geomagnetic disturbances, it appears that our ability to predict the intensity of solar 

flares and their impact on Earth is critical to mitigating the impacts to the electrical grid. Ms. Bourge, could you and maybe Dr. 
37 

Garwin take this question for me? Can you address if the United 

States is doing a good job at predicting space weather events? 

Ms. BOURGE. From the electric industry—— 

Senator CARPER. Microphone. 

Ms. BOURGE. From the electric industry perspective, I would say 

that the United States is doing a pretty good job of predicting space 

events. We do get early alerts so that we are able to take protective 

action for our systems in the higher latitudes. That sometimes will 

mean turning off a system because we got that alert from the government in time. 

Senator CARPER. Is it a couple of days? Is it hours? 

Ms. BOURGE. So it depends on the size of the storm. Usually, it 

takes about 16 hours to, I think, 36 hours, if I recall correctly, for 

the storm to impact the Earth from when it first happened on the 

Sun, and we usually get close to that for type of a heads up. But 

you could have a shorter time period as well. But as long as we 

have enough time to have our operators respond, that works. And 

so that is a very important issue from our perspective, because unlike the EMP threat, the GMD threat we do get that early warning. 

We do know for sure. The military is not going to call us if they 

are tracking a nuke, most likely. But we do get a heads up when 

a GMD is heading our way. We know what level we are expecting. 

We know what region is likely to have the most impact, and we can 

take protective measures for our system. 

Senator CARPER. What kind of protective measures would you 

take in those instances? 

Ms. BOURGE. So in some cases, we already have existing technology on the systems at the higher latitudes to protect against 

GMDs. They are often called ‘‘chokes.’’ 

Senator CARPER. Chokes? 

Ms. BOURGE. Chokes. 

Senator CARPER. Like a chokehold. 

Ms. BOURGE. Like a chokehold, because basically that is what it 

is doing to the current. It is trying to limit its ability to impact the 

system. 

And then we also have that early warning system. That is a big 

part of protection against a GMD, just knowing that it is coming, 

knowing what time you are expecting it so you can protect your 

system, and if need be, shut it off so it does not get hurt. 

Senator CARPER. And if you get like a warning of 12, 18 hours, 

that is enough time to shut down? 

Ms. BOURGE. That is enough time. We always would love more 

time. The more time you have for things, the better. But that is 

a good window. I would caution that these are programs that are 

sponsored by government dollars. It is satellites that are out in 

space monitoring space weather for us. And it is very important as 

we move forward in the years that we do not consider removing 

these technologies from NOAA’s suite of technologies and availabilities that they have. 

Senator CARPER. Dr. Garwin, do you agree with anything that 

Ms. Bourge just said? 

Mr. GARWIN. Quite a lot. We do not get very good warning. We 

see these things on the sun, and 24 or 36 hours later we may or 

may not have a severe geomagnetic storm on the Earth. A real 
38 

warning of about 40 minutes comes from an ACE satellite or now 

the DSCOVR satellite on the Earth-Sun line off at a million and 

a half miles from the Earth out of 93 million miles to the Sun. 

Forty minutes is sort of short to change from economic dispatch 

where you send the electricity in the cheapest way to robust dispatch, which may do some good so that the lines are less heavily 

loaded and more generators are operating, so if one line goes out, 

another one can take over. 

We could have, as in the 2011 report, some so-called quasi-satellites that would be out at 15 million miles. You cannot station 

them there. You have to have a whole swarm of them. But they can 

be tiny things, and that would extend from 40 minutes to about 7 

hours and give you really better actionable intelligence. 

Senator CARPER. OK. 

Mr. GARWIN. So that would be a good thing. It really would not 

cost very much. Nobody that I know is planning for it. 

Senator CARPER. All right. Thank you. And one last question, if 

I could, for Mr. Currie. Mr. Currie, the EMP Commission issued its 

recommendations several years ago, and I think those have been 

discussed at least to some degree here today. As I understand it, 

GAO is working to assess whether the Department of Homeland 

Security has implemented the EMP Commission’s recommendations. Here is my question: Is DHS required to implement the EMP 

Commission’s recommendations? That is one. Second, have any of 

the EMP Commission’s recommendations been codified in statute? 

Go ahead and answer those first. Is DHS required to implement 

the EMP Commission’s recommendations? And, two, have any of 

the EMP Commission’s recommendations been codified in statute? 

Just do those first. And then I have one more followup. 

Mr. CURRIE. Sure. No, I am not aware of any law that requires 

DHS to implement the recommendations. 

Senator CARPER. Have any of the Commission’s recommendations 

been codified in statute yet? 

Mr. CURRIE. Not that we have seen. 

Senator CARPER. OK. Last question: Did the EMP Commission 

recommend that any other department or agency take action? 

Mr. CURRIE. Absolutely. The Department of Energy was a big 

part of the EMP Commission report, too, and they were to work either independently or with DHS to implement the recommendations, too. And that is the same structure for protecting critical infrastructure across the country. DHS has the lead in coordinating, 

and they work with the sector-specific agency. For energy, it is 

DOE. But that applies to all sectors, too. So it is a partnership. 

Senator CARPER. OK. I want to, if I could just in a closing statement, thank each of you for coming today, for your preparation, 

and for your responses to questions. 

In the last Congress—I call him the wingman while I was 

chairing this Committee, was Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Dr. 

Coburn, a House Member, a physician, a successful business person, and a valued member of this Committee and this body. And 

we were encouraged at one point in time—at several points in time 

in the last Congress to hold hearings and to delve deeper into this 

issue. And I recall him as a Congressman, he is one of those persons who—for those of you who know him—was already free to 
39 

speak his mind. And one of our colleagues used to say of Tom, 

whom I love dearly, he would say, ‘‘Dr. Coburn is sometimes mistaken but never uncertain.’’ That is what he would always say. But 

he was oftentimes right. 

We once had a conversation about this issue. I think he described 

this issue as ‘‘hokum.’’ That is a word we sometimes use in Delaware. Again, going back to the characterization one of our colleagues used to have of Tom, I do not know if this is hokum or not. 

I think we have some pretty smart people here that are before us 

and who have the interests of our Nation at heart, have brought 

their concerns to us, and we should certainly be attentive to those. 

I know this is an issue that is especially important to our Chairman, so it is sure to get some attention. But I know just about 

enough to be dangerous on this subject, and I did not know that 

much before we started planning for this hearing, so I have learned 

a bit, and I have more to learn. 

But among other things, I know a little bit about cyber attacks. 

I know a little bit about cybersecurity. I know a little bit about 

data breaches. In fact, I have learned a lot. I remember a couple 

years ago when there was an article several years ago in the press 

that said I was the expert in the Senate on cybersecurity. And I 

turned to a member of my staff, and I said, ‘‘Imagine that. I am 

an expert now in cybersecurity now that I am the Chairman of the 

Committee.’’ And my staff person said, ‘‘In the land of the blind, 

the one-eyed man is king.’’ So for me not to get carried away with 

being deemed an expert in that. 

But I know a fair amount about those. I also know I am a retired 

naval flight officer (NFO), retired Navy captain, and spend a fair 

amount of time thinking about wars and being involved in one and 

worried about our homeland security and a lot of levels, including 

lone-wolf attacks—and those are not lone-wolf attacks—including 

avian influenza, Ebola. It is a wild and crazy world that we live 

in today, and we need to be able to sort of assess these risks, and 

to the extent that we have resources, people and other resources 

to push toward these risks, what we need to do is make sure that 

we are adjusting our resources that we have, can commit, are committing to the level of risk, and that we always keep that in mind. 

All right. Mr. Chairman, thanks so much for bringing this together and to all of you for joining us today. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Thank you, Senator Carper. 

I just have two quick questions. Then I will give everybody a 

chance, if you have another comment you want to make, to do that. 

First of all, does anybody on the panel think the threats from EMP 

and GMD is ‘‘hokum’’? Anybody? 

Ms. BOURGE. I just have to admit I do not know the word. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman JOHNSON. Hooey. Science fiction. Fanciful. Like not a 

problem. 

Ms. BOURGE. I would not agree that it is imaginative or movie 

scenario only. It is a definite potential threat. I just would not 

agree that it is the most vital threat against our electric infrastructure. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. It is a real threat. 
40 

Second, we were talking about one of the solutions would be basically shutdown—with early warning, shutdown. Correct? 

Ms. BOURGE. For a GMD. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Now, we have a massive solar flare, space 

weather like a Carrington Effect. You would have to shut down everything, correct? Dr. Garwin. 

Mr. GARWIN. You can wait, but we do not have the instrumentation right now to give you the information. We have to look at the 

individual transformers, listen to the noise they make, measure 

their ground currents, and in order not to shut them down unnecessarily, use the magnetometers. China has a much better display, 

deployment of National Science Foundation magnetometers than 

we have here. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But, again, that is making the decision 

based on what the extent of the solar discharge would be if it was 

massive, like a Carrington. 

Mr. GARWIN. Well, we might—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. You would have to shut it down then, correct? 

Mr. GARWIN. With no protection deployed, yes, we could and 

should do that. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And for how long? How long do these space 

weather effects—— 

Mr. GARWIN. Some of them are a few days. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Which means you would have to—because 

we do not have protection, we have not installed the capacitors—— 

Mr. GARWIN. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON [continuing]. The only solution we have right 

now, the only protection would be early warning, and on something 

massive, complete shutdown of our electrical grid to save it. 

Mr. GARWIN. Well, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, argues that you do not have to plan for a shutdown. The 

grid is so vulnerable that it will shut itself down. 

Chairman JOHNSON. That is not very comforting, and it could 

shut down for a couple years. Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make one point on 

this issue of whether this is a low-probability, high-risk problem. 

There is more than one kind of probability. I sometimes talk about 

whether you are dealing with a malignant or malevolent 

problem—a malignant problem being something that is natural 

and it may metastasize, it may be terrible, it may be awful—Ebola. 

But it is random in the sense that it is only influenced by nature. 

Whereas, a malevolent one is one where there is somebody on the 

other side actually planning to try to kill you, and you cannot really assign a probability to that. All you can do is try to understand 

their culture. A lot of people would not have thought in 1929 that 

within a decade we would be into World War II with the Nazis in 

control of Germany and the rest. 

But I want to read two sentences from an Iranian publication: 

‘‘Once you confuse the enemy communication network, you can also 

disrupt the work of the enemy command and decisionmaking center. Even worse, today when you disable a country’s military high 

command through disruption of communications, you will, in effect, 

disrupt all the affairs of that country. If the world’s industrial 
41 

countries fail to devise effective ways to defend themselves against 

dangerous electronic assaults, then they will disintegrate within a 

few years. American soldiers would not be able to find food to eat, 

nor would they be able to fire a single shot.’’ That is the Iranian 

magazine Nashriyeh-e Siasi, 17 years ago, in 1998. Their strategists have been following and analyzing General Slipchenko’s work, 

which I mentioned. That is not something to which one can assign 

a random probability. If these guys get in control, a launch under 

some circumstances could be possible. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, that was 17 years ago, and they have 

been pretty patient. And now we have a deal that I believe will 

allow them to become a nuclear power with ballistic missile technology. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And this is in their military planning and 

strategy, as well as—and I would refer everybody to your testimony. You have a number of statements from military planners in 

Russia and China and North Korea. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, fully aware of this real threat—not 

hokum. A real threat. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Yes. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Again, this is not like, ‘‘Oh, nobody has 

thought about this.’’ No, people have thought about it, and they are 

planning for it, and they are giving themselves the capability to implement it. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. And the South Koreans are not getting bogged 

down in probabilities. They are toughening their grid because they 

have North Korea to deal with. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And we have known absolutely this for decades, publicly since at least 2004 with these EMP Commissions, 

and we have done virtually nothing. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Absolutely. 

Chairman JOHNSON. When we can do something, and it does not 

cost very much—not perfect, but we can spend a few million dollars—millions. We are not talking billions. We are talking millions, 

and we could go a long way toward providing some pretty significant protection. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. 

Mr. GARWIN. I will agree with that. I disagree with Jim 

Woolsey’s characterization. It sounds like, not only 17 years ago. It 

sound like Sun-Tzu. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. It does. Sun-Tzu could have written that if he had 

known about EMP. 

Chairman JOHNSON. But he was not aware of nuclear weapons. 

Final comments, we will start with you, Ms. Bourge. 

Ms. BOURGE. I just want to remind you that we do need to look 

at these issues as separate, GMDs and EMPs. I hear a lot of 

conflation, and I understand the reason why, because of that E3 

component. But one thing I do not think was clear when we defined 

that out initially was it was defined as E3 component is similar to 

a severe GMD storm. That is not identical. That is similar. So 

there has been some disagreement, and there is a desire to have 

some research to see just how well does the GMD protections that 
42 

we do utilize in some parts of the country currently, how well do 

those actually protect against an EMP? And so I am not sure if industry would agree that by putting on the technology solution that 

is being put forth here or the ones we already utilize in some parts 

of the industry, if that would actually solve the EMP threat. 

Chairman JOHNSON. And that is fine, but let us at least protect 

ourselves from GMD in a more robust fashion where it does not 

cost very much. And, again, my proposal would actually have the 

government pay for it, and we just need cooperation. 

Ms. BOURGE. Well, we certainly—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. Trust me, now I am all about let us not 

grow the Federal Government, let us not overregulate. I mean, I 

am your ally from that one still. So, again, kind of work with us 

on this. I would appreciate it. Mr. Currie. 

Mr. CURRIE. Yes, sir. Well, as I said in my opening statement, 

I think it is really difficult to fully assess the risks of this or 

prioritize investments and security when it is not clear who has the 

lead role, and that is one of the big themes that we have 

found—is that DHS has the lead role for critical infrastructure protection, but has not identified different roles and responsibilities for 

electromagnetic threats. 

Chairman JOHNSON. So that would be something our Committee 

could potentially help define in legislation. Dr. Garwin. 

Mr. GARWIN. Let me pass right now. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Sure. Mr. McClelland. 

Mr. MCCLELLAND. Just one quick clarification. An EMP event 

and a GMD event would be events of mass destruction. The EMP 

Commission was very clear about the electronics and the transformers and the lead times associated with those systems as well 

as the other systems, the other infrastructure types that would be 

affected. A recovery would not be easy. In many cases, the generators are specifically and custom-built. They have transformers that 

are custom-built for their installation. So stockpiling those transformers and then replacing them after the effect is simply not a 

feasible solution. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Ambassador Woolsey. 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding 

this hearing and say that anything I can do in the future to help 

you in these efforts. After several years of Peter and I and others 

who are interested in this issue feeling like we are beating our 

heads against a wall, it is great to have a Chairman and a Committee that is taking us seriously. 

Chairman JOHNSON. I understand what that feels like, by the 

way. [Laughter.] 

Mr. WOOLSEY. Anyway, I just want to say thank you. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Well, again, thank you for your work 

on this. Dr. Garwin. 

Mr. GARWIN. OK. My summary is a small point, and in my analyses, E3 from a high-altitude nuclear explosion is easier to correct, 

to mitigate, than a geomagnetic storm because it is over in a 

minute or so, and you are going to shut down, generators are still 

spinning, easier to get back up. 

Chairman JOHNSON. Can you shut down quickly enough in an 

EMP, though? Doesn’t that require microseconds? 
43 

Mr. GARWIN. No. The E3 does not cause damage for seconds or 

more because it is the power that is flowing in the transformers 

that can no longer resist the voltage—— 

Chairman JOHNSON. But you need automatic trips. I mean, you 

are going to have to have some kind of detection in mind—— 

Mr. GARWIN. I agree with you, and you would have absolute certainty if you put in this warning system that I recommend, government-operated, high-altitude nuclear explosion went off, never went 

off before, and take measures to protect your system. Then milliseconds, seconds, those would be fine for protecting the transformers. Of course, other things may have been lost due to the E1 

pulse. 

Chairman JOHNSON. OK. Well, again, I just want to thank all of 

you for your time, your thoughtful testimony, your answers to my 

questions, all of our questions. I hate to call this a ‘‘first step,’’ but 

I guess we are kind of at that stage where, at least for this Committee, for the U.S. Senate, this is kind of a first step. Maybe we 

have had a number of first steps. It cannot be the last step. So I 

am going to aggressively pursue this, provide it the type of public 

attention I think it deserves, and hopefully the thoughtful evaluation so we can start moving forward. Let us do the easy things 

first, not perfect, but let us start offering and implementing some 

protections as we continue to study this, as we develop a longerterm strategy that is certainly more encompassing. 

So, with that, this hearing record will remain open for 15 days 

until August 6 at 5 p.m. for the submission of statements and questions for the record. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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