Juno News - April 04, 2019


The secret weapon that could destroy North America

Topics
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threat
Mentioned
Pulse Attack Donald Trump Justin Trudeau
Trudeau's carbon tax ＂rebate＂ doesn't make any sense Australia to jail social media executives over user content

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

184.14

Word count

1,735

Sentence count

89

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Donald Trump signed an executive order on EMPs, electromagnetic pulse warfare, which could be a good thing for our national security. But what would happen if an electromagnetic pulse attack on our electrical grid were to happen? What would it do to our infrastructure? And who could be the culprit?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Great news on the national security front here in Canada, in fact all across North America,
00:00:10.300 for an issue not furthered here in this country, but put forward by the American president
00:00:15.200 just last week, Donald Trump signing an executive order on EMPs, Electromagnetic Pulse Warfare.
00:00:23.460 This is something a lot of people have been calling for for a while now, including yours truly.
00:00:27.640 I wrote a book on that, released in 2017, called Pulse Attack, the real story behind the secret weapon that can destroy North America.
00:00:36.280 So what is this issue, before we get into why this executive order is a good thing?
00:00:40.820 Well, I first seriously heard about the issue a few years ago when I sat down with a gentleman who had run the CIA under the Bill Clinton years,
00:00:47.840 and we were talking about a different issue, the Iran deal, but at the end of that conversation he said,
00:00:52.260 Hey, do you have a moment? I want to talk to you about the EMP issue, something that I'm trying to raise awareness for.
00:00:57.080 Now, I had heard about EMPs just a little bit here and there, it pops up in science fiction and video games just a bit,
00:01:04.300 and it seemed, quite frankly to me, like something like a conspiracy theory, or I wasn't sure, people just making blogs about it here and there.
00:01:11.560 As I studied the issue further, though, and talked to very senior people, I realized how this was such an underreported issue,
00:01:18.540 and it is stranger than fiction, stranger and more worrisome and more troublesome than those fictional representations made it out to be.
00:01:26.800 To make a long story short, an electromagnetic pulse is the consequence of a nuclear detonation that happens atmospherically, up in the sky,
00:01:36.840 and it sends out these gamma rays that, if they get into electronics and technology below them,
00:01:43.400 can short-circuit them, can fry them, can blow them up.
00:01:47.420 Now, the United States and the Soviets first became aware of this at the end of the Second World War and during the Cold War.
00:01:53.500 They were doing a whole bunch of nuclear tests, and as they were doing these tests, up in the sky,
00:01:58.100 they found that down below them, in places like Hawaii or Kazakhstan, parts of the electric grid went down.
00:02:04.460 And they thought, whoa, we have a situation on our hands here.
00:02:08.120 We didn't expect this would be one of the consequences, one of the side effects of our nuclear development.
00:02:14.640 So they wanted to learn more about it, but in 1963, JFK introduced the partial test bans, the Partial Test Ban Treaty,
00:02:21.880 and what that did was ban, among other things, atmospheric testings.
00:02:25.500 Now, this was good news in terms of slowing down the Cold War and the arms race,
00:02:29.560 getting people to not want to collect nuclear weapons and develop them as much as before,
00:02:33.900 but the downside from it is scientists could no longer do research on EMP.
00:02:38.620 They could no longer do primary source material, collect that primary source material, and do research on it.
00:02:44.420 So a lid was brought down on the topic, on the issue.
00:02:48.440 People just left it really to side researchers here and there, but they didn't get a lot of advances on it.
00:02:54.060 A lot of the original material and technology and reports they were working on were from a long time ago.
00:03:00.380 Fast forward to several decades, and there are a lot of nefarious actors that are still interested in this technology,
00:03:06.540 despite those bans on testing.
00:03:08.920 We already know that this is in the nuclear and military strategies of China, of Russia,
00:03:14.460 and we also know North Korea is very interested in it.
00:03:17.940 In fact, the other year after they did their six nuclear tests, they released a statement saying,
00:03:23.500 it's so great we're now developing our nuclear program and we can also continue with the idea of EMP, part of our strategic vision.
00:03:31.000 Whoa, hold on, I said when I saw this announcement.
00:03:33.740 This is the first time one country has threatened to release an electromagnetic pulse attack on the world,
00:03:39.920 on whatever target they want to have.
00:03:41.820 This is not a good situation at all.
00:03:43.860 Well, what would happen if there was an EMP attack on Canada or on the United States?
00:03:49.360 Well, the worst case scenario is an incredibly troubling one.
00:03:53.420 If the power grid is taken down, which could happen,
00:03:56.920 if the electrical wires are fried, if massive, massive amounts of electricity go through them,
00:04:02.220 go to the transformer stations, damage them, melt them down, blow them up,
00:04:06.260 we could be without power for a very long time, not just days, but weeks, or months, maybe even years.
00:04:14.940 And we live in something called an electronic civilization,
00:04:18.000 where the whole basic facts of the way we live now is structured around using electricity,
00:04:24.200 being able to live in tall towers and tall buildings, being able to commute, drive into the cities,
00:04:28.900 our water filtration systems, all of that, all of our regional food hubs,
00:04:33.280 how we feed ourselves, it's all built around electronically fueled components and a way of life.
00:04:39.520 So our current way of life would cease to be.
00:04:43.660 We would go back to how we lived in the early parts of the 19th century.
00:04:47.740 So is this thing really possible?
00:04:49.260 Could it cause damage like that?
00:04:51.120 Well, there isn't just man-made EMPs, these weapons,
00:04:53.860 there's also naturally occurring EMPs, otherwise known as solar flares.
00:04:58.380 NASA predicts there's about a 10% chance of one of these occurring every decade.
00:05:02.260 Now 10% sounds a little low, but compared to your odds for winning the lottery or having your house burned down,
00:05:08.900 that's actually incredibly high, and we still buy lottery tickets and we still get home insurance.
00:05:13.600 10% incredibly worrisome.
00:05:15.880 Well, has something like that ever happened to the Earth before?
00:05:18.020 Yes, it actually has.
00:05:19.380 In 1859, something called the Carrington Event struck Earth,
00:05:22.760 a very, very heavy solar flare getting its way into the atmosphere,
00:05:26.600 and it actually blew up a lot of the electronics on Earth.
00:05:30.580 The only thing is it was 1859, and there weren't that many electronics.
00:05:34.400 There were telegraphs, and there was the transatlantic cable.
00:05:37.420 They were damaged, and that's about it.
00:05:40.140 What would happen if something like that hit us now?
00:05:43.460 Either from a solar flare or from a nefarious actor like North Korea? 0.97
00:05:47.660 We would be in big trouble.
00:05:49.400 Such big trouble that after it happened and society had basically collapsed,
00:05:54.160 people would say, why didn't we do anything to prevent it?
00:05:57.360 And that's what a lot of researchers and advocates on this issue are now calling for.
00:06:02.800 So what do we do?
00:06:04.320 Well, part of the challenge is that because we don't have that primary research,
00:06:08.720 we're a little uncertain on exactly how things would happen,
00:06:12.340 how bad it would be, and what you can do to prevent it.
00:06:15.560 But it's largely believed that one of the things we need to do is look into our utilities grids,
00:06:20.300 into our power grid, and replace the parts, as they need replacing,
00:06:24.640 with more resilient parts, EMP-compliant parts.
00:06:28.300 Basically, very elaborate surge protectors,
00:06:30.840 the sort of stuff we already have on our home electronics to deal with lightning strikes.
00:06:34.980 A lot of estimates show it's really not that expensive,
00:06:38.440 it's really not going to take all that much effort and energy.
00:06:41.640 So we have the risk of a black swan event,
00:06:44.620 something that's basically societal collapse from one rogue state inflicting this upon North America,
00:06:51.300 but it's actually solved in a relatively boring way, in a boring regulatory way.
00:06:56.860 Donald Trump's executive order calls for more study,
00:06:59.940 it calls for an identification of critical infrastructure and assets that are at risk,
00:07:04.320 and then calls for a plan to look at how to mitigate that,
00:07:07.700 and to make it more resilient.
00:07:08.940 An excellent decision, something that needs to be done in Canada to make progress on that.
00:07:14.360 The good news, and why this is good for Canada,
00:07:17.020 is that if the U.S. electricity grid is protected,
00:07:19.580 the Canadian grid is somewhat protected as well.
00:07:22.040 Because we don't actually run east-west with our electricity grids,
00:07:25.400 we run north-south.
00:07:27.020 You've got the western seaboard, the eastern seaboard.
00:07:29.640 When there's a big blackout in Toronto and Montreal and other parts of Canada over a decade ago,
00:07:35.460 well, that also happened in upstate New York, because we were all along the same lines.
00:07:39.720 So we're all in this together.
00:07:41.380 Great news that Trump has done that executive order.
00:07:43.760 We're going to have to pay attention to the follow-through, hope it gets implemented well,
00:07:47.580 and let's call for something here in Canada as well.
00:07:50.820 There are a number of people who are interested in seeing this in Canadian politics.
00:07:54.500 It's a non-partisan issue.
00:07:56.380 Justin Trudeau himself, he called for a look at critical infrastructure to make sure it's resilient.
00:08:01.080 When I was researching my book, I asked the public safety office and others if that includes EMP.
00:08:06.920 They didn't really specify.
00:08:08.600 The Canadian government is unfortunately not that aware of the issue,
00:08:12.060 filed many access to information requests, talked to experts,
00:08:15.320 talked to the one, the one public servant who is tasked with looking into solar flare issues,
00:08:20.120 and they're paying attention.
00:08:22.080 They're just not paying attention enough.
00:08:24.560 But the good news, there is progress happening on this issue.
00:08:28.300 As I said, I go into detail on all aspects of this story.
00:08:32.700 The history of it, the background, the people, the players,
00:08:36.420 what countries like North Korea are doing, and what Canada should do.
00:08:39.840 All of that in my 2017 book, Pulse Attack,
00:08:42.720 the real story behind the secret weapon that can destroy North America.
00:08:46.420 It's still available up at Amazon.
00:08:58.300 And in your 2018 book, Pulse Attack,
00:09:01.180 I'll do it in the description.
00:09:02.100 You're the extremists' mission.
00:09:03.660 I'm the bank, which I'm going to tell from you.
00:09:05.820 If you're a nonLER's AoC. 0.94
00:09:07.820 You're the expert city that the providers are doing this for you,
00:09:10.060 the warranty company.
00:09:10.700 It doesn't bring the blessings because of the peace and lights.
00:09:13.100 You don't appoint a front of the person who is the sole.
00:09:15.220 You don't appoint a previous number of people.
00:09:17.340 You don't equest that spaceship for you.
00:09:20.220 You don't enlightest any food.
00:09:22.540 You're the regular counsel.
00:09:23.900 You don't wait.
00:09:24.460 You're the best way.