Frank Gaffney: North Korea Could Take Out Entire U.S. Electrical Power Grid

On Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow to discuss dictator Kim Jong-un’s unwelcome contribution to this year’s Fourth of July fireworks: the test launch of what may be North Korea’s first true intercontinental ballistic missile.

“It’s unprecedented in the sense that it’s performed the feat of demonstrating the capacity to deliver a payload over longer range than ever before,” Gaffney said. “This missile flew for about 40 minutes. In this particular case, they chose to fly it almost directly straight up, and then pretty much straight back down.

“It went to about 2100 kilometers, we’re told, perhaps somewhat longer. The length of time and the amount of distance covered suggest that if the trajectory were flatter, it would reach intercontinental ranges, at least to Alaska and perhaps beyond in the continental United States.”

“In any event, what it really indicates is that this is a regime that intends to continue to refine, and perfect, and expand the capacity to threaten the United States, which is bad enough even without this long-range missile,” he continued.

“As we’ve discussed before, one of the things that worries me the most about the North Koreans is they have been beavering away at, it appears, a technique called electromagnetic pulse attacks.”

Gaffney explained that such attacks do not require precision targeting, miniaturized nuclear warheads, or reentry shielding, which seem to be areas where North Korean technology remains lacking. Instead, an EMP attack could be carried out with “a single nuclear weapon, perhaps not even a very sophisticated one” detonated in orbit somewhere over North America.

“They could conceivably take down the electric grid of the United States, and with it our country,” he warned. “That’s the worrying threat to me ..."

>> I wonder what steps the Trump administration is taking - if any - to alleviate this major threat to our nation? <<

Significant steps? I doubt that there are any.

It seems to me that there’s nobody other than Speaker Gingrich who not only (1) understands the triple threat, but who also (2) is prominent on the national stage.

Therefore somebody might say, “Let’s have Gingrich head up a big anti-EMP initiative.”

Yet if Pres. Trump should appoint Gingrich to such a job, that choice would probably doom the exercise since Gingrich is so widely disliked. He just doesn’t seem to be the kind of leader who is going to “bring people together” — whereas we seriously need a bi-partisan effort.

What about Frank Gaffney, Roscoe Bartlett and/or Jim Woolsey? They clearly are admirable experts in the EMP arena, but they have no real pizazz. They’ve been warning about the EMP threat for years, but almost nobody has paid them much attention — and IMHO, almost nobody’s likely to pay them attention in the future.

Bottom Line:

The outlook remains gloomy.

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