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Background

 The United States critical national infrastructure faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and natural EMP from a solar superstorm. During the Cold War, the U.S. was primarily concerned about a high altitude nuclear-weapon generated EMP attack as a tactic by which the Soviet Union could suppress the U.S. national command authority and U.S. strategic forces’ ability to respond to a nuclear attack, and thus destroy the U.S. deterrence value of assured nuclear retaliation. Within the last decade, newly-nuclear armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability to deploy and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the U.S. Such an attack would give North Korea and countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to critical national infrastructures of the United States itself as a viable country and to the survival of a majority of its population.