Protecting the Grid: A $4 Billion Fix for a Multi-Trillion-Dollar Risk

Imagine waking up tomorrow to a world without power. No lights. No phones. No internet. No refrigeration. Within days, grocery stores are stripped bare. Within weeks, hospitals close. Within months, millions are dead.

That isn’t science fiction. It is the very real danger of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, and it is what keeps national security expert Tommy Waller awake at night.

A Threat Hiding in Plain Sight

Waller is not given to exaggeration. A retired U.S. Marine officer who commanded 3rd Force Reconnaissance Company and later served on the U.S. Air Force’s Electromagnetic Defense Task Force, he is now President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. When I asked him what the biggest overlooked danger to America might be, he didn’t mention terrorism or cyberattacks.

“It’s EMP,” he said flatly. “It can come from two sources, human or natural. Either way, the effects could be catastrophic. And it’s a 100 percent certainty that sooner or later, the natural form of EMP – from the sun – will collapse America’s unprotected electric grid.”

Civilization’s Weakest Link

Think about how fragile our modern life really is: food supply chains, transportation, banking, health care. Every one of them depends on electricity.

“According to a report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, if the grid went down for a year, up to 90 percent of Americans would die,” Waller told me. “Before electricity, the North American landmass could support maybe 30 million people. Today we’ve got 330 million. The math is brutal.”

And unlike our ancestors, we’ve lost the skills to survive without power. “People say, ‘That’s too apocalyptic to imagine,’” Waller said. “Well, before 9/11, our nation’s leaders couldn’t imagine planes crashing into skyscrapers either.”

Lessons from the Cold War

The danger of EMP first revealed itself during Cold War nuclear tests. In the early 1960s, the United States detonated nuclear devices above the Pacific. Streetlights in Hawaii, more than 800 miles away, flickered out. Satellites in orbit also went dark.

“The Soviets ran their own tests over what is present-day Kazakhstan,” Waller said. “The blast knocked out power across a region the size of Western Europe. They picked that test site for a reason. Kazakhstan lies at about the same geomagnetic latitude and longitude as the capital of the  United States – Washington D.C. – so the Soviets could see exactly what kind of infrastructure effects they could generate with a decapitation EMP strike.”

A nuclear EMP is not one pulse but three. The first, called E1, fries unprotected electronics in an instant. An iPhone or a computer plugged into the wall is fried when the pulse couples with the power cord. The second, E2, is like natural lightning, something utilities already know how to handle. The third, E3, is the real widespread killer. It drives massive currents through the Earth itself, sending surges that destroy the high-voltage transformers that serve as the backbone of our massive electric grid.

Extra High Voltage (EHV) transformers – which are most susceptible to those ground induced currents - take years to build and are extremely difficult to transport. Losing even a few hundred at once would overwhelm global capacity.  If America loses large swaths of its transformers, the lights might stay off for a generation.

The Sun: An Unavoidable Threat

The most sobering part is that nuclear weapons are not even required. The sun poses the same danger.

In 1859, a solar storm known as the Carrington Event was so powerful it set telegraph stations on fire. In 1989, a much smaller storm knocked out Hydro-Quebec in just 90 seconds.

“Scientists agree it’s only a matter of time before another big one hits,” Waller said. “And when a massive solar storm hits, the result is the same as a nuclear EMP: nationwide transformer failure. The difference is, you can’t negotiate with the sun.”

The Fix That’s Sitting on the Shelf

If this all sounds like a doomsday scenario, there is at least one hopeful twist. We can do something about it.

“The problem is fixable,” Waller emphasized. “There is proven technology that can block the dangerous currents before they destroy transformers. These devices have been tested for more than a decade. They work.”

The price tag to harden the U.S. grid against the ground induced currents from solar weather and EMP? About $4 billion, or roughly a third of one percent of the most recent federal infrastructure bill.

According to global insurance experts, our nation already suffers about $10 billion in economic loss from solar weather each year. “So, for a tiny fraction of the federal budget, we could prevent these annual economic losses and – most importantly – avert a catastrophe that would otherwise kill millions,” Waller said.

Why Nothing Has Been Done

If the fix is ready, why hasn’t it happened? Waller doesn’t mince words.

“The problem isn’t the science. It’s the government bureaucracy,” he said. “Administrations of both parties have passed executive orders meant to protect against solar weather (Obama) and nuclear EMP (Trump). Yet during the Biden Administration, the government dumped billions into renewables and other projects while leaving the grid exposed to the EMP threat. Meanwhile, Russia, China, North Korea, and even Iran include EMP in their war doctrines. Other countries are already deploying protective measures. We’re standing still.”

The Path Forward

The solution, Waller argues, is straightforward. Utilities must survey their transformers. Protective blocking devices should be installed where needed. The federal government can demand it and state legislatures can also pass laws to require it.

“This isn’t something that takes decades,” he said. “We could harden the grid against the solar weather threat in just a few years if we decided to act.”

And he left with one final warning: “A civilization built on electricity cannot gamble with its grid. The natural form of EMP, from the sun, is guaranteed to hit us again. The man-made form is already in adversaries’ playbooks. The threat is real, the solution is affordable, and the only question is whether we’ll act before it’s too late.”