EMP, Electric Magnetic Pulse (WEP)
So what the heck is that?
Any COD players out there? Yall remember this sucker right? It was literally so OP. Especially in a battlefield that heavily relied on machinery for warfare--once you triggered an EMP you literally left the enemy vulnerable.
If yall still can't picture it, try this for size.
You want to build one? The supplies aren't that difficult to fetch: How do I make a small EMP device at home that can destroy a device the size of a CCTV camera?
Stemming away from theoretical, imaginative usages of EMPs, the idea of an EMP is quite practical, scary, and very real. China and Russia have been improving the technology well after the Cold War.
”In the absence of a peer rival following the end of the Cold War, DoD failed to pursue a new generation of capabilities that are needed to maintain its EMS operational superiority.
‘This pause provided China, Russia, and other rivals with an opportunity to produce systems that target vulnerabilities in sensor and communication networks the U.S. military has come to depend on.
It that concludes that ‘failed to keep pace’ is an appropriate description of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) investments in EMS warfare capabilities over the last generation.’
The White House Is Preparing for a Chinese EMP Attack
The author's closest colleagues states:
It is counterintuitive to believe that the Chinese would ever launch an EMP attack upon Taiwan or the United States for that matter. My closest colleagues believe that the Chinese would not destroy the power grid of a country that they own the country’s debt.
The author disagrees and so I do, and here is why:
In a MarketWatch article titled, "America has a secret weapon to ensure economic power"
The Dollar's global currency monopoly coupled with its devaluation function (post 2008) poses a greater economic weapon than that of China's ownership of U.S treasury bond. The article states:
"The weaker dollar also improves America’s external position, as U.S. foreign investments and overseas income gain in value.
The major benefit relates to debt owned by foreigners. Foreign investors, China, Japan and “others,” principally oil exporting nations, Asian central banks or sovereign wealth funds, hold about 35% to 40% of America’s $16 trillion in government debt.
As almost all of this debt is denominated in dollars, devaluation reduces the value of its outstanding debt, making it easier for the U.S. to service its obligations."
"Foreign investors, including China and Japan, which have around $2 trillion invested in U.S. government bonds, face a significant loss of their national savings. Between 2008 and 2012, the depreciation in the U.S. dollar resulted in a loss of more than $600 billion for foreign creditors."
So China does not have the economic leverage that many speculate it has. Therefore, China can take a go at any Western power with its productive, forward thinking, and innovating military power. "An integral part of Chinese military doctrine since decades has been denial of information, strategic deception and achievement of psychological surprise" The Chinese are one forward thinking people, their PLA principles states, "We fight our way, you fight your way." And it is precisely the way for unconventional warfare that they are aiming towards defining.
In fact you can read all about it in China's Military Doctrine and Strategy: Continuity with Change by Monika Chansoria
During a US Senate Armed Services Committee testimony on 27 January 2009, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, identified the threat of Chinese military build-up by stating, “The areas of greatest concern are Chinese investments
and growing capabilities in cyber and antisatellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, submarines and ballistic missiles.”
[China's] new technologies sought [to] include the revolutionary technologies of unconventional warfare, electronic warfare, information warfare and intercontinental missiles. “Information and knowledge have changed the previous practice of estimating military strength by merely calculating the number of armoured divisions, airborne combined troops and aircraft carrier fighting groups. At present, it is also necessary to calculate invisible
strengths, like computational ability, communication capacity, reliability, realtime reconnaissance ability and so on.”61 These elements of China’s emerging doctrine are designed to be effective in regional wars under high-tech conditions, which Chinese strategists have focused on as a type of war China is likely to face in any near-term conflict, and also against information-based wars that are unconstrained by geographic regions or territories.
We no longer live under this Industrial production economy, the likes of which allowed for many Americans to get out of the Great Depression through World War II. The paradigm shift now, is under this information, service based economy. Unconventional warfare like tracking, hacking, information, disrupting are the future pillars by which conventional warfare will be fought. To quote Sun Tsu:
It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.