On February 14, 2021, a once-in-a-few-year snowstorm hit Texas in the United States, causing the state to experience extreme cold weather that had not been seen in decades.
The next day, texas sirens sounded, the entire power system was nearly paralyzed in one day, and the self-proclaimed "lighthouse of the world" of the United States suddenly became pitch black.
It didn't take long for Vincent Lepp, executive director of the U.S. National and Homeland Security Task Force, to claim that a single attack on china's electromagnetic pulse bombs could paralyze the United States.
The Texas blackout and Vincent Lepp's so-called "China threat theory" are two unrelated things, but why did Vincent Lepp link these two things? What kind of weapon is an electromagnetic pulse bomb?
Principle and practical application of electromagnetic pulse bomb
Readers and friends may feel that the electromagnetic pulse bomb is full of science fiction colors, a virtual weapon that exists in science fiction, but in fact, the electromagnetic pulse bomb has long been available.
Moreover, it was the United States that first invented the electromagnetic pulse bomb and applied it to actual combat.
As early as 1962, the U.S. military conducted a high-altitude nuclear explosion test on a small island in the Pacific Ocean, and the experiment went very smoothly, but unexpectedly, the power supply system in the Hawaii area 1400 kilometers away was instantly paralyzed, and all the lightning protection devices were even burned.
The U.S. military investigation found that the main cause of the power collapse in the Hawaii region was caused by the electromagnetic pulse effect caused by the high-energy microwave released by the nuclear explosion.
Inspired by the United States scientists, they began to develop weapons of destruction using electromagnetic pulses.
In the 1970s, the development of electronic informatization in all walks of life in the world was very rapid, which also provided theoretical support for the birth of electromagnetic pulse weapons.
At the end of the 1980s, the technology related to electromagnetic pulse bombs was gradually improved; in the 1990s, electromagnetic pulse bombs went from the laboratory to the battlefield and became a new weapon in war.
The most critical part of the electromagnetic pulse bomb is a sophisticated "radio wave transmitter", which can emit powerful high-power microwaves in a very short period of time, which can penetrate buildings, penetrate civil air defense projects, and generate induced currents with circuits on electronic devices, destroying all electronic components.
Take a simple example - usually we charge the mobile phone, we need to use the appropriate current to be able to, if the current is too large, it will burn out the semiconductor chip inside the mobile phone.
The working principle of the electromagnetic pulse bomb is to apply overloaded energy to precision electronic devices such as mobile phone chips, causing electronic devices to collapse.
With the development of electronic technology, the world's high-tech products are embedded with highly integrated chips, such as computers, cars, and even satellites, air defense systems, are inseparable from the role of chips. Chips are typical electronic devices, and as long as they are hit by electromagnetic pulse bombs, these so-called "advanced" devices will be paralyzed in an instant.
Therefore, the emergence of electromagnetic pulse bombs has epoch-making significance, and it can completely turn the tide of war in an instant.
For example, during the first Gulf War in 1991, the US military applied electromagnetic pulse bombs to actual combat for the first time - the US military's E-8 "Union Star" aircraft dropped the first electromagnetic pulse bomb in the history of human warfare, which led to the instant paralysis of the command system of a certain unit of the Iraqi Air Force at that time.
(Schematic diagram of electromagnetic pulse disturbance)
Although it was only against a small chain of command, the repeated attacks were enough to make Iraq miserable.
For example, in the Kosovo War in 1993, the US military once again used electromagnetic pulse bombs, which paralyzed the communication system in the eastern part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for a full three hours, making the ground troops of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia instantly become "blind."
In 1996, a US Air Force laboratory developed an electromagnetic pulse cruise missile, which can accurately strike any target within 10 kilometers.
Five years later, the U.S. Army will study the element of a new electromagnetic pulse bomb and write it into the "Operational Outline", which fully demonstrates the importance that the US military attaches to electromagnetic pulse bombs.
U.S. Navy Operations Secretary Gen. Ralph Head of Operations once said: "Electromagnetic pulse bombs will be revolutionary weapons in future wars, and the United States must not miss it." ”
Since then, the US military has invested a lot of effort in the research of electromagnetic pulse bombs.
The power of the electromagnetic pulse bomb has been indispensable to the dominance of the United States in wars since the 1990s - it has allowed the US military to dominate the electromagnetic environment, and the US military can ignore the enemy's chain of command.
Not to be left behind, Russia also successfully developed an electromagnetic pulse bomb in 1998, and since then, China, Japan and other countries have also carried out research on electromagnetic pulse bombs.
But, then again, can a single Chinese electromagnetic pulse bomb attack completely paralyze the United States?
In fact, on closer inspection, Vincent Lepp's "China threat theory" is untenable for the following two reasons.
First, the progress of research on China's electromagnetic pulse bomb has never been disclosed, and what Vincent Lepp said is obviously an unwarranted speculation that lacks evidence and is simply not credible.
Second, from a global perspective, electromagnetic pulse bomb technology is actually very immature, and the reason for this is, in short, that it is subject to the bottleneck of modern physics - existing physical theories cannot support the large-scale application of electromagnetic pulse bombs.
Therefore, paralyzing the entire United States is tantamount to alarmism.
In the example of the application of electromagnetic pulse bombs listed above, the explosion range or target of the electromagnetic pulse bomb can only be limited to a small area, such as a television station.
Even in the Gulf War, the US military successfully applied electromagnetic bombs, but the scope of its power is extremely limited, and there are not a few incidents in various countries that have caused serious consequences because of the immaturity of electromagnetic pulse technology.
The North American air defense computer of the United States once caused a false trigger due to the military's electromagnetic pulse experiment, thus issuing a wrong emergency alarm, causing several false alarms and social panic.
Even as early as 1982, electromagnetic pulse weapons caused serious accidents to the British army.
At that time, during the Battle of the Falklands between Britain and Argentina, the British destroyer HMS Sheffield had ventured to use electromagnetic pulse weapons.
However, after use, the ship's satellite communications and radar systems were subjected to electromagnetic interference.
(USS Sheffield)
In the course of the operation, the British Navy, in communication with its superiors, turned on satellite communication and turned off the alert radar system, resulting in the radar system failing to detect torpedoes fired from the direction of Argentina, and finally the British Destroyer Sheffield was hit.
It can be seen that the development of electromagnetic pulse bombs is still a long road.
It is also nonsense that China's electromagnetic pulse bomb can "paralyze the United States" with a single attack.
So what did Vincent Lepp mean when he said this?
If you think about it, this is probably inseparable from the fragile power system in the United States.
The political context of America's fragile power system and "political polarization."
In mid-February 2021, the U.S. state of Texas was hit by blizzards, and there was extreme cold weather that had not been seen in decades.
The entire Texas power system continued to be overloaded, and after dozens of days of overload work, the Texas power grid finally collapsed, followed by successive power outages and insufficient power supply.
On Feb. 15, the Texas Energy Department issued an energy alert, and since then, Texas has taken turns with power outages across the state.
Just three days later, 4.5 million users across Texas suffered a power outage.
(It's pitch black in Texas)
And Vincent Lepp wants to use the "Chinese electromagnetic pulse bomb" to knock the US government - updating the power system is an urgent matter!
In fact, the United States was the first country in the world to adapt the power system to civilian use, and as early as the 1890s, power facilities have blossomed everywhere in the United States.
However, after entering the 1970s, due to rising fossil fuel prices, environmental legislation, and the prevalence of environmentalism, the renewal of the U.S. power system came to a standstill, and old power facilities and power grids often had power outages.
States with better revenues will find ways to update their power systems, but states with less optimistic revenues cannot afford to support the costs of power system updates, so they can only perform simple maintenance.
In the 1960s, after the oil crisis broke out, the price of oil in the United States rose sharply, which led many American power companies to replace oil-burning steam units with coal-burning or dual-fuel combustion equipment.
However, after this replacement, the power grid systems of the us states are no longer updated, and they are responsible for simple repair and maintenance work.
Moreover, the U.S. power system is not just a problem of aging facilities.
In the United States, the type of energy used to generate electricity is usually affected by the energy supply situation and varies from region to region, which also causes the power supply networks of the states in the United States to be independently governed, and they cannot help each other if they have problems.
For example, most of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest of the United States comes from large hydropower projects owned by the federal government; the coal-producing state represented by Ohio is the region with the highest concentration of coal users in the country, and Texas, which is hit by blizzards, uses natural gas to generate electricity.
This shows how fragmented the power system in the United States is, and a state's power system fails without external support.
Like Texas, it can only wait for the blizzard to stop and the temperature to warm up before the power system automatically recovers.
Despite such a severe power crisis in Texas, the U.S. government still has no idea of updating its power facilities.
Vincent Lepp is worried about this, and he doesn't want the next blizzard to follow in the footsteps of Texas.
Perhaps some readers and friends will wonder why the US government is so indifferent to domestic infrastructure construction.
In fact, the inaction of the US government is closely related to the "political polarization" of the US government.
The concrete embodiment of "political polarization" is the continuous "internal friction" between the two parties in the US political arena, the serious tearing of civil society, and the gradual decline of the economy into recession, which has led to a large increase in unemployment.
Since President Clinton, the rise to power of every new president in the United States has not only not eased the contradictions between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, but has expanded the differences between the two parties.
The legislative impasse caused by "political polarization" has seriously damaged the efficiency of public services, and under the highly "polarized" system of politics, bills and policies have become a means for the people and the communist party to compete for the rights of political parties and obtain the interests of political parties.
Thus, the resulting serious legislative impasse – the "power system" is the victim.
Updating the power system is a costly project that makes it difficult for the two parties representing different interests to reach a consensus — the Republican Party accuses the Democratic Party of being overstretched and refuses to update the power system; the Democratic Party accuses the Republican Party of "sucking blood" from ordinary people, even refusing to update the infrastructure.
Such a thing is simply impossible in China, which is known as the "infrastructure demon", because China has a superior system of democratic centralism.
The superiority of the Chinese system lies in the fact that it truly takes the interests of the broad masses of the people as the supreme interest and truly maximizes the people and realizes the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation through the way of people's democratic centralism.
Therefore, the policies formulated by the mainland government on this basis can also take into account the interests of the broadest masses of the people and the long-term development of the country.
The original intention of the design of the two-party system in the United States was to balance the two parties through mutual restraint and balance, so that the policy could be fully discussed and the decisions made by the government could be optimized to the greatest extent.
However, in order to gain votes, the two parties put the interests of political parties above the public interest, which has a considerable adverse impact on American politics and society.
As mentioned in this article, Vincent Lepp strongly advocated nuclear power generation, but the growing problem of "political polarization" prevented his ideas from being implemented nationwide.
It can be seen that Vincent Lepp is more interested in using the sensational "China threat theory" to make the two parties understand that there is no delay in "updating the power system".
In this way, Vincent Lepp's words are obviously "drunkards do not mean to drink" - on the surface, China's electromagnetic pulse bombs are powerful, but in fact, the US power system is too old and needs to be updated.
But why did Vincent Lepp have to take China with him?
In fact, this is the so-called "political correctness" in American society, and many American politicians will deliberately bring China with them when they make political arguments in order to unite the increasingly divided society in the country.
They see China's rise as a threat, so that even the sharpest internal contradictions among the people are less important than China' external "enemy."
The China Threat Theory
In recent years, with the rapid development of China's economy and the rapid improvement of its comprehensive national strength, China's role in international affairs has become increasingly obvious.
In this context, some foreign scholars have begun to turn their research attention to the huge ideological differences between China and the West, and to hype up the "China threat". This argument is widely promoted in the United States by republican-dominated right-wing forces.
In some countries or political parties in Europe and the United States, the "China threat theory" is even carefully divided into a number of sub-categories, including the "political threat theory" and the "military threat theory".
After the snow disaster in Texas, US politician Vincent Lepp accused China of possessing electromagnetic pulse weapons that paralyzed the United States, which is a concrete and vivid manifestation of the "military threat theory".
When these far-right AMERICAN politicians express their political views, if they do not involve China, they are as if they are Americans in vain.
In fact, as early as 2011, the Pew Global Attitude Project in the United States conducted a national image survey for more than 20 countries such as the United States. The survey results show that expectations that China will later replace the United States as the "world's leading superpower" are widespread.
In recent years, with the continuous strengthening of China's national strength, a new round of "China threat theory" has struck strongly.
It is worth noting that the "China threat theory" in the past was more of an accusatory, repressive, and critical nature.
The new round of "China threat theory" has the meaning of "China's rise theory", the essence of which is that today's China has the strength to "threaten" other Western countries, and makes Western countries led by the United States feel uneasy.
For example, a series of trade frictions between China and the United States, such as tariff disputes and sanctions against ZTE, are all realistic reflections of the economic field when the United States responds to the "China threat theory".
In the US military field, Vincent Lepp's remarks are exactly what US far-right politicians like, and whether China can completely paralyze the US power system with the help of electromagnetic pulse bombs is not what US politicians really care about, but as long as this matter is related to China, then this matter must be taken seriously.
Resources:
"Electromagnetic Bomb Gradually Emerging" Xu Yulong Electronic World
The Future Killer: Electromagnetic Pulse Weapons, Military Digest
"A Brief Analysis of the Western "China Threat Theory" Appeal to Fear Strategy and Response" Li Yu, International Communication Planning Bureau of China Central Radio and Television Corporation