[This is a rush, unofficial transcript provided by National Security Reports.]

Transcription

1 National Defense Industrial Association, Air Force Association and Reserve Officers Association Capitol Hill Breakfast Forum with Representative Trent Franks (R-Az.), on Electromagnetic Pulse and Nuclear Threats, Missile Defense Issues and Infrastructure Protection. (For additional information on NDIA/AFA/ROA seminars contact Peter Huessy at [This is a rush, unofficial transcript provided by National Security Reports.] MR. PETER HUESSY: Thank you all for being here this week. This is our third breakfast and tomorrow, of course, we have our dear friend Uzi Rubin from Israel. And next week we have a luncheon that the Marshall Institute is hosting along with us, with Barry Blechman and Bob Butterworth. And they re going to talk about the value of nuclear weapons in American security policy. It s not going to be so much a debate as a discussion. And then in the last week of July we have our friends from NNDO who are going to talk about deterring nuclear terrorism, and also the worldwide effort that they have in place to detect nuclear attacks. And then on the 31st, the last breakfast for the summer, we have General Kowalski from Global Strike Command. And then in September on the 18 th, Keith Payne will talk about his new publication on minimum deterrence. And we will have a presentation on China and cyber security and cyber warfare. We re also doing an event in Bloomington, Indiana on the cooperation between the SLBM and ICBM, the Air Force and Navy, on strategic systems. That will be hosted by Admiral Benedict and General Harencak, along with Senator Coates. And I want to thank my friend Jim Dovall (ph) from Senator Coates office for helping on that. And we tentatively have for the week before Veterans Day, our third triad conference in Kings Bay in Georgia, where I am going to get blue suited Air Force guys with four stars standing on the deck of a Trident submarine. I had Navy guys up at Minot standing in front of a B-52 bomber. We are honored today to have one of our dear friends and colleagues, Trent Franks, from Arizona. Trent, as you know, is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. He is also a member of the Republican Study Committee. He is chairman of the EMP Caucus, chairman of the Ballistic Missile Defense Caucus. And in the interest of time, Trent, I thought I would just have you come up here and speak to us now. I think the amazing progress that Trent has made last year I think we had 18 members of the EMP Caucus and now we have over 50 or are exactly at 50, which is a

2 tremendous achievement. So with that said, Trent, I want to thank you for coming here to speak with us with ROA and NDIA and AFA as our sponsors. I want to thank you for coming here. Would you give a warm welcome to our good friend, Trent Franks from Arizona? (Applause). REP. TRENT FRANKS: Well thank you, Peter. You know I know you re always supposed to say something sort of cute when you respond to an introduction, but you know, Peter has been such a sweet friend for a long time and he always overdoes it. But I do appreciate it so much. And I appreciate all of you. You know, I think it was T.S. Eliot who said, The growing of the world is partly dependent upon unhistoric acts. And that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who live faithfully a hidden life and who now rest in unvisited tombs. Now I m not suggesting you re resting in unvisited tombs, but I am saying sometimes that I see so many of you out there that are doing amazing work and that you don t stand before people and speak all the time and that you don t see your name in the paper. Let me suggest to you that that s more of a blessing than you realize. But I know that a lot of you do what you do simply because you care about the country. You care about the cause of human freedom. And you are indeed, as I say many times, that invisible line of freedom in the world. And I can t express to you how much I honor what you do and who you are. And I appreciate getting to speak to you. I know that practically everyone in this room, in their own area of exoteric knowledge, will be way ahead of anything I m going to say here today. So I go ahead and warn you of that ahead of time and I hope you ll sort of bear with this in that regard. But I see so many people but there are just a few people I ve got to acknowledge here. Of course, Peter Huessy has been a friend for a long time. And I see Frank Gaffney over here, a precious friend for a long time. And Gordy Shell (ph) I mean, I m going to get in trouble. Jim, you re from Senator Coates office. Senator Coates has been a hero of mine since I was about this high. I just think he s a great man, one of those people who is committed to the cause of freedom. And in the back, he just sat down. I hope he can hear me. But he is my LA, Ari Zimmerman. And Ari is an absolute treasure to our office. We stole him from another office.

3 And the other gentleman didn t come back, he was defeated in Florida. But he was a great man and we re just grateful that Ari is with us because he s been a tremendous asset to our office. And I m going to stop there. And Dr. Peter Pry, he and I went to Israel here not very long ago and talked to the Israelis about some of their vulnerability to EMP. You know, the great thing about the Israelis is that they get it. You don t have to explain things twice to them. And we, I think, had some very worthwhile times there and I m grateful for his knowledge and for his willingness to go trapsing half way across the world to help somebody else. But let me, if I could, go ahead and start today, related to missile defense in general. I would suggest to you when Peter mentioned that we ve gone from about members, there s two reasons for that. First, I would say to you that Ari Zimmerman in our office has had a really significant outreach. But I have to tell you, I d like to say it s because of some great insight that I ve proffered, but I don t think so. The reality is when the Israelis demonstrated in their Iron Dome system to be able to knock down 85 percent plus of their targets, it put a face on missile defense that a lot of people I don t think had seen before. It just didn t permeate. And now it is, and it s very encouraging to me because we didn t have to do a great deal. And I m seeing all over Congress sort of a realization that missile defense is the coming dynamic of war. Missile warfare is why send, as they say, a man to do a missiles job? The reality is that the way that our whole technology is advancing, that missile technology is going to be something we are going to have to master or it will master us, unfortunately. The idea that the United States needs a robust missile defense system is kind of gaining momentum, I think in Congress, in general. And I d also tell you that I deal with the same thing that you do every day, that people think we have a full blown shield that we could hold off a full blown Russian Federation salvo. And those things aren t true. But it is pretty wonderful that we re now able to say that if North Korea or if there was a rogue situation, that we have a very good chance of (intervening?). Now I m going to go ahead and deal with the little situation with one of our GMD tests, or GBI tests here recently. All of you know that we missed. But I try to explain everything in politics that s wrong in one word. And I can do it in one word and I can do it in two that s wrong in public policy today. The one word is Obama. In two words, it s Barack Obama. (Laughter). And so we haven t tested of our GBI since And I will say to you that over time, if you don t pull these things out and play with them, over time there are things that can go

4 wrong. It s my belief, and I m going to put it that way for a lot of good reasons. I m not expressing anything that s classified. But it s my belief that we will find that what occurred there was a lack of separation of the DAX (ph) from the actual missile body, rather than the hitto-kill technology itself failing. And that s something pretty basic and we predicted it might be something like a battery or something, simply that you could at least with some plausibility relate to the fact that we haven t done the testing as we should. We should be testing I think we should be testing our GBIs every six months. It s not like they don t play a pretty significant role. I know all of you know that they are our only tested system designed to interdict incoming nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. And there s no way to find the right phrase, but you know those can ruin your whole picnic. And the reality is it s always amazing to me that we put all of this focus on sometimes minutiae, and something of that magnitude we don t pay enough attention to. And this administration has cut $6 billion from missile defense since they ve been in office, $6 billion, all the while that the missile threat has increased almost all over the world, whether it s -- China is now trying to compete with the United States in space. And I think that if we don t handle ourselves carefully, they are going to surprise us in many ways. And, you know, I say that without any sort of belligerent attitude, but I absolutely believe that their intent is to prevail in space. And it wouldn t concern me so much to look at just their present technological plain. What concerns me is that they have 20 times the number of defense engineers or defenserelated engineers as we do. And it s just simply a matter of the numbers. And over time, when they are able to shall we say acquire a lot of their technology from other countries without doing the research themselves I didn t say stolen. They usually buy it if they can. And if they can t then they steal. But the reality is that they are leapfrogging in many different ways. And we re going to have to pay attention to that because with 1.3 billion people and a growing society that is starting more and more to look for competing with the United States in space and in missile defense, they have the most robust missile development program in the world, without a doubt. They are way ahead of everybody else in terms of their development of new systems. Now the good news is we re a long ways ahead of them on so many fronts that there still is some time to respond. But it s important that we do that. On North Korea, you know a lot of people have wondered do I considered North Korea a real threat to the United States? And I m just kind of going to be really candid. No, I don t,

5 because I think we have the capability to do what we need to do to prevent their missiles from reaching here. But, it s the indirect threat that they represent. I think North Korea, being the police state that they are, still wants to survive. I think Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-eun, I think they want that regime to survive. They re not like the jihadists where they re willing to die to take us out. So I think that we have a lot of leverage there. But the danger is, with all of the closeness that they have with Iran and being able to transfer technologies and being able to indirectly proliferate, being able to maybe out right sell warheads, those are things that we should be aware of. I mean, is it right wing rhetoric to say that maybe, maybe an Iranian government could say, you know what, we could sprint and gain maybe three or four warhead within six or eight months. But why don t we just make a deal with North Korea and buy one, or buy two or three? Is it that implausible? And if it isn t, why aren t we really making sure that we re capable of dealing with anything that they have? And, of course, the North Koreans deal a lot with this KO-8 (ph). And some of you how many of you are familiar with the KO-8 missile? Yeah, there s a few. You know, that system would be able to range the entire United States. And we re not paying much attention to it. And just the notion that North Korea could do something is frightening to me. And people say, well they don t have a re-entry vehicle. Well, if they re maybe going to hit us with an EMP attack they don t need one. You know, maybe wrap some tin foil around it and send it on over. The reality is that we don t need to try to invent or imagine threats, but we shouldn t ignore them, either. I know when we talk about Iran I know I sound pretty obsessed with Iran. But I think that s the right word. I was the first to call for Iran to be referred to the Security Council seven years ago on the House floor because I saw that, like everybody else did, it wasn t anything new, it s just that there wasn t too many of us that were really willing to jump out there in the front and say that this is a serious threat and that they re going to build a nuclear weapon. They had, at the time, 165 centrifuges. And so it wasn t really a big threat to anybody because everybody said, Trent, they need 3,000 to have a nuclear weapons program. You re over-reacting just way premature. I said, but that s where they re going, because they have no other reason. I mean, there s a lot of well, we need them for medical isotopes or we need them for peaceful nuclear energy. But all of those things, as you know, would be akin to building a

6 factory to make a sandwich. They simply have all the natural gas, all of the capabilities that they ve needed without going to nuclear power. So it seemed very clear at the time, to me, that that s where they were headed. And indeed, I think now that that s kind of a ubiquitous conclusion. So I would just say sometimes you have to re-say something that s obvious in order for us to just kind of keep it in mind. If Iran gains nuclear weapons terrorists the world over will have access to nuclear weapons and all of us will step into the shadow of nuclear terrorism. And my four-year old twins will not have quite the bright future that I want them to have. And I will just say to you that it changes everything when jihad you ve got nine nations with a nuclear weapons capability. When jihad gets their finger on the nuclear button it will change our calculus all over the planet. And I m always amazed that when we have things that are right in front of us, it seems like we have this brilliant insight in retrospect. But sometimes we look at something and we say well, two plus two looks like four, but that can t be right. That s not the mainstream thinking. And sometimes we just need to back up and look at things like engineers do and try to take the politics all out of it and the presuppositions and just say, is this first of all, can it happen mechanically? Does reality support such a scenario? And if it does, then we have to ask ourselves, are there those that might have the intent to proceed along those lines? And I will say to you that I believe Iran is so desperately dangerous to the world because if they do gain this nuclear weapons capability it re-writes the whole hegemony in the Middle East to the extent that I think our influence there and our protection of Israel, all kinds of things are diminished demonstrably. And it is very important that we not only stand with Israel, because Israel cannot, in my judgment, tolerate a nuclear Iran. I mean, it s an impossible situation. It leaves them 12 minutes from annihilation, without the ability, probably, to prevent it. They might be able to do all bad things back, in time. But without the ability to actually protect their homeland, I don t think I think when someone comes to the prime minister of Israel and says Iran is on the brink of having a nuclear weapons capability, and they are almost there, I think he will act. And I think he will do so partly because he has no choice. And if that happens, of course, it will inflame the whole Arab world. And it puts Israel in a most untenable position that we can imagine. And they should not have to carry that burden alone.

7 This nation is still the true arsenal of freedom. We re still the flagship of liberty on the planet. And it is important that we say we will not let a country like that have the capability to re-write history in a dark and ugly way. And so, I just hope that all of us will maintain just shifting to India and Pakistan, you know they continue to develop a short-range and long-range capability. There s a growing ability for countries that we wouldn t ever have dreamed possible, to be able to enter this nuclear weapons, this ICBM age. And it s not far away. I think Iran is probably 2015 to be able to have a fully capable ICBM. I mean, they could do some things with that now, you know, in terms of their satellite capabilities. You know, if it s a light payload, they have that capability now. It s the same technology. So it is important that we pay attention to missile defense. I know I m not talking to the choir here, I m talking to the conductors of the various choirs. So I appreciate that you already understand that and I hope we don t take our eyes off of it. Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity, they tell me. They said he was out flying a kite and lightning stuck and he got nailed. But you know, at the same moment he also discovered EMP. And we forget that E2, lightning, is EMP. And I sometimes think that it s important to bring it down to that basic reality so people understand that it s real. We deal with EMP every day with our electric grid. If lightning strikes I mean, you all remember the storm here six or eight months ago, whenever it was, it put the lights out here in Washington, D.C. for a lot longer than we thought it would. And this is something that we re fully prepared for. This is something that we know about and we have equipment to interdict. And still, still it had that effect on us. And again, I don t have to suggest to you that danger or the reality of having a complete loss of electricity over the continent for a long period of time, what that would mean to our civilization. So it is important that we pay attention to this. And I think that I m seeing more and more that people are paying attention to it. I haven t even read Ari, were you in the room when we were talking about you? Alright, well I said a lot of good things about you, didn t I everybody? (Laughter). But we haven t even seen it I know that he s told me that there s a major article in the Washington Post. MR. ARI ZIMMERMAN: It s sitting on your desk.

8 REP. FRANKS: Sitting at my desk. Why would you put it there? (Laughter). I never get to sit there anymore. Putting things on my desk doesn t seem like an outrageous thing. But there s a growing awareness of it. I was telling Dr. Pry that when I was at the Fourth of July with my four-year olds at the Grand Canyon, we were watching in the hotel room and on the weather channel a major documentary on EMP was taking place. And it was very real. It was very fascinating. And people now are beginning to see this more and more. And I think that we re going to see some major situations happen. To that end, our response to that has been the SHIELD Act. How many of you are familiar with the SHIELD Act? All, I see. Well the SHIELD Act really is an outgrowth of the Grid Act, but it is designed primarily to put a hardware-based solution on our grid. It s a very reasonably cost everybody says how reasonable it is. But in this case, it s very reasonable. It might add a dime a year to the average rate-payer s bill. And yet it might be one of the most significant things that we could do to interdict one of the most significant national security threats that we face in America, and even the world, today. And I see it gaining strength every day. But I also see that there is this battle between industry and the regulatory function, which I m usually always on the side of industry. In this case, it s not over EMP, it s over the authority to deal with this. And they had a big fight over Section 215 years ago, and now industry doesn t want to let that go. Unfortunately, I think it s steeped in the fact that they don t understand how serious the threat could be to them. And I m also seeing a lot of insurance companies now beginning to come forward and say, what is the liability concern for us if we re insuring the grid or insuring these power providers and if we are in a position of being the underwriter here for the liability? We need to make sure that this thing is mitigated. So I think that industry is going to have to (reach out?). I think they re going to, but it s very important that the Grid Act be there so that we can have a national standard, so that everyone understands what we need to how much we need to harden. It s always ironic to me that we spend hundreds of millions of dollars across the years in our defense apparatus to harden against EMP. We don t have to explain this to the generals. I was having lunch I m dropping names now I was having lunch with General Dempsey here just the other day at the Pentagon.

9 And he said something I thought was very insightful. These guys do that once in a while. He said we were talking about cyber security and EMP came up. He said, cyber security and EMP are kissing cousins because they deal with the same networks. And, of course, you always hear all the time, more and more, the growing phrase that the EMP is the ultimate cyber security threat. And I believe that s true. It s also something that our opponents and I think there are probably, I won t say opponents in this room but I would say there are probably representatives of those who could be our opponents in this room that they pay attention to these kinds of things. And some of the rest of the world, some of our shall we say most robust competitors, have advanced their offensive EMP capability beyond where we were a few years ago. I m going to leave it in that phraseology. And that means that they re keeping an eye on what we do. And if we harden our grid, it is a disincentive for the Iran s for the world, for the others of the world that might want to exploit that now existing significant vulnerability. And across history, you all know that if there is a defense strategy maxim, that if there s a vulnerability, a true vulnerability, your enemy, your most committed enemy, will probably find it and they will try to exploit it. And so I m just convinced that we need to do everything that we can. The first reality with EMP, with each passing year, is our sophistry, our advancing technology and our human civilization s ability to need and to expand the capability of electricity. We re growing more and more vulnerable all the time. And that s just a fact. I mean, 30 or 40 years ago we weren t one tenth, we weren t one percent as vulnerable as we are today to EMP. The other danger, and it s the exact juxtapose to the other side of the book case, I suppose, and that is that with growing proliferation we have more and more people capable of exploiting that vulnerability. And if we harden our system, if we harden our grid, it is probably the most important thing that we can do toward creating a disincentive to do that. Because if someone should try that and fail, I think, you know, that they would see a fireworks display that would be pretty impressive. But the fact is now that if they think they can succeed, they probably will. Now I want to try to conclude here and give you some time for some questions, if you can. But one last thought on the East Coast site. Some of you know that we ve supported I ve been a strong supporter of an East Coast missile defense site. A lot of the perspective is because I think we re much more vulnerable in the Gulf area than anybody realizes. That s not so say that we re not aware of it, but we re more vulnerable than we should be. And the East Coast site, I think, will give us some additional options. And I also think it is important given

10 Iran s growing capability. And so I just want to thank all of you for what you do. I truly believe the old maxim that the more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war. And all of you today and the things you do, you go about every moment of your lives, I think are strengthening the chance that my little children will be able to walk in the light of freedom. And for that, I m grateful to you. And I ll open it up for questions, if there s time. (Applause). MR. : In general, we don t even have radars looking south, let alone (missile defenses?) down there. In terms of flight detection, especially like we experienced when we (stood up?), but also in general terms, doesn t it make sense for the Navy to have a standing Aegis picket down there? Does that ever come up in conversations? REP. FRANKS: It does, and you know I ve had the privilege now of serving on the Strategic Forces Committee for 11 years. And it comes up all the time, especially in more closed door settings. Because of it coming in closed door settings, I can t expound as much as I d like to, but I will say to you that I believe that there is a profound vulnerability there. And the Aegis, between the shore and whoever might come at us, is probably one of the best not the only -- I have to stop there. But it s the best mechanism that we have to really protect ourselves because we are not we are not we re not reliably protected there. And part of it is the radars, part of it is the lack of an interdiction system. We just can t reach from Fort Greeley or Vandenberg if something especially if it were an EMP attack. Because as you know, it s just a matter of just going up and detonating at apogee, and we we re not capable of dealing with that. So I want you to know that I m very concerned about it. And to answer your question, should we have Aegis there? I think we should, if for no other reason just to make us all feel warm and fuzzy. MR. FRANK GAFFNEY: Congressman, thank you very much for your leadership on all of these issues, most especially I think on the EMP, which you ve really taken on and are bringing along very nicely. You did not mention, I think, in your remarks one other piece of this, maybe because you haven t gotten to your desk, but the Washington Post story focused on it on Sunday. Geomagnetic storms adds a whole other means of inflicting this kind of threat on us that leave aside the North Koreans, the Iranians and so on. Would you speak to that as an aspect of this? REP. FRANKS: I think that s great. I m sorry for not mentioning that, because in the simplest terms a major GMD from a coronal mass ejection at some point is inevitable, unless the stars re-write their historical patterns. And so I am convinced of that. It s just a matter of time.

11 There are a lot of people who say the maxims increase that possibility or that mathematical probably that it would occur in a maxim. I think the next the solar maxim, doesn t it peak in this year? And I don t know what to say about that. If it happens now it s really not good news for modern man. But it is real and I think that the one way we can protect it is to have either neutral phased blockers before the current goes into the transformers, or some type of capacitors. I m a big neutral phased blocker fan. I don t have any commitment to either technology. I want the industry to figure that out. I m not connected I want just whatever works. But the neutral phased blockers, if some of you know, to put it in simple terms, if you have 220 volts at your house for your dryer, it s a two phase where it s got 110 and 110 and then a neutral phase. Well a neutral phase, if it s interrupted, it will immediately cease the current in the true hot phases. And yet, the neutral phase is not under load. So it doesn t have the arc over issues. And if we can do that with our 220, but sometimes 14-15,000 or many more, then we can have something that really is a mechanism that s pretty simple but very reliable and very capable of doing that. I ve seen some of these neutral phased blockers they say would cost about $250, 000 that would protect two or three transformers. And it would allow the grid to run at a higher percentage so that it would actually more than pay for itself. But I think that that s the answer to Frank s issue, that we need to do that because that is inevitable. One more question here? MR. HUESSY: Your staff says you have to run. MR. JOHN WOHLSTETTER (ph): John Wohlstetter, are your fellow members of Congress (off mic) not getting very close to the target before a ground burst or an air burst darkens Kansas (off mic) due to a high altitude EMP strike? Do they understand that and therefore that the ability to put a light payload in space and Jim Woolsey testified on the Hill you could put a neutron bomb in (off mic) coming into polar orbit south to north, and you have hundreds of miles (off mic). Do you think any of them understand that? REP. FRANKS: Well, I ll tell you, I don t know if they do. But it s obvious, sir, that you do, because everything you ve said I agree with, absolutely every syllable of the scenario that you paint. And Peter Pry, of course, has been the one in my mind that has really opened the question about whether or not even the North Koreans might be testing neutron warheads rather than the standard uranium warheads or plutonium, whatever they they won t tell us. I m sorry, they re not telling.

12 But the reality that you paint is very real. You don t have to be accurate. A one-eyed monkey with a hand grenade can almost hit it. And the ability, of course, for them to launch off shore, it multiplies your scenario because they don t have to even travel that far. I know I ve got I m chairing the committee, so I ve got to go. But I just want you to know I appreciate people like you that think through this. I appreciate all of you so much. I know sometimes we wake up and we find, how in the world did we get here? And, of course, we look around and we wonder how everybody else got here too, sometimes. But I am truly grateful to all of you and I hope that we stay with it. And I think that there s a lot of good things to look forward to, and peace through strength. God bless you. (Applause).