Here's an interesting statistic for you. If the U.S. faced a catastrophic power grid failure, as in the whole grid went out throughout the entire country, 90% of the U.S. population would be dead. That's from the EMP commission.
Now you might be wondering how close are we to a scenario where all of the power grid goes out. Well, unfortunately, We're a lot closer than most people think. That's what we're going to cover in this episode is all the vulnerabilities that we know about that the power grid faces and the good news is at the end of this we talk about how to fix it. So unfortunately there is no legal ramifications for not protecting our power grid from the companies that supply power.
That's because they are lobbying you are politicians, which means they're paying them off so that they don't create laws that force the power companies to protect the grid. Go figure, politicians getting paid off, right? But anyways, hey, we got David Tice. He's on the show today.
He is the producer and director of the documentary Grid Down, Power Up. I suggest you check it out. It's a free doc linked in the description. Ladies and gentlemen, if you get anything from this show, please go to Spotify, go to Apple Podcasts, leave us a review.
Patreon members, you are what makes this show happen. Thank you so much for all the support. We love you all. I appreciate it.
Enjoy the show. Cheers. Tice, welcome to the Sean Ryan Show.
So glad to be with you, Sean, and honored to be here. I have been very interested in the vulnerabilities of our power grid for a long time. A friend of mine showed me this documentary, Grid Down, Power Up. phenomenal documentary so you are the director and producer of that doc and and you're doing it just to raise awareness on how just how vulnerable our grid is and and it's making a lot of waves you know after dinner last night it sounds like it's making a lot of ways and i just want to add some fuel to the fire well let's get it out there and get your viewers to become grid warriors that's what this next hour is going to be about all right well before we kick it off everybody that comes on the show gets a gift are you ready right any guesses I have no idea.
All right, well, here you go. All right. I'm a snacker, so gummy bears. Those are Vigilance League gummy bears made in the USA, and believe it or not, they're legal in all 50 states. You're not going to feel funny after you eat them.
Yeah. All right. Thank you, sir. You're welcome. But so before we get started, how did you, what prompted your interest in this?
Because you're... You're an investments guy. Right.
Not a grid guy. No. So how did you get interested in the US power grid?
So I actually have been a geopolitical junkie going back probably 20 years. And so I followed some really intelligent gurus that have followed Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and the threat to America. And therefore, I've had the highest ranking spy that ever defected from the GRU.
And the GRU is a sister organization of the KGB in my living room. And he actually was, his name is Stanislav Lunov. And so he testified in front of Congress with his voice disguised behind a screen. And he was one of the guys from the Russian side that worked with the Chinese. in their master plan to essentially undermine the United States.
And so I followed, you know, great geopolitical strategists like Jeffrey Nyquist and Frank Gaffney, Peter Navarro, etc. And so I've been worried about this. What did, I'm sorry, I can't pronounce his name.
What did he tell you? Oh, Stanislav Lunov. Essentially, he said that The Russians were almost inhuman in terms of their leadership.
And so he made the point about how people in the West think about some of this Russian leadership, and they think that they're normal human beings, but that they are cutthroat and vicious and essentially just wanted to undermine the United States. So you're saying they're willing to do whatever it takes to win? Exactly. Everything that we're not willing to do? Exactly.
Interesting. A lot of countries are coming out now, and it looks like they're willing to do whatever it takes to win whatever their goals are. The only country I don't see doing that is the one we live in. So what he also said is that Russia and China are working together, and they planned on.
undermining the United States. And they essentially want to wipe out the United States. That's in their master plan.
And that comes from taking out our power grid. Well, he didn't get as specific as that at that particular juncture. But then I learned over time about how that generally is a master plan. And I learned later that We have studied defector literature and we have, you know, defector testimony.
And a number of them from all four countries, Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia, have said that this is in their master plan. And we know even from special forces operations, you know, that are conducted, you know, from Western countries, that it is. typical game plan to take out civilian infrastructure and take out the power grid. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. And we're going to dive into all of these plans and what you've learned.
So you have the documentary broken up into kind of four different sections, and they are basically the four threat vectors of where our power grid is most vulnerable. And that's broken into physical attacks. cyber attacks, electromagnetic pulse attack, or EMP, and geomagnetic disturbance, which is a natural, basically a natural EMP delivered from the sun.
But before, and then there's also the political weakness, which I would personally consider a threat as well. But before we get into that, I'd like to go over... and paint a picture of What it looks like if our power grid were to go down and you did an amazing job of that in your documentary Well, thank you.
So Essentially what would go down is and really there's misperception sometimes about the power grid going down Sometimes it's out for a couple days. Normally it happens regionally, you know, it's a pain in our neck and Sometimes if it might go down regionally. We might have, you know, another state or another city come in to help us out.
What we're talking about here is two different amplifiers. One, if it's nationwide, then you don't have, you know, Houston able to help out Louisiana, as an example. You know, then we have to count on France.
And then also, we're talking about something longer than a couple days. If this happens... six to nine months, then again, it amplifies it, you know, a thousand to a million fold. So if we truly have an outage that is nationwide that lasts nine months, the EMP commission, which is a commission that was mandated by U.S.
Congress, and it has much more authority and better funding than a congressional committee, they found that as many as 90% of Americans would die. 90% of Americans, that's what's 90% of 360 million people. Yeah, so it's like 300 million. 300 million people wiped off the map just like that. And how long did you say that would take?
Nine months. Nine months? That was the metric that the EMP Commission utilized. And what does it look like if our power grid goes down?
So it really becomes almost zombie apocalypse. And it's horrific because we think about loosen the rule of law. And so we have George Carlin, you know, a clip from, you know, one of his comedy tours in a movie. And he says, you can't count on the police or the National Guard. They'll be at home protecting their own family.
And that's exactly true. I don't think people realize How much chaos and how miserable it will become when the power grid goes down and and just I've known this is coming for a long time and when I first started looking into me and my wife lived in Florida we went through a hurricane and and anybody who lives in Florida the population just continues to increase and increase and now after after after 2020 and COVID with all the mandates all these People that want freedom are just pouring in there like it's nobody's business. And we moved up here about five years ago to Tennessee, and we went through a hurricane. Here's what happens in a hurricane.
If anybody's been through one, they obviously know. But grocery stores are completely wiped out within about 48 hours of a hurricane coming. Just the news alone, people go into panic mode, and there goes all the water. There goes all the bread, there goes all the meat, all the frozen food, all the vegetables, anything you can think of, it's gone. Gasoline, gone.
The lines go around, the lines can be over a mile long sometimes. Plywood, gone. Why do you need plywood to, one, to keep looters out and to keep debris that the hurricane's gonna throw at your house from cracking, from breaking windows.
All the plywood's gone. All the generators are gone because everybody knows the power's going to go out. Everything that you can think, you can't even escape it because the, I believe it was Matthew, there was a stop and go traffic jam on Highway 95. And that went all the way from Miami to Atlanta, Georgia. Stop and go traffic. There is no escape.
And so when we went through that, which, uh, that hurricane, that. If I remember correctly, that wound up being kind of over-embellished by the news. But it did paint a picture of what it's going to be like with all these new people. I mean, Florida's worried that they're not going to be able to flush the toilets in a couple years. There's so many people down there now.
So we moved up here, and when we moved up here, I had a very particular type of property that I was looking for because I was thinking about the grid. And what's going to happen when it does go down, because I knew early on how vulnerable it was. I didn't realize it was this vulnerable. And we looked for a place that was way out of the middle of nowhere. It had to have a water source, because when the grid goes down, there goes your water.
There goes your medical. There goes your food. Everything.
It's gone. There goes the police. There goes communications.
You think you're going to talk to your elderly parents? Nope. That's over.
No cars. Especially if it's an EMP. An EMP will destroy any electronic device within its range. And help me out here. There's a lot more, you know, that needs to be said about what this looks like.
In a never-ending, in a never-ending, I mean, nine months, just nine months alone. And it frankly could be six months. I mean, these guys.
The EMP Commission was staffed by the smartest scientists and electromagnetic pulse physicists in the world. And they're making conjectures about it. Think about the municipal water system.
The municipal water system is 100% dependent upon the grid. So I visited in Highland Park in Dallas a system there and had the top engineer. Walked me through some of it, and I said, well, what's your power source?
They said, the grid. I said, any backup for that? No, we thought about some backup generators a few years ago, would have cost $5 million, and we dismissed that idea.
If you watch this show at all, you know I am a very big proponent when it comes to psychedelic therapy. I have my own journey. It's helped me in more ways than I can even begin to describe in one sitting. And I found this new company called Mindbloom. Let me tell you about it.
There's no quick fix for anxiety and depression. It's not finding a new therapist or starting an exercise routine. Not more and regular meditation or a better diet.
Sometimes you need something to unlock your brain. A new way of thinking and seeing the world. Maybe... that thing is guided ketamine therapy from Mindbloom. But there's a new tool to improve your mental health, at-home ketamine therapy.
Mindbloom is a leader in at-home ketamine therapy, having helped thousands of people overcome their anxiety and depression. Unlike traditional talk therapy, ketamine can work quickly and doesn't have the unpleasant side effect of traditional antidepressants. In a study of over 1,200 clients, 89% have found improvement in anxiety and depression in just two sessions.
Right now, MindBloom is offering our listeners $100 off your first six-session program when you sign up at mindbloom.com slash SRS and use the promo code SRS. Take the first step and break free from your anxiety and depression with MindBloom. That's mindbloom.com slash SRS.
Use the promo code SRS. Ladies and gentlemen, you've heard me talk about them before. We're talking about Hoist's IV-level hydration. Stuff tastes absolutely incredible. And what's ironic about that is it actually has half the sugars and three times the amount of electrolytes.
is most sports drinks on the market. It also has no artificial dyes and there are no preservatives. So that's probably why the U.S. military signed a contract with these guys. So now the warfighters throughout the entire U.S. military have access to hoist.
It's on the majority of military bases throughout the entire world. Let me rephrase that. U.S. military bases, not all military bases, just US. In fact, they are only one of three hydration products even authorized by the US military.
You can use their store locator on their website to find a store near you, or you can purchase directly from drinkhoist.com, where you can use my promo code Sean to save 15% off on their website. Hoist also offers 10% off to military and first responders on every purchase through the website. Go check out their website.
That's drinkhoist.com. Don't forget to use the promo code Sean for 15% off. I mean there's literally nothing which is going to create, nothing.
There are no supply chains, there is no water, there is no food, there is no fuel. Everything that you have come to know, all the both luxuries and necessities in life, are fueled by the power grid. And that's going to create chaos because when people get hungry, And they get thirsty and desperation sets in. There's no more friends. There's no more communities.
People are going to do whatever they need to do to enable their families and themselves survive. And it's, it's... It's just going to be mass, not really rioting, chaos in the streets.
Nobody's coming. There is nobody coming. How are they going to fuel helicopters to bring supplies in?
They're not. They can't. There's an expression that's utilized among...
this grid warrior community, which is there's no Calvary to come and you can't count on the Calvary. And so let me also mention, even if you had some backup generators and some people, you know, some institutions like hospitals or apartments might have backup generators, but then how much diesel supply do you have? And then sometimes it's three days, you know, sometimes it's...
day and a half, maybe it might be 30 days, but then your diesel is not going to be delivered, you know, because there's going to be chaos. And therefore, when that's what causes, you know, the problems and people think that, oh, I've got, you know, this backup generator or, you know, the power guys, you know, from the electric utilities will come out and fix all this. Well, how about if the jet, if the transformer. And these high voltage transformers that we talk about in the film that are, you know, hundreds of tons each are made mostly in South Korea, Germany, and some in China.
And that's a big part of our movie that we talk about is they can't be replaced without there being an enormous backlog. And it will take, you know, potentially right now, the backlog has gone from... two years to over five years from what we understand, because what's happened in the Ukraine, the Russians have gone after the Ukrainian power grid, and they've wiped out a number of transformers. And therefore, in replacing some of those transformers that have been damaged, it's increasing the backlog for transformers.
Do we make any of these transformers? Yes, we do make some. And there's about five companies that do make these transformers.
And frankly, I was a little bit less aware of that until not that long ago. But we're actually starting to talk to some of those companies and we're trying to work, you know, behind the scenes to do all we can to fix this issue. And you made mention before about. Why I was doing this to raise awareness. It's not just to raise awareness, it's to raise awareness and get our legislators, get our regulators to damn fix this problem.
And part of my motivation for all this was I call myself a NASA grandfather because my grandkids are four, three, two, one. Houston, we have a problem. And so I said, we've got to wake people up.
We've got to create enraged mama bears and soccer dads such that we get in front of our legislators and our regulators and we get this stinking problem and this vulnerability fixed. This should be one of the most important agendas in this entire country. And it's, I don't think it's even on the agenda. Going back to the transformers. So I'm going to display on video right now what these transformers look like.
Transformers take up to 18 months to make. The U.S. cannot live six months without these transformers. Cybersecurity, no one has checked for vulnerabilities on the back doors of these transformers, how vulnerable they are to hackers. China provides 10 percent of the electricity to New York City and 20 percent of the electricity to Las Vegas. Two hundred of these transformers are from China and are embedded into the U.S. power grid.
And. China, South Korea, and Germany are the majority of the manufacturers, as you just previously stated. And I know we're going to get into these transformers a little bit later, but let's start.
Let's just start with the four threat vectors. And the first threat vector I have is physical attack. Let's talk about the... Domestic terrorism attack that happened in Metcalf, California. And the reason I want to talk about that is it shows how vulnerable it is and how unsophisticated it can be to take the grid out.
Okay, so let's talk about that. So this was 2013, Metcalf, California, which is outside Silicon Valley. And this was a major... substation. So this attack, you know, was covered actually in 2022 in a January 60 Minutes story that was rerun again in August.
You can go to YouTube and watch that story. It was fortunately, uh, so it seems that eight or nine terrorists were utilizing. AK-47s or AR-15s and shooting out, you know, the cooling, you know, facility for these transformers.
And fortunately, police got there. They disappeared into the night. They've never solved, you know, who this was.
Unfortunately, we were able to divert power such that it did not cause a massive outage in. Silicon Valley, but it was frankly a wake-up call. And frankly, it was hidden for about a year until the Wall Street Journal ran a story a year later. It was hidden?
Yes, it was completely hidden. Why do you think they hid it? Because the powers that be did not want the American public to understand.
that there might be terrorists out there taking out a substation. It's also possible that they didn't want this to create, you know, Me Too attacks, you know, other people saying, oh, we can do this. And therefore, you know, potentially our powers that be have some reasons for, you and I both know, you know, our authorities don't tell us the truth all the time.
That's becoming more and more clear every day that goes by. But what came out of this report was FERC, which is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which does a lot of the regulation for our power grid. They ended up running a study, and they found that if there were as few as nine critical substations were taken out, you know, just key nodes, it could cause the power to go out. nationwide in the United States. Nine substations.
How many substations are there? There are about 55,000 substations. And it would only take nine substations to... Correct. Yeah.
Would these need to be strategic attacks? Is there nine in particular? Yeah.
Yeah. No, I'm sure there's maybe 50 that would fall within that nine. And I haven't seen that report, but it would have to be key substations.
for sure so another thing that i found interesting is there is no legal obligation for these power companies both private and public companies i think if i remember correctly there's around 20 power companies nationwide none of them have any legal obligation to secure their grid that serves Every person in the United States. What I think is, I mean, how is that even possible? I mean, this is life.
Power is life. Okay. The most, I mean, this is also what enables us to be the most powerful country in the world is electricity and power.
So, electricities. So Senator Bob Hall, who is a state senator in Texas, and he's a real patriot, he's been fighting for better grid legislation, grid protection legislation in the state of Texas for four different sessions. So he says that electricity is more important than anything after air. It's even more important than water, because if you don't have...
electricity, you're not going to have water. And therefore, that's how important it is. And human beings need water. They will die after three days of not having water.
And therefore, this is how important electricity is. Now, there's been something called regulatory capture. And there should be better regulation of our utilities. There's the provide electricity because electricity is so important. But most people don't want to be told what to do.
Most companies and most industries don't want to be told what to do. But in the public interest, there needs to be regulation telling companies what to do. But what's happened is there's mostly... Self-regulation in the electric utility industry, which means, so we call that regulatory capture, which means the utility industry has captured the regulators. So we go over in a film just for a couple of brief minutes about there's FERC and NERC.
So I mentioned Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and then NERC, North American Electricity. North American Electricity Regulatory Corporation. And both those entities, especially NERC, has 75% of their trustees come from the public utilities.
Are there any of these power companies that are proactive enough to actually put up some type of... protection for these power stations and substations? And is there anything?
Yes. There are certainly some utilities that are better than others, for sure. And we talk about that in the film.
We actually mention, you know, five or six companies that have, you know, gone much further than most. But the problem is, it needs to be industry-wide. And We need to wake up. There needs to be better regulation demanding that these companies make these changes.
And that's not in place. I'm sorry, I said for NERC, it's the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation. So this attack in Medcalf, California, that sounds like the US Navy SEALs helped with some type of an after-actions report and said that this was likely a terrorist attack. Then one year later, the FBI concluded, go figure, that it wasn't a terrorist attack, but they had no further information.
Right. So they don't know what it is, but they just know it's not a terrorist attack. Exactly.
FBI is an extremely unimpressive organization. Um, let's move on to cyber attacks. And I think, you know, actually backing up, you know, another thing is this physical attack.
We had mentioned at the beginning of this that China and Russia are working together. It's likely China is going to take Taiwan before. The end of the Biden administration. We already see Putin made his move under the Biden administration. These two are working together.
You're starting to see more and more countries take sides with China and Russia. I saw France is looking to drop the U.S. dollar. Saudi Arabia and Iran, they just made a deal. They're dropping the U.S. dollar. India is part of BRICS.
Brazil announced to drop the U.S. dollar. Argentina. wants to drop the U.S. dollar. And it looks like we've been weaponizing U.S. currency so much that now it's becoming a trend that people don't want the currency weaponized against them. And more and more and more people are starting to drop the U.S. dollar.
This is coming from China. China and Russia are working together. China produces I can't remember how much of our power grid.
200 transformers. You said nine. It's actually 300. 300. Yeah, the number's 300. 300 transformers come from China.
All they need to do is take out nine transformers. And right now we have a wide open southern border where we already know there are people from all over the world flooding into this country. Why wouldn't China send in?
a couple of operatives to take out nine substations and kill our power grid right before They hit Taiwan. I mean, it just seems, I mean, if they didn't do it, it wouldn't make any sense. Why wouldn't they? It would be, it's so vulnerable and it's so easy just to send a couple of people across a wide open border that seems like half the country doesn't want to secure and take out nine transformers.
I think it is so eminent and I'm with you, Sean, in terms of China has plans to go after Taiwan, and they will do it before the end of the administration. So that's only a year and a half away. Yeah. And it's coming.
And so why not? Frankly, I think an aircraft carrier is going to be taken out, and then we're going to be potentially in World War III. And when— Because I think our aircraft carriers are likely sitting ducks, you know, for the sunburned missiles. And that we will, and taking out critical civilian infrastructure like the power grid, and maybe they don't do it nationally, maybe they do it regionally, or, you know, a big city just to alert, you know, America about where they are in terms of a... hostile act as a uh saying here's here's what you got you know do you want us to do more we'll do it how long would it take let's say they did they were successful and they took out a bunch of these substations let's say they took out all 300. how long would it take just to replace one of these gigantic transformers in the documentary you guys talk about You show how big these transformers are.
I mean, they would have to remove stoplights, maybe even remove some overpasses. I mean, this isn't just a delivery of a six-by-six box generator. This is a—I mean, these transformers are the size of buildings.
Right. Exactly. There are hundreds of tons each, and therefore, how long would it take?
If there were— three or four, they could probably get it done in a month or so. But if there are 50 or 200, then we're talking about chaos. We're talking about extreme chaos.
Let's move on to cyber attacks. So cyber attacks. So Jennifer Granholm is the Secretary of Energy under Joe Biden currently. So she was asked on a Sunday morning talk show about if our adversaries are currently in the grid and therefore could shut down our power grid. And she responded affirmatively.
So there's something called malware or Trojan horse software. And... Essentially, it could be this malware can be laying in wait, latent and ready to go to be signaled. Senator Angus King, you know, had a tirade in a congressional committee talking about this, saying that we're at war, that our adversaries are in the grid.
And therefore, here we have two major. public officials responding that this is a case right now. And for these 300 Chinese transformers that have been provided to us because they're cheaper, in my opinion, and China, Xi has talked about how they are at war with the United States, essentially.
They consider us the number one enemy. Exactly. They consider us the number... One enemy and so cyber attacks thousands of daily cyber attacks Thousands of them of at least attempted attacks are happening daily.
There is no this is what really gets me. There is no regulated protection to Remove any of this malware or Trojan horse software that there or that they're putting into these transformers There's there's literally no oversight The next geopolitical conflict will likely be in the form of a cyber war. And they are using another mind blowing thing. So they are using Ukraine as basically a testing ground on shutting power grids down using this.
We think that's certainly the case. Now, I have not seen anything, you know, we mentioned in the movie about 2015, 2016. This is before the Ukrainian war, that there were three major cyber attacks against the Ukraine. And there was conjecture that, you know, came from Ukrainians that said that We were probably the test case for this. Now, what's happened in the last year and a half that Putin has been fighting, you know, a kinetic war against Ukraine, and we know they've gone after the power grid. And frankly, Ukraine is probably less sensitive than we are because they have lesser, you know, Less current technology and more analog technology and less digital electronics.
And therefore, that makes them a little bit less vulnerable than our systems. They're more digital and more advanced. So you're telling me that Ukraine has a more sophisticated power system?
...than the United States? No, I'm saying actually less sophisticated in terms of older and less, but in this case, it's... They have more stability.
More stability. Sometimes older is better because it's more analog and less digital, and therefore less likely to be susceptible to... malware, etc.
So if this malware, let's say there's, let's say there's, you said there's 300 transformers from China. There's no regulation that says they need to inspect these for malware or Trojan horses. So I think it would be safe to assume all 300 of these transformers have something inside of them that China can control.
from a long ways away. How easy would it be if they are, all of them are infected, any of them are infected with this malware or Georgian horse? Is it literally just the push of a button? I'm not a cyber technology expert like that, but from what I understand, it's real possible.
Yes. It's simple. It's simple to take it out if those are installed.
Yeah, yeah. Have they found any, has anybody inspected any of these transformers? So actually, it hit the news where a major, you know, high voltage transformer was inspected, you know, by the energy department and by some of our labs. And because there was suspicion and it was not put into the grid. But then it's...
Nothing has ever come out publicly, and so it's been top secret, but we don't know. But I have a feeling, again, our government is not being completely forthcoming to us. They're not going to tell us, oh, by the way, we found out this Chinese transformer has all this malware in it.
But they certainly could have come out and said, oh, we inspected it, it's all fine. And they certainly haven't said that. So, well, I mean, the government is, I think if it was clean, then they probably would have released it.
I mean, the government doesn't, they don't want to embarrass themselves. And so, I'm sure that's why it's classified, because they don't want to report that, yeah, this is infected. I mean, it's just- If it was clean, there would be no reason not to report it. Yeah. But very, very alarming.
Let's talk about the electromagnetic pulse or EMP attack. So electromagnetic pulse. is essentially comes from a blast of a nuclear detonation in the atmosphere. And a blast creates these gamma waves.
And so essentially the blast... which would occur between 20 miles and 200 miles in altitude. And essentially, the higher it is, the more expansive the blast. If it's 20 miles, it's an expanse like this. And essentially, these gamma waves are called E1 from a physics term.
And what's interesting, I'm going to bring up... Lightning. So lightning is essentially E2.
And so we protect our computers in our house, in our, you know, high-end TVs with surge protectors, correct? Because we want to protect against E2. Okay, so what we're talking about here is E1 pulses. So this E1 pulse, just like an E2 lightning. you know, can wipe out electronics.
So it will wipe out transformers, it will wipe out our cell phones, it will wipe out, you know, any highly sensitive electronics. So what we have here is we need to protect against these E1 pulses. And that can be done just like surge protectors are done for E2 for lightning.
It can be done for E1. And there is technology that can be provided on the front end of our substations to be able to protect our sensitive electronics for our transformers. And that's what we're arguing for. And one of the things that we're doing with this movie is this is not just scare porn where there's no options available. Where we just have to cower in a corner and just, you know, just pray to God that we're protected.
There is something we can do. We can provide. There's technology available, Faraday cages, surge arresters that can be utilized. You know, highly physics oriented technology that will help protect our substations and transformers. Is any of that being utilized?
Not really. There has been some technology that's been shown to the utilities. Siemens and Centerpoint Energy actually developed something called Sipratech, which is a device that would help protect our substations.
It doesn't necessarily protect completely from the pulse, but it was shown to utilities. And the utilities essentially... You know, gave it a deaf ear. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Iranians have verified that their war plans, their first move for the United States would be an EMP attack.
The U.S. electrical grid would not survive a massive EMP attack today. Even a weather balloon, interesting, 20 miles above the earth, can be destructive to the sensitive electrical infrastructure. An open southern border. foreign nationals are crossing with no paper paperwork or records and you know so far all this we've talked about is the is an airborne emp which How I do know that we are close to having the technology, maybe we may already have it, where we would have the kind of like the Iron Dome over the entire of the United States, which is basically an energy field.
like a bubble over the entire United States. Do you know anything about that? No.
And fortunately, I have no knowledge of that. I don't know what the altitude of that is, but I do, I mean, the purpose of it would be to stop an EMP, a nuclear, any kind of missile coming in to hit the United States. However, if it detonates above that threshold, I don't know if it would be effective at all in disseminating the energy waves, but there's another kind of EMP, a briefcase EMP, which would be much easier to get into the country undetected, especially with the southern border wide open the way it is.
So what a briefcase EMP is, is it's still creating this E1 pulses. And, you know, as you mentioned, a terrorist can carry it in like a small, you know, briefcase and could be outside these key critical substations, you know, of which there are nine that, you know, at critical junctures and our adversaries have, you know. top scientists and strategists and electromagnetic pulse experts.
And, you know, it's not that difficult, I don't think, to figure out. And we're certainly not going to announce where those substations are. But this is a potential threat as well.
I mean, I want everybody that's listening to think about, we drive by them all the time, maybe several times a day, you see these little outstations. And what... What is the protection that they have? They have a chain link fence and maybe some barbed wire on top of the chain link fence. They're everywhere.
You see them all over the place. I've never seen one guarded, not once. I've never heard of one being guarded. I mean, they're just out there in the open. I mean, just sitting there waiting to be attacked.
Exactly. So what happened in Metcalf, California, was they did put a more secure wall around it. But again, there's no roof or a drone could come in on top. And I think there is a cause looking at critical junctures, you know, that potentially we have, you know. guards, or this certainly ought to be looked at and talked about.
Let's take a quick break. Great. Everyone knows what's going on around us. The banks are collapsing. The dollar's being devalued.
You need to ask yourself one question. What are you doing to secure your family's financial future? The good news is we can protect ourselves by holding tangible assets like gold and silver.
They've been known to hold their value Appreciate and help provide a source of financial security that cannot be printed or taken away. I own gold and I suggest you call my friends at Lear Capital. They offer a wide selection of gold and silver bullion coins, as well as IRA rollovers into precious metal backed IRAs. Call Lear at 800-741-0551 to talk with a gold and silver specialist or go to learshawn.com.
for the free gold and silver guides. There are a lot of gold companies to choose from. I particularly like Lear Capital because I trust them. Take action now to protect your financial future and your freedom.
Call Lear at 800-741-0551 or go to learshawn.com and my viewers receive up to $15,000 in free bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800-741-0551 or go to learshawn.com. Information contained within Lear Capital's website is for general educational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Past performance may not be indicative of future results.
Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a minute. Since I've done a Bubz Naturals commercial, but it has not been a minute since I've taken the best shit of my entire life.
Actually, just knocked one out this morning. It was amazing. And I'm gonna give you the secret.
You ready? Here's the secret. You want the secret for the best shit of your entire life that you could do, I don't know, every day?
Maybe multiple times a day. Here's the secret. Bubz Naturals collagen...
peptide says it's good for joints hair skin and nails i'm surprised they don't put on there it'll give you the best shit of your entire life but hey i get it right and you mix that with the halo creamer that's mct oil put these two together you're gonna have a explosive hell of a day these things are both whole 30 approved nsf certified and USDA approved. So there's that on top of that. Hold on wait There's more. If that doesn't get you going, which I guarantee you it will, you've got Bub's New Coffee. So, this is the first ever coffee bean Whole30 approved.
You can believe that. And we all know coffee can, you know, speed things up a little bit in the morning. But hold on, wait.
There's more. Apple Cider Vinegar Gummies. Guys, I'm gonna be honest, I don't know exactly what these things do.
for you, but here it says, promotes energy, immune support, promotes healthy digestion, and supports healthy metabolism. I can tell you one thing, good luck just eating one of these things because at the end of the night, I will crush an entire bottle of these. That will not give you the best shit of your life.
I wouldn't recommend it. It will speed things up, but you may not like the final outcome. And hold on, wait, there's more. There's more. Bubz came out with a lot of new products.
They have these hydrate or die hydration packets. Great for post-workout. All this stuff is great for post-workout, especially the collagen protein.
Guys, here's another thing about Bubz. Bubz is a tribute company. It's named after Glenn Bubz Doherty, who was a Navy SEAL and CIA contractor.
He died defending our freedom in Benghazi. And Bubz... Donates a portion of every order to the Glenn Doherty Foundation, and they donate 100% of the proceeds from their products on Veterans Day every year. I love this company.
They are just solid people with a solid product, and they just want everybody to experience the best shit of your life. Go to BubzNaturals.com, use the promo code Sean. for 20% off and let's get it going.
All right, David, so we've gone through three of the vulnerabilities or threat vectors. We got one more geomagnetic disturbance, basically a natural EMP. One thing that I did wanted to say, I think we may have already covered this, but these, so that would be a natural threat, but the previous three are all from our adversaries.
And I just want to reiterate, between the years of 2010 and 2020, there have been upwards of 900 documented attacks on our power grid. 900. Yes. So those are physical attacks. I think that's through actually 2022. That's just physical attacks? That's not even cyber attacks?
Yes. That's physical attacks. Is there any more that have been effective other than the Medcalf California one?
There has been one in Arizona that actually, well, we saw what happened in North Carolina just recently. And so that just happened a few months ago. What happened in North Carolina?
It knocked out, I believe, 45,000 households for at least two or three days. That was in the news fairly recently. I didn't hear about this.
Yeah, it was within. Probably January, February of this year. And then there were stories about in Oregon and Washington, there were a number of other attacks that had been not disclosed. But then after the North Carolina attack, it was in the news that there were several attacks in Oregon and Washington state. So can you repeat?
So in North Carolina this year? Yes. In January, February time frame, there was a physical attack on the power grid that left how many people without power?
45,000 households without power. So basically an entire city. Yes.
What was the attack? The FBI is investigating a series of attacks on U.S. power grids. In North Carolina, thousands were left without power for days after gunfire damaged two substations. Shots were also fired this week near an energy facility in South Carolina.
And recent attacks were reported in Oregon and Washington state. So they never quite found the perpetrator. There were rumors that this was some kind of... Right wing crazy attack. But we never really got to the complete bottom of it.
Okay. So there was a physical attack in North Carolina this year that left 45,000 without power. And they, again, have failed to report who it was and the cause.
Right. So they're just making shit up. Yeah. As the media continues to do.
So, well. Let's move on into geomagnetic disturbance, the natural EMP. So in the doc, you guys talk about the Carrington event of 1859, the most intense GMD in recorded history. Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure.
So this is called the Carrington event. It occurred in 1859. So this is before we had very many sophisticated electronics, but we had telegraphs. And so all the telegraph lines were knocked out. Various railroad lines were actually fried, you know, in terms of, and we show some pictures in our documentary about this, and it actually sent telegraph operators to the hospital. And this was a massive attack.
And there is a belief that if we had an attack at that scale, today, it would wipe out all our transformers and all our sophisticated electronics. This caused fires, electrical shocks, wiped out all the telegraph stations. A storm of that magnitude today would cause an internet apocalypse.
You cannot accurately predict when the next solar storm will be. Space weather at this point is wildly unpredictable. Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves from something like that?
There's actually a lot that can be done. So earlier in our discussion, I talked about E1, which is EMP. And then I talked about E2, which is lightning.
So this is actually E3. So it's considered natural EMP because it's very similar in terms of the gamma waves, et cetera. But from what I understand is... a slower amplitude, I believe. And so there are something called zero ground blockers that can be put in, you know, outside substations that will protect against this E3.
And in fact, the protection for E3 for a geomagnetic disturbance is a lot less costly than what the cost to protect against E1. So it is forecasted that it would cost as little as $10 billion to protect the entire nation from E3 and GMD. Now to talk a little bit more about GMD, this is also considered a solar flare, a solar storm.
Another term for it is a coronal mass ejection. And essentially what the sun is spitting out, you know, enormous energy and these flares. And so the question is when it coincides with the Earth's orbit.
And so that is a statistical problem or it's a statistical phenomena that we can guess one will. eventually occur will coincide with the Earth's orbit. We just don't know when. NASA has forecasted that there will be a severe storm, you know, potentially as big as the Carrington event. The risk of that, the statistical probability of that is roughly 12% every decade.
12% every decade. So if this happens, would this just, I mean, is this the entire globe or is this whatever side of the globe is facing the sun? How does this go down?
I think it has to do more with hemisphere. Okay. Yeah.
So it would be our, you know, Western hemisphere facing the sun at that particular time. So whichever hemisphere is facing the sun, that's who's going to take it. Yeah. And will the other side be affected at all? I tell you, Sean.
physics was my worst class in high school. So we're getting outside my bandwidth a little there, but I should know that. Well, I appreciate the honesty.
I really do appreciate the honesty. So getting back to what do you think the... Most imminent threat could be out of the four vectors here.
I mean, just going back to China, you know, our adversaries, they've labeled us enemy number one in their eyes. And they've just got so many angles on this country. And now the power grid, you know, I've been going on about this green movement.
And not that I don't think. Green energy would be a good thing. I don't think it works, and I think we found that out in Texas. What was that, last winter or two winters ago?
Two winters ago. And I was upset because it's already known that they would produce all of the batteries. We talked about this last night at dinner, how China's investing in all these lithium mines all around the world. They were there to negotiate with the Taliban before we even pulled out of there.
As we're pulling out. China's there to negotiate the lithium mines, which would be our batteries for all the green solar equipment. They're doing this in Mexico.
They're doing this in Africa. They're making our solar panels. They're supplying our batteries.
They're supplying our wind turbines and everything. Well, now I'm finding out they've been supplying a lot of it all along. And so they've essentially they already have us. But on top of that, companies. Chinese companies are purchasing land near U.S. military bases.
$700 million worth of farmland bought near Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. In 2019, Chinese billionaire purchased land near Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. That's the largest pilot training facility. That's the Air Force's largest pilot training facility. They purchased 140,000.
acres with an airstrip on that land. And there's, I mean, why are foreign companies allowed to access the Texas power grid? Is that still in? This is from 2019. Okay. So Greg Abbott signed the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act to block the proposed wind farm plans that the Chinese had.
So that's good. There's been a rise in number of Chinese nationals crossing into the U.S. through the southern border. I mean, these guys are getting extremely aggressive and normally I would say overconfident, but looking at all the different sectors that they have, they have our supply chain, they had COVID, they are paying off our politicians, they are... Settling Africa.
They are taking all the lithium mines. They are buying our farmland. They, am I missing something? I got to be missing something. They literally have us from every angle.
No, we are incredibly vulnerable. We've let our guard down. As you and I were talking, you know, before we started the interview, it's conservatives need to step up.
You know, Americans need to step up. We realize that we're at war with China. And we have the Taiwan staring us in the face.
And it's likely to happen in the next year and a half. I mean, I feel like we're completely helpless, and the majority of the American population doesn't even realize it yet. No, we need to wake up.
That's why people need to watch this documentary. We need to tell your friends. But we have the facility by which... We can reach out to our regulators, our legislators, our board of directors of our public utilities. But, you know, Sean, we are movers and shakers.
You are disseminating this wisdom to your listeners and viewers. You know, I'm trying to wake people up with this film. I end this film on this tone of positivity because I say we can do this. We've overcome a lot in the past. We built a national highway system.
We overcame racial segregation. We overcame, you know, Nazi Germany with, you know, converting our industrial economy to an arsenal of democracy. And we made that happen.
And therefore, we Americans and we patriots that are listeners and viewers of your show, we just need to step up and we can't get overly You know, comatose about this, we've just got to step up even greater and say, we're going to fix this. Before we get to how we fix it, let's talk about what, in your opinion, what is the... Most likely or imminent threat out of the four of these vectors? I'd say cyber attack, and I'd say it's Chinese transformers. Cyber attack and Chinese transformers?
That's what I would think. What about, one thing I didn't discuss is the political weakness. So it sounds like the, according to the documentary, both the Obama administration and the Trump administration had put things in place to kind of protect these transformers.
Trump signed an executive order while he was in office. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is neglected to address the power grid crisis, and whatever Trump put in place is now falling apart. UK and Israel have appointed a person to oversee their power grids. U.S. has done nothing, and the U.S. does not have direct authority over the civilian infrastructure.
So how—how— When we get to the point where we talk about how we're going to get these politicians to start to enact bills and legal stuff to force these companies to protect our grid a little bit longer, how would we combat all of the money coming from these power corporations? They're going to send in their lobbyists. They're going to pay off.
All of these politicians, we see it all the time. All of our politicians are paid off, all of them. So how are we going to protect ourselves from a utility company that literally has an endless bank account because we all need power, they're never going to go out of business? How do we combat that? So we need to take this movie and move it into a movement, and therefore it needs to be, we need to wake up.
You know, Gen Xers, we need to wake up. Baby boomers, we all need to tell our friends, we need to write these letters. We'll get more into that in a second.
But this can be fixed. There is technology, as we've talked about, that can prevent this. And we just need to, we need a better regulatory system.
Because as we mentioned before, there's been regulatory capture. We need to amend the Federal Power Act. To be able to get NERC, the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation, out of the way, you know, because they're self-regulating, we need to embarrass these utilities and let them know that we need to, you know, put in the infrastructure. And one of the terms for this is harden our grid, protect our grid.
We need to protect our grid against all hazards. You mentioned about the UK and Israel. We mentioned that in the film.
The UK and Israel both have what we call a grid czar, almost, you know, responsible to the president and American people saying, we will protect this grid. When you think about electricity being the most second, most important component after air, I mean, this needs to be protected and this needs to be top priority. What are some things that people can do?
I don't think there's very many people left that have any confidence in the U.S. government at this point. We spoke about that last night. In fact, my personal opinion is they already know it's over and they're ripping the wiring out of the walls and trying to get every last dollar into their pockets before this thing goes up. What are some things that folks can do just to...
prepare their families for something like this that's coming down the line, if it happens. Yeah, so we intentionally didn't take a civil defense, you know, approach to this film. It's kind of left, you know, silent in terms of when you see how severe this might be, and you're sitting around your breakfast table with your spouse and your kids, you've got to think, what are we going to do?
And you... better have some extra food. You should have a generator.
You should potentially have a bolt hole where you can go, where you have friends and family around you. You should have a plan. You should think about this because the risk is high.
And I know this is politically incorrect to talk about. People think you're a tinfoil hat kind of guy if you think that. But how reliant can we be? on this U.S. government, frankly, when you see the threats.
And when you watch this movie and you're going to say, holy smokes, we better protect ourselves. And therefore, you need to think outside the box. You need to think about.
50 years ago, we were more self-reliant. We didn't rely, you know, 100% on calling Uber Eats or, you know, calling Amazon to get our food. I mean, a lot of us had gardens.
A lot of us could, you know, could hunt, etc. Nowadays, we've gotten soft, and therefore, we have to think about getting better prepared and better self-reliant. frankly.
And we have to, the saying I have is, prepare for the worst, hope for the best, leave God to the rest. I have a saying too, you can shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one fills up first. But, you know, I think it's important that, I don't think... There are very many people left at all that have any confidence in the U.S. government. I mean, it's just been failing us time and time and time again, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.
I would like to add just a couple of things, because I know people that watch this show are going to want to take this opportunity to start to prepare right now. And I would say a couple of things that you need to have on hand would be. Some type of a water filtration system, preferably a gravity-fed water filtration system. Some type of a generator, but on top of that, some type of a solar inverter that you can recharge.
There's tons of these things online now, and they're getting better and better and better by the day. I would get at least a couple of them. I would get a Faraday bag to put those generators in, figure out what electronics you think you're actually going to need the most, maybe light.
Heat, because if the grid goes down, there's not going to be any heat, and it's going to be extremely cold in some places. And I would put all of these important electronics that you think that you might need into a Faraday bag to protect from an EMP pulse. And another thing that people never think about, you know, they always think protection.
weapons, things like this, but, and that is a hundred percent. Yeah. You need to be able to protect yourself, especially when this happens, if it happens, because the desperation will kick in extremely fast.
But another thing people don't think about is tools, you know, tools that you need to garden, tools that you need to board up your windows, all this, like the power drills, all that kind of stuff, it's not going to work anymore, you know? And, and so hand tools to be able to enable you to. to increase the infrastructure in your house and protect against the desperation of humanity that's coming. And I think those are very important things to think about. And for anybody that does think the tinfoil hat thing, you know, time and time again, tinfoil hat people are becoming there.
It's turning out that a lot of these things are right. And it's. And it's not a tinfoil hat thing. We see it anytime there's a hurricane, you see this in a very small capacity. What we're talking about is something that could last to the end of your lifetime.
Yeah. And then we saw it in Texas in February 2021, four minutes and 30 seconds away from a total collapse of the grid. The short term was two to three days without power. That way that went. to 200 deaths.
That brought 200 deaths. Long-term outage, one to two years, that would equal 10 million plus deaths. There were 210 fatalities and an estimated 710 related deaths.
8.7 million people had to boil their water. August of 2003, New York City had a total blackout. 55 million people lost power for two days. The New York City subways and traffic came to a complete halt.
Eight U.S. and Southeast Canada, eight U.S. states and Southeast Canada were infected. New York, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut were all affected. So anybody that's thinking that this is the likelihood of this happening is slim. It's already happening. It's already happening.
We just mentioned there were 900. There's been 900. personal, physical attacks on the grid in what, a 10-year period. So this isn't that far-fetched at all. In fact, the likelihood, especially with China becoming more and more aggressive towards the US, and I don't know if manipulating is the correct word, but I'm going to use it, manipulating different countries and nations and even some of our allies to side with them to collapse the dollar. And I mean, it's... It's just a matter of time.
You know, it is literally a matter of time. It's coming. And this is certainly not far-fetched. And, you know, the film lays out with some phenomenal experts.
So we mentioned Angus King. We mentioned Jennifer Granholm. We also have Newt Gingrich. We have Ted Koppel.
is very, very concerned about the potential of a cyber attack. We have the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who just retired, John Hyten, said that, yes, we've protected our critical missile systems and our command control centers from EMP, but our critical civilian infrastructure, we haven't protected it at all, and that we ought to think about it. One thing that I did really appreciate about your documentary is the end. And so now we can get to how we fix this. And I'd like you to explain it, but you have really made it easy on the website, Grid Down, Power Up.
Just Google it. It'll take you right there. But you really laid out, you've made it extremely easy for people to get in touch with their...
political figures and how to find them. And you guys even have an email that's already written up. You just got to hit the send button. So can you go into... Sure.
So thanks for saying that. So it's griddownpowerup.com and you can watch the complete movie there. You also can watch a 12-minute version, which is a highlights reel, because sometimes people want to schedule... you know, two weeks from Thursday before they can allocate 56 minutes. But you can really get the crux of this.
But under the Participate tab at the top on the right, click on that, and you can write. You can identify your legislators, regulators, and members of your boards of directors for your public utility. And so far, you can.
Put in your home address, a few clicks of your mouse, and you will have a pre-written letter pop-up for your state legislators, lower house, upper house, your congressman, your governor, your adjutant general of your state's National Guard, your FEMA emergency director, as well as your chairman of your public utility commission. You can do all that through a couple different. outreaches. And you can have these letters written. You can sign a petition.
You can make a post to Facebook. You can actually have a phone call mechanism by which your Skype or your phone will be engaged. You'll have the phone number. You click. You'll be able to reach that congressperson's office or state legislator's office.
We also have an outreach to your FERC and NERC regulators. And so we've made this very, very easy. You hear that, everybody? It's literally just clicks. Just go to the website, do the clicks, everything's done for you, get in touch with these people, and let's fix this damn problem.
I mean, this is a nation-ending event. if this happens. It is the end of the world as you know it.
And for 90% of you, you won't even be around if it happens. But David, I really appreciate you coming out here and sharing this information. And I'm happy to jump on board and get this out to as many people as possible.
I know how imminent this threat is and the probability is extremely likely. So I just want to say I really appreciate what you're doing. It's going to take people like you. putting things aside and producing stuff like this to wake people up and inform the masses of how how important this is to protect our grid. Well, Sean, thank you for that.
And thanks for this opportunity to be in front of your very intelligent, astute viewers. And just I would urge them to watch the film and then Alert, you know, 10, 20 of your friends and then take those outreach mechanisms and let's let's fix it. So let's get it done.
Let's do it. All the links will be linked below. Everybody go watch it.
It's it's an amazing documentary and very alarming. But we all need to watch it. I watched it three times. So anyways, David, best of luck to you.
Hey everybody, I'm Shawn Ryan. Click here to subscribe to the Shawn Ryan Show YouTube channel for the hottest and most compelling interviews that you will not see anywhere else. I've also made a playlist of all the previous SRS episodes so they're easy to find. You can find that right here.