Protecting America’s Grid and Restoring Constitutional Accountability Online

On November 7, 2022, the day before Election Day, Kim Monson explored two critical threats facing Americans: the vulnerability of the electrical grid to electromagnetic pulse attacks and the erosion of constitutional rights in the digital realm. Glenn Rhoades of the EMP Task Force and Scott Cleland of the Restore Us Institute joined the broadcast to sound the alarm on these overlooked dangers.

America’s Vulnerable Electrical Grid

Start listening at 35:16 – Hour 1

Glenn Rhoades, Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, delivered a sobering update on the nation’s grid security. Rhoades opened by paying tribute to Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, the organization’s late executive director and world-renowned EMP expert who recently passed away. The tribute underscored the urgency of continuing Pry’s work to protect America from this existential threat.

Rhoades revealed that he was recently selected to join Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm’s Advisory Board, where he presented four critical actions needed to secure America’s energy future. He emphasized that the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy are not effectively coordinating their understanding of EMP risks, a failure documented by the Government Accountability Office. The expert stressed that defense contractors estimate it will take 10 years to fully engineer solutions to protect the grid.

Colorado has been at the forefront of state-level action, with legislation advancing to create a Critical Infrastructure Review Board that would partner with defense contractors to port military EMP protection technologies to the civilian grid. Rhoades warned that without action, a full nuclear exchange or even a solar event could result in 90 percent of the population perishing within months due to grid failure.

“If we don’t do this, within the next three to four months after a nuclear exchange, we would lose 90% of our population. We would cease to exist.”

Glenn Rhoades, Director of National Operations, EMP Task Force

Restoring Constitutional Rights in the Digital Age

Start listening at 71:44 – Hour 2

Scott Cleland, founder and executive director of the Restore Us Institute, exposed how five presidential administrations and thirteen Congresses have failed to protect Americans from online harms. Cleland traced the problem to 1990s policies designed to encourage internet adoption that created, in effect, an absence of government oversight online. What seemed reasonable when only a few percent of Americans used the internet for 30 minutes a month has become untenable now that digital life is integrated into everything.

The policy expert drew a stark contrast between offline and online accountability. If two people conspire to commit a crime in person, they face the full force of law. Do the same over a smartphone or laptop, and criminal penalties rarely apply. Cleland described how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants technology companies effective impunity to moderate content however they choose, creating what he called a system where “might is right and spite is right.”

Cleland catalogued how Americans have been reduced to “commercial chattel” online, describing citizens as lab rats, indentured servants, and second-class citizens in the digital realm. He emphasized that children are particularly vulnerable, noting that the Supreme Court’s 1997 precedent effectively treated the coercion of minors for sex as a form of protected speech. The solution, Cleland argued, is restoring constitutional authority online so that the same rules and rights that apply offline protect Americans in the digital world.

“It gives them immunity but actually impunity to moderate anything. And to put it in simple terms, it makes them meddlesome middlemen, and they have impunity. Literally, they have license to do whatever they want.”

Scott Cleland, Executive Director, Restore Us Institute