seriously? some members of congress do. i should say the congress as a whole does. the emp commission was established. senator ron johnson, the chairman of the senate homeland security committee passed a really important bill in 2016 called the critical infrastructure protection act which directed the department of homeland security to start planning and preparing to protect our country from natural and nuclear emp. so congress takes it seriously, i wish they would take it more seriously. one of the things that was done in the not so serious category is congress decided to close down the emp commission at the end of september in the very month that north korea successfully tested a hydrogen bomb that the north koreans designed for superpowerful emp attack. makes no sense to do that. the commission should have continued if you are serious about this. mark: we ll be right back.
imagine this nationwide. right. mark: and when you start to think of electricity, everything we do is associated with electricity, isn t it? even if you try and fill up your car, the gas station, the pump, electricity. everything we do is related to electricity, no? absolutely. all the critical infrastructures depend upon it. communications, transportation, banking and finance. we did an experiment on the commission and i went to a grocery store and picked up an apple and i wondered how did this apple get on this grocery store in the washington, d.c., area? a simple apple? tracing the history of that apple, it was grown in an orchard in washington, harvested mechanically, it was cleaned and packaged mechanically using electronic systems and electronic assembly belts. put on a refrigerated truck and drove across the country so people locally in washington, d.c. could eat the apple.
provide a definitive answer for purposes of public policy about the way forward and the commission system has tended to work well. we have missile defense because of the results of congressional commissions, commission called the marsh commission that laid out the rules to prepare us against cyber warfare. i wish i could say the obama administration followed the advice of the emp commission, that s the point of commission said, we were ignored until the trump administration, and i just hope it s not too late because now, eight years ago, you know, north korea didn t have missiles that could reach the united states, you know, it wasn t testing hydrogen bombs but it is today, and poses a clear threat. mark: is this linking with the notion of our strategic defense initiative and started under reagan and conservatives and
know or hear about nuclear emp, they wouldn t meet with the chairman of our commission, dr. william graham, the world s foremost expert on this. he was one of the people that discovered the phenomena in the 1962 star fish prime test when i was in elementary school. imagine not meeting with dr. william graham. it would be like not meeting with albert einstein when he s trying to tell thought nazis could develop the atomic bomb in 1939. that s how irresponsible the administration was. shutting the door on the albert einstein of emp, dr. william graham, not listening to him, not following the reldations, when the commission was reestablished by congress, obama and holdovers did everything they could to sabotage and undermine our work. mark: why? emp did not fit into the narratives that they had for trying to sell two of the obama administration s major foreign policy objectives. one was the idea of a world
catastrophe. he s the first president to include emp in protecting the electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures from emp. moreover, numerous meetings between the emp commission and the national security council and talked about making emp part of the plans to modernize the critical infrastructure. so the difference between the trump administration and the obama administration is night and day. mark: you meet with the obama national security council. they never let us. mark: for eight years? no. they never met with the commission, and they weren t interested in implementing. in fact there was a general government accountability office report done in 2015 that showed 0 of the emp recommendations were implemented by the obama administration. not a single one. mark: this commission was created by congress, it s a legitimate commission. yes, of course, and the whole purpose of commissions like this is to basically