United States’ critical national infrastructure has long been a topic of concern within key infrastructure and homeland security circles. CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) defines critical infrastructure under the USA Patriot Act of 2001 as any “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual to the United States that the incapacity of destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”   The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2020 warned that both domestic and foreign terrorists have developed “specific plans” to attack the US energy and utilities sector as the US electric grid has been found to be one of the most vulnerable of critical national infrastructure.

Fast forward two years since the study and domestic attacks are now infiltrating our energy and utilities sectors. We witnessed truly concerning domestic attacks on the US electric grid in late 2022. On December 3, 2022 Moore County N.C. experienced a shooting attack on two main electrical substations which left at least 40,000 people without power for weeks. The attack was premeditated as the ensuing FBI investigation found structured markings for targeted gunfire. While the electric grid attack in North
Carolina was widely publicized, similar attacks in Oregon and Washington state went almost unknown. Late November 2022 heralded at least six attacks to Oregon’s electric grid involving firearms. If local gunmen can incapacitate county grids, imagine what a full-fledged terrorist attack could
encompass?

In September 2022 I attended Keiser University’s Women in Tech lecture The Effect of Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse on Critical U.S. Infrastructure by James Todd Lovelace. What I learned was very concerning. Todd Lovelace gave a very detailed 8 day run down of what would happen to the United States based on a foreign missile attack aimed at the main US power grid. In brief:

• The scenario presented hides a Shahab-3 missile in one of our massive US coal barges that have daily/weekly/monthly routes through Midwestern waterways.
  • This missile has been commonly used by North Korea and Iran. Once the coal barge is opened the missile is easily shot into Midwestern sky to attack the heart of the US.
  • Quantitative models show a blast wave B16b-GIC attack in the Midwest will immediately bring down the entire US power grid.
  • Also, we have 10 major nuclear power plants located in the Chicago area which was simulated as the highest target range.

• Lovelace presented a day 1 to day 8 scenario of how North Florida would be affected by the missile attack 1000 miles away in the Midwest.

• Day 1 – The US grid breaks into small grid islands. Possibly 60% of these islands will remain defunct.
  • Generators only last up to three days and will be used for large critical institutions. Approximately 80% of cell towers will crash. We will need to fall back on coal for fuel. Gas and hybrid cars will run out of fuel and will need to be mass parked by day 3.
• Day 8 – This is one week after a major terrorist attack:
  • Our digital infrastructure which we as a Nation and a global community depend on is our “single point of failure.” Almost all manual devices have been computerized in our modern time. Cars, railroads, banks, telecommunication, workforce. And digital will stay failed possibly for 30+ days.
  • Hospitals need mass utility to run let alone computerized options. Expect huge increases in mortality especially for infants and the elderly.
  • Without telecommunication fire/rescue/police will not be able to receive civilian calls. The National Guard is needed mainly to protect existing energy, nuclear and chemical sectors from further attack.
  • The US Dams Sector is the only silver lining during an attack, according to Lovelace.
    • Our hydro-electric systems have been proven to withstand the B16b-GIC waves and will most likely be the mechanism to resuscitate electric power grid restoration in the medium term, after coal fuel.

From a policy perspective it bodes well to understand whether CISA’s Partnership Advisory Council works at a grassroots level with county/state governments as well as local businesses for infrastructure improvement via public private partnerships. If we truly had a working partnership to plan,
test and monitor protection of the US power grid across state dictates, domestic gunfire would not be able to bring county and state grids to a halt. More is needed from our infrastructure officials to ensure that the United States can withstand both wide scale domestic and foreign attack.

We would also suggest a new take on an old energy source which would be very lucrative to develop. As depicted in Todd Lovelace’s lecture, we as a nation will have no choice to resort to coal energy when digital and electric energy fails. We know that coal energy use has been frowned upon
by environmentalists, yet it is essential to critical national infrastructure recovery. Yet what if we harnessed and invested in coal power in the form of synthetic industrial diamonds for energy fallback? Europe is currently on the cutting edge of renewable electric energy using both real and artificial
industrial diamonds. Energy Industry Review considers industrial diamond energy as having “superior electronic and thermal capacities [with] many possibilities in power transmission.”

For purposes of critical national infrastructure protection physics has proven that to withstand an electric voltage of 1K V, a regular converter requires 100 microns while lab industrial diamonds require only 1 micron. US R&D public/private investment would benefit from placing emphasis on
the manufacture of synthetic industrial diamond converters as a solid enhancement to the energy fallback on its predecessor coal during times of dire national power and energy crises.

REFERENCES:

• “Critical Infrastructure Sectors.” 2023. CISA Online. www.cisa.gov
• David, Rona R. “Supreme Semiconductor: Industrial Diamond – Cutting Losses During Power Transmission Over Long Distances.” Energy Industry Review Online. https://energyindustryreview.com/metals-mining/supreme-semiconductor-industrial-diamond/
• DeBlaker, Karl B. 2022. “North Carolina attacks highlight the vulnerability of power grids.” NPR News Online. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/09/1141937948/north-carolina-attacks-highlight-thevulnerability-of-power-grids
• Lovelace, Todd James. 2022. “The Effect of Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse on Critical U.S. Infrastructure.” Keiser University and JAX Range Assoc. Online. youtube.com/watch?v=q4B_A3Anlk0
• Mahdawi, Arwa. 2022. “Attacks on Pacific north-west power stations raise fears for US electric grid.” The Guardian Online. https://www.theguadian.com/us-news/2022/dec/09/us-power-grid-pacific-
  northwest-attacks

Are Gold and Silver Real Money? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke answers no.  And so do America’s youth.  Both clueless.

The youth, who pay with credit cards, not with cash, think money is digital. Consequently a bitcoin is worth many times the value of a gold coin despite the fact that a bitcoin’s value is nebulous and can decline thousands of dollars in a day.

And, apparently, gold and silver are not money for people worried about inflation that is
allegedly so serious that the Federal Reserve is engineering a recession and pension
fund and Big Bank wipeout to stop.

With inflation high and financial investments paying so little, why haven’t people sought
to protect their purchasing power by going into gold and silver?  Gold and silver prices
have fallen while inflation has risen. This is nonsensical.

Part of the answer is that the US dollar is high despite high inflation. This normally nonsensical relationship is because the UK pound, euro, and yen are adversely impacted by economy shutdowns due to Covid lockdowns and energy shortages created by Washington’s Russian sanctions, and these countries are experiencing their own inflations from the Covid lockdowns that reduced supply and cut them off from global deliveries.  Supply reductions can result in higher prices just as effectively as
excessive consumer demand.

Another part of the answer is that the supply of gold and silver in the futures market can be increased by printing uncovered contracts and, thereby can be increased in supply like fiat paper money.  The prices of gold and silver are in fact set in futures markets, not in the physical market where gold and silver are purchased.  The futures market in gold and silver permits “naked shorts.”  This means that unlike the stock market, where the person shorting the market has to have the actual stock to sell, which is usually borrowed, gold and silver can be sold short without the seller owning any gold or silver.

What this means is that gold and silver that trade in future markets can be created by printing contracts that are not covered by gold and silver, and today gold and silver can be increased in supply by printing contracts in the futures market where price is determined just as fiat paper money can be printed.

The printing of contracts and then dumping them into the futures market suddenly increases the supply of paper gold.  A sudden increase in shorts in the futures market drives down the gold price.  The Fed & the Big Banks have used naked shorting to prevent rising gold and silver prices that would show the true depreciation in the dollar’s value.

I believe that eventually this way of holding down the price of gold and silver will be overwhelmed by flight from excessively printed paper currencies.

My conclusion: I believe gold and silver are the ONLY REAL MONEY out there.

As J.P. Morgan stated in his testimony before Congress in 1912 “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”

If you’re scratching your head wondering how so many people and institutions could’ve invested so much trust and money into a shady, unregulated, and inherently risky operation like the FTX scam run by Bankman-Fried or any other house of cards, like the crypto industry in general, consider the quickness with which the masses, without question, bought in to approved narratives about.

• Effectiveness and safety of COVID vaccines and mandates
• The legitimacy of the 2020 election
• The 1/6 Capitol “insurrection”
• Inflation is temporary and comparatively not that bad
• Supply chain breakdowns reflect a booming economy
• American patriots are “fascists,” “extremists,” and/or “terrorists”
• Ukraine is a “democracy” worthy of $91+ billion of U.S. money
• An open southern border is needed to fill American jobs
• “Climate change” will destroy the planet in only a few years
• BLM is a legitimate benefactor to black Americans
• White people are innately “racist”
• “Diversity, inclusion, and equity” are more important than merit
• Teachers know what children need better than their parents do
• Gender is “fluid” and people, including children, can choose their own
• “Born that way” as a rationale for the queer/trans movement
• Abortion as a humane way of protecting women’s health, and
• Everyone is entitled to his own “truth”

Notice a theme here? Most of the false narratives seducing the gullible public are coming from the political left —And they’re working in parallel with global political and financial powers who want us to accept that “by 2030, you will own nothing and be happy.” 

None of these leftist narratives would stand the light of day if we all chose to reject them and openly call them out for what they are — lies, propaganda, and con jobs. 

Over the past 50 or more years, we have become a nation of people undereducated, misinformed, disenfranchised, disempowered, silenced, chemically numbed, and made overly comfortable in our little private digital environments. We have been neutered to the point where we have lost not only critical thought, abstract reasoning, and basic common sense, but the capacities that make us humans created in God’s image — compassion, empathy, and selfless love for one another.

Unless we change, we may be reaching a point of no return for the humanity we once knew. All change starts from within each of us individually. So question everything you see and hear; resist herd mentality, trust your gut; and, for the sake of others more vulnerable to the con, speak out against the madness. If enough of us actively take control of the narratives we’ve been fed, we will discover we’re not alone, and according to the “butterfly effect,” individual change will grow to become collective change. We are the majority, and must be silent no more.

Happy New Year