Author of The Civil Defense Book
Congress Passed Critical Infrastructure Protection Provisions in 2016 The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act was a bill introduced in Congress in 2013 and 2015 and finally passed in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (NDAA). Congress said the provisions were designed to “to protect Americans from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a…
Bipartisan agreement about threats to the electric grid There has been little bipartisan agreement in Congress about anything in the last decade. Healthcare, taxes, the budget – you name it, they disagree on it. There is one glaring exception: The threats to the electric grid from a variety of man-made and natural threats. They all…
Civil defense gradually morphed into emergency management. There are several good documents that give us the history of civil defense in the United States. Here is one from FEMA and here is an interesting manual (FEMA 107) from 1986. (Thank you to the Civil Defense Museum for making this available to us!) It can be hard to parse…
Why has so little critical infrastructure protection passed congress? I just don’t get it. I mean, I understand why Congress is struggling on health care and tax reform. The reds and the blues have different opinions and different philosophies and apparently nobody wants to compromise. I get that. It’s the same on a lot…
On October 30, 2013 Representative Trent Franks introduced a new bill: The Critical Infrastructure Protection Act (or “CIPA”) (H.R. 3410 – read it here). The bill was co-sponsored by Representative Pete Sessions. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security. If the history of grid protection legislation is any indication, the bill may…