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Comment by spdustin | Hacker News Reader

Not a wild thought. The China, Russia, and the US (if not the other nuclear powers) have made known their plans to use a nuclear electromagnetic pulse as the first phase of any attack.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse#...)

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That seems to be talking about using EMP as a targeted weapon.

I think the question was more if any countries have ready made plans to exploit the natural disaster for military gain. Like does any country have a standing order to in the case of massive global disruption subdue or attack their geopolitical rivals?

The Carrington event was about 7 days, so one could assume this would affect EVERY country.

So the hypothetical nation state here would need a ready-to-go plan ready to roll out at any time, and the plan must assume the native country also has all electronics knocked out along with the adversarial country. Such an all-out attack by itself would turn the world against this aggressor, moreso since it exploited the event and was premeditated. I think it's unlikely, it would be a crazy thing to do.

Now, who do I think might want to pull off something like this? A terrorist group could have a plan spooled up just waiting for this event. That, and I would expect some opportunists to appear as well.

With that being the case, you would think that grid hardening would not have trouble getting funding, as a matter of national security.

Hardening essential comms and energy infrastructure has been funded. Trouble is, the rest of us don't benefit from the government redundancies, since they're focused on continuity of government rather than continuity of the electorate.

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