By The Craig Bushon Show Media Team
If you think the next big attack on America will come with bomb craters and burning cities, think again. China is investing heavily in weapons that could cripple our nation without firing a single bullet — and our leaders aren’t moving nearly fast enough to stop it.
I’m talking about the Chinese “blackout bomb.” It’s not some movie prop or futuristic fantasy. It’s shorthand for a chilling arsenal of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-power microwave (HPM) weapons that the Chinese Communist Party is suspected of developing — weapons specifically designed to shut down our power grids, communications networks, and critical infrastructure.
In Beijing’s strategic playbook, this is the new battlefield: disabling a country’s heartbeat by frying its electronics, not flattening its cities. They see it as a clean, effective way to gain leverage or achieve total dominance. It’s tyranny by technology — and it’s far closer than most Americans realize.
The dark power of EMPs — and why China is obsessed
China has spent decades studying both nuclear and non‑nuclear EMP attacks. A high-altitude nuclear EMP (HEMP) can be detonated hundreds of miles above the Earth, unleashing a pulse strong enough to knock out power grids across entire regions or even continents. Meanwhile, smaller, non-nuclear systems — sometimes dubbed “blackout bombs” — use HPM generators to emit microwave bursts that overload circuits and disable electronics on the ground.
Declassified U.S. documents have shown that China ran early EMP animal tests aimed at understanding how to cripple Taiwanese infrastructure without mass casualties. Their open military journals talk explicitly about using electromagnetic attacks to destroy satellites, silence radars, jam communications, and blind missile defenses.
And let’s not forget: China’s anti-satellite (ASAT) lasers and directed-energy projects are not conspiracy theory. They are central pillars of its counterspace program. In a world where our military, banking, logistics, and even food delivery depend on satellites and synchronized electronics, one successful EMP or HPM strike could throw us into chaos.
How prepared is America? Not nearly enough.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: While the Department of Defense has made classified efforts to harden certain key military installations — building EMP-shielded command centers, testing at places like Joint Base San Antonio, and beefing up redundancy in Indo-Pacific bases — our broader civilian infrastructure is dangerously exposed.
Roughly 85% of the U.S. electric grid is privately owned. The federal government cannot force companies to shield their systems. After Trump’s 2019 executive order, the Department of Homeland Security began drafting resilience plans, and the Electric Power Research Institute ran simulations showing how well surge arrestors might protect our transformers. But voluntary guidelines only go so far. Much of our critical civilian backbone — power stations, telecom hubs, water systems — still lacks robust Faraday shielding or HEMP-level protections.
And China knows it.What a “blackout” strike could look like
Picture this: a conflict over Taiwan escalates. China detonates a nuclear device 200 miles above the Pacific, sending an electromagnetic wave sweeping across Hawaii’s Pacific Command posts and parts of the mainland. Simultaneously, it launches a swarm of drones equipped with non-nuclear microwave “blackout” payloads to fry radar and communications nodes near U.S. bases in Guam and Japan.
No mass casualties. No smoking craters. Just darkness, confusion, and a cascade of secondary failures that could ground aircraft, cut off fuel deliveries, and even crash financial markets. That’s the allure of these weapons for an authoritarian regime — maximum strategic impact with minimal physical destruction.
So what should we do?
It’s long past time for the United States to get serious. Here’s what we need, right now:
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Mandatory EMP shielding for critical infrastructure, not just voluntary standards. Congress must empower DHS and FERC to enforce real protections.
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Accelerated hardening of our military installations, including power redundancy and rapid-recovery systems that can restart within hours of an EMP hit.
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A national stockpile of critical transformers and grid components, since these can take months to replace.
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Continued research into EMP detection and “counter pulse” technology that can disrupt enemy attempts to deploy these weapons.
We also need to educate the American people about the very real threats posed by electromagnetic warfare. Because ignorance is Beijing’s best ally.
We must defend our modern way of life — or lose it overnight
The bottom line is painfully simple: China is building the tools to turn off America’s lights. Their investments in EMP and microwave warfare aren’t sci-fi speculation; they are documented strategic priorities embedded in official doctrine. Meanwhile, we are still arguing over who’s responsible for protecting the grid.
At The Craig Bushon Show, we believe truth, accountability, and the power of the vote are the bedrock of preserving this Republic. But none of that survives if we wake up one morning to a silent country — no phones, no banking, no food supply logistics, no defense radars — because we failed to take threats like China’s “blackout bombs” seriously.
It’s time to demand action from our leaders. Not tomorrow. Not when it’s convenient. Now.
Because in the end, the question isn’t whether China will use these weapons if cornered. The question is whether we will be ready when they do.
For more deep dives into threats to America’s security — from EMPs to economic sabotage — keep following The Craig Bushon Show. Share this op-ed, and let’s wake up more Americans to the risks we face before it’s too late.
