Stratfor addresses the issue. We are vulnerable. But only major players could attempt it and they know that such an attack would trigger nuclear retaliation. And we really don't know the extent of damage that would result.
The bottom line?
The world is a dangerous place, full of potential threats. Some things are more likely to occur than others, and there is only a limited amount of funding to monitor, harden against, and try to prevent, prepare for and manage them all. When one attempts to defend against everything, the practical result is that one defends against nothing. Clear-sighted, well-grounded and rational prioritization of threats is essential to the effective defense of the homeland.
Hardening national infrastructure against EMP and HPM is undoubtedly important, and there are very real weaknesses and critical vulnerabilities in America’s critical infrastructure — not to mention civil society. But each dollar spent on these efforts must be balanced against a dollar not spent on, for example, port security, which we believe is a far more likely and far more consequential vector for nuclear attack by a rogue state or non-state actor.
That sounds about right. No crash program is necessary, but we probably should have standards for new construction and maintenance that would harden infrastructure over time so at least something survives to provide a basis for rebuilding. And we should have plans to rebuild and cope until we can rebuild.
