This Technology Kills Electronics

Watching my parents grow old hasn’t been easy.

Aside from the normal effects of aging — the graying hair, the slowing pace of life — there has also been no shortage of ailments.

My dad with his heart, my mom with her arthritis (which thankfully isn’t progressing very rapidly).

But for all of the problems, aches, and pains, there is one benefit I’ve found to being a senior citizen today…

My parents never had to endure the likes of Nickelback and Aerosmith as the music of their youth.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same.

From the time I was in grade school all the way up to the first decade of the 2000s, I was forced against the deepest desires of my soul to cringe my way through countless renditions of acoustic atrocities like “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing,” “Cryin,” and the positively brain-melting, suicide-encouraging, “Back in the Saddle” — which sucked monumentally despite having appeared during Aerosmith’s early years.

And just as the image of Steve Tyler’s horse-faced visage gradually faded into the realm of rock history, another even bigger atrocity surfaced, calling itself Nickelback.

Certainly the most erosive thing to come out of Canada since the colossal glaciers that carved out the Great Lakes, Nickelback redefined the concept of mass douchebaggery… or perhaps just perfected it.

Between the voice of their singer, which sounds like a dying toad trying to escape the gagging throat of an overzealous televangelist preacher, and their song-writing skills — to which we owe gems like: “And this is where I went to school. Most of the time had better things to do. Criminal record says I broke in twice; I must have done it half a dozen times” — Nickelback is easily the best justification for self-inflicted deafness yet.

So yes, age does have its benefits. My parents may be feeling the effects of their years, but they certainly never had to feel the hope-crushing tidal wave of angst and self-hatred that comes at you when the first couple notes of “Eat the Rich” or “Figured You Out” come spewing from the radio like an opening salvo of Montezuma’s Revenge.

However, there is a hope today, and as with most hopes, it comes through the miracle of technology.

Kill Bad Music With Electromagnetic Radiation

Today, there is a way that sense-offending noise pollution like the aforementioned can be stopped — halted in its tracks with the effect of a concrete barrier.

As with most cutting-edge, paradigm-disrupting technologies, the system I’ve taken this rather circuitous route to explain comes to us from the military.

How does it work? How does it stop the evil sound waves carrying the screeching sounds of Steve Tyler or the fake raspiness of would-be high school janitor Chad Kroeger?

It’s called EMP (electromagnetic pulse), and aside from being able to stop Aerosmith and Nickelback (or anything else, for that matter) from taking over your sound system, it can do a great many things for our national defense needs.

EMP has been a bit of a legend to military strategists since the discovery of the first man-made EMP, which came as part of the radiation wave from the first A-bomb tests conducted during Project Trinity in the 1940s.

Simple in theory, EMPs (also called “transient electromagnetic disturbances”) contain a wide spectrum of wavelengths, ejected in all directions from the center of a nuclear fission reaction.

The sun throws out these pulses as well in the form of solar flares, and their effect on electronics has been known to us since the first satellites felt the wrath of these energy tsunamis in the 1960s.

A Weapon Repurposed

The main problem with using EMPs as a tool of war is that to generate a wave strong enough to actually disable enemy electronics, disrupt their communications, and wreak all matter of havoc on high-tech equipment, one would have to actually set off a nuclear device.

Destroying and killing everything within range of the EMP makes little sense, which made its use as a weapon elusive.

The real Holy Grail — the weapon that would allow total technical shutdown while harming nothing and nobody — has not existed.

At least not until now.

But three days ago, all of this changed.

Earlier this week, the Air Force and Boeing (NYSE: BA) announced the successful testing of a device called “CHAMP” (Counter-electronics High-powered microwave Advanced Missile Project).

Yes, DoD spinmasters really earned their paycheck with that acronym.

In the works for years, the announcement came with a confirmation: According to Air Force Research Laboratory Commander Major General Tom Masiello, CHAMP is “an already operational system already in our tactical air force.”

This is a startling revelation to anybody who understands just what this device can do when fielded against a modern enemy.

Capable of flying over a specific target with the accuracy of a standard long-range cruise missile, CHAMP can shut down every device containing modern circuitry.

Even primitive transistors are not immune to the invisible power of the EMP.

Painlessly Taking the Fight Out of the Enemy

This means that instead of crushing enemy information infrastructure with bombs and missiles that inevitably destroy much more than just the intended target, we will now have the power to selectively and non-lethally make our enemy deaf and blind in advance of any military operations.

And to those who think our biggest enemies don’t use anything more sophisticated than a Toyota truck and an AK-47, the reality is that cellular technology is one of the things terrorist groups have used to multiply their effectiveness for years now.

And as for our own high-tech circuits? Well, there is a way to shield sensitive electronics from EMPs — so the issue of friendly fire (or electrons) will not pose a threat to us or our allies.

This should make you feel good, as this is the first kinder, gentler weapon to come along that actually has the ability to effectively paralyze an enemy.

For Every Move, a Countermove

It should also make you feel good for another reason: The market for electromagnetic shielding should respond to this development.

We can expect a few years of lead-time before the likes of Russia and China start building their own EMP delivery systems (if they aren’t already).

The result will be an invigorated interest in EMP shielding for both military and commercial assets — including bank databases.

At the moment, however, it’s a sad and worrisome state of affairs, as most of our domestic power grid remains unprotected from attacks of this nature.

Companies like EMP Grid Services LLC, a private firm with offices in Virginia, provide exactly the sort of protection that companies, banks, and government agencies will be looking for in the future.

However, as the demand for this level of defense broadens, you can expect some of the bigger players to get into the action as well.

Where there’s a need, somebody is always willing to profit from it.

In the meantime, however, the threat to us is probably minimal at best. With the CHAMP system only now becoming public, the only ones who will have to fear a sudden and unexplained blackout will be enemies of the U.S. government (for the time being, at least).

It’s just a shame Steve Tyler and the other guy aren’t high-priority targets… yet.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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