The Chinese and Russians could also do this.
...but are sane enough not to till necessary.
It’s the matter of plausible deniability. If the norks do it China and Russia both have clean hands. Who do we retaliate against, exactly?
The norks wouldn’t notice if we emp’d them. Any any significant non conventional attack on the norks would decimate south korea.
Not to mention the loss of 90% of the population of CONUS. We’d be off the world political map, probably forever. China, Russia, whoever, could just walk right into CONUS about 6m after such an attack. With little or no resistance and no radioactive no go zones either.
An EMP attack could put us at third world status for the next 2 generations. Possibly longer since we wouldn’t even have a population surplus to market as a labor force.
“The Chinese and Russians could also do this.”
Why do it directly when your proxies North Korea and iran are capable and just waiting for you to give the go ahead?
When it happens, whether from North Korea or Iran, if US submarine and naval forces based outside the continental USA are able to respond the response will be against the client state and not China or Russia directly. All China and Russia have to do is decide how to split the territory, once the slaughter is over when the starving population devolves into anarchy.
North Korea only has nuclear capability because China and Russia permit it and have facilitated it. North Korea has provided substantial aide to the Iranian nuclear program. Again, it couldn’t happen if China and Russia weren’t allowing it.
It isn’t hard to figure out where this is all heading. When it does, thank Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski for spiking the bipartisan bill in 2008 that would have shielded the electrical grid from EMP. Also thank the free traders whose deindustrialization policies since 1990 have resulted in the US having no manufacturing capability to replace key grid components, including large transformers, after an attack. We now import them all. Not to worry, the Chinese occupation army will bring them.