China's New "Blackout Bomb": A Non-Lethal Weapon With Potentially Lethal Consequences

On Thursday, June 29, 2025, a striking video released by China's state broadcaster CCTV caught the attention of military analysts and policymakers worldwide. The video showcased an animated depiction of what appears to be a newly developed graphite bomb - nicknamed a "blackout bomb". This weapon, designed to cripple an adversary's power grid without causing direct physical destruction, underscores China's ongoing efforts to expand its arsenal of non-kinetic warfare tools.

Illustration by The Geostrata

While the concept itself is not new, graphite bombs were first used by the United States during the Gulf War in 1991. China's high-profile reveal indicates renewed interest in weapons that can neutralise infrastructure while avoiding the devastation and public backlash of conventional Strikes.

The CCTV animation, attributed to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation ( CACS ), depicts a missile launching over an enemy power station. It then releases a cluster of 90 cylindrical submunitions that burst open midair, scattering graphite fibres over a broad area. According to the animation, each submunition can affect about ten thousand square meters, implying a single missile could blanket an entire power substation or node of the grid.

WHAT IS A GRAPHITE BOMB?

A graphite bomb - sometimes called a "Soft Bomb" - is a special weapon that doesn't explode like a normal bomb. Instead, it spreads tiny threads of carbon (Graphite) into the air. These tiny threads fall onto things like power lines, transformers, or power stations. Since graphite can conduct electricity, these threads cause short circuits when they touch electrical equipment. This makes the power system stop working and can shut down electricity in an area.

The good thing (From the user's side) is that a graphite bomb doesn't destroy buildings or kill people - it just cuts off power for a while. 

Graphite bombs have proven their effectiveness under certain conditions. During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. used graphite bombs to knock out about 70 % of Iraq's power grid with minimal civilian casualties. NATO repeated the tactic during the 1999 Kosovo war, dropping graphite bombs on Serbia's power infrastructure to degrade its ability to resist airstrikes.

WHY DOES CHINA WANT A BLACKOUT BOMB?

The Present Geopolitical context offers some clues. Over the last decade, China's military modernisation has heavily prioritised cyber warfare, electronic warfare and space-based capabilities, all aimed at disabling an opponent's command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) Systems. A graphite bomb fits nearly into this doctrine.

If used at the start of a conflict, a blackout bomb could blind enemy radars, cut power to military bases, or sow chaos in civilian infrastructure. By avoiding outright destruction, such attacks might delay or limit an adversary's ability to escalate militarily, at least temporarily.

In this sense, graphite bombs complement other tools in China's arsenal - Such as anti-Satellite Weapons, Cyber attacks on Critical networks, and Directed-Energy Weapons, to create a layered strategy for paralysing an opponent before the first conventional missile is ever fired.

China's 2020 defence white paper specifically highlights the importance of "winning informationised local wars", emphasising attacks on enemy networks and logistics. Research papers from the PLA Academy of Military Science describe blackout Weapons as critical for the "Decisive Campaigns" in a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, official PLA exercises in 2021 and 2023 have simulated blackout Scenarios, indicating these tactics are already embedded in China's war planning, not just theoretical concepts.

China's strategy increasingly revolves around what the PLA  calls “systems destruction warfare.” Rather than just fighting enemy troops, the goal is also to paralyse the systems that keep a country running - electricity, transportation, data centres, and industrial production. Civilian infrastructure is often far more vulnerable than hardened military bunkers and, if disabled, can indirectly degrade an opponent's military capability by sowing chaos, lowering morale, and crippling the logistics and production pipelines that supply weapons and fuel operations.

For example, in any Taiwan conflict scenario, power plants and substations serving semiconductor fabs could be prime targets.

A graphite bomb dropped over high-voltage transformers that feed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's massive chip fabrication plants could instantly shut down chip production.

Without chips, industries worldwide - from smartphones to fighter jets - would feel the shock within days.

Ports are another critical civilian target. A blackout bomb detonated over Port could stop cranes, refrigeration units, and fuel pumps, freezing tens of thousands of containers in place and cutting vital trade routes overnight. Urban areas would feel it too. By knocking out transformers that supply hospitals, water pumping stations, or public transportation systems like subways and high-speed rail, a blackout bomb could sow panic and paralyse daily life.

Even short outages can disable ATMs, shut down traffic lights, and halt data centres that support banking transactions or internet services - cascading into widespread economic disruption far beyond the immediate blast zone.

In this way, the blackout bomb is not just a military tool - it is a precision weapon designed to turn modern urban life against itself, exposing how fragile advanced societies are when the lights suddenly go out.

WHEN BLACKOUT MEANS BURNOUT: THE MICROWAVE WEAPON PARALLEL

China's concept of a blackout bomb is not limited to graphite alone. The popular Science report from 2009 shows how the U.S. Air Force explored a similar idea using high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons to disable enemy electronics by emitting gigawatt pulses from UAVs. These weapons can blind radar, fry circuits, and penetrate bunkers by inducing surges in unshielded wires.

China's recent animation and past research imply that its own blackout bomb strategy may combine graphite bombs with microwave technologies, extending the impact from short-circuiting power lines to frying critical electronics. This dual approach will even disable surveillance, radars and command centres. Once an adversary adopts microwave countermeasures or develops its own HPM drones, China's vast, interconnected cities could face the same silent threat.

A SCENARIO: TAIWAN, TAINAN-KOAHSIUNG, AND CUTTING THE LIGHTS

To see how China's blackout bomb could play out in practice, consider Taiwan's Southern Industrial Corridor - Stretching from Tainan to Kaohsiung. This region is an economic engine for Taiwan and a crucial node in Global supply chains.

Tainan hosts the Southern Taiwan Science Park, with over 200 high-tech Companies producing semiconductors, optoelectronics, and precision machinery. It supports fabs and suppliers tied to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the World's largest contract chipmaker. Even a temporary blackout here could paralyse chip production and disrupt global electronics.

Kaohsiung, just south of Tainan, is Taiwan's largest port and a key naval base. The Port of Kaohsiung handles about 60 % of Taiwan's container traffic, linking the island to Major shipping routes. It is also home to the Zuoying Naval Base - Taiwan's main naval fleet headquarters - and supports critical maritime logistics and fuel storage.

Both cities draw power from major generation sites like the Dalin Thermal Power Plant (One of Taiwan's largest fossil-fuel plants) and the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant near Hengchun, connected by extra high voltage transmission lines that cross exposed terrain and substations.

Disabling these links with graphite bombs could short-circuit transformers feeding both Cities, halting port operations, disrupting industrial output, and delaying naval and air sorties from bases like Zuoying and Tainan Air base.

A SIGNAL MORE THAN THREAT

Given that the blackout bomb appears only in an animation, not a live test, its actual status remains unknown. China 's choice to broadcast it may be more about signalling than immediate deployment. By showcasing the weapon, Beijing reminds potential adversaries that any military confrontation will extend beyond battlefields to power plants, data centres, and other soft targets that keep societies functioning.

In this sense, the blackout bomb is as much a psychological weapon as a physical one.

Its message, a future conflict with China may not be fought solely with missiles and tanks but with tools that can quietly, swiftly, and precisely turn the lights out.

From a Geopolitical perspective, this aligns with fear theory, which holds that states leverage the perception of possible threats to influence the behaviour of rivals without necessarily crossing thresholds that would provoke outright war. Moreover, this signalling reflects a broader Chinese approach of employing tactics of fait accompli - limited, rapid actions that create new realities on the ground or in cyberspace before rivals can mount an effective response.

Just as Beijing's island-building reshapes maritime claims by presenting neighbours with a new status quo, a blackout bomb embodies this logic in the realm of non-kinetic warfare.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The deployment of this new weapon system has nonetheless sparked fresh worries and added strain to an already tense region. Though the world waits to see whether this graphite bomb becomes an operational reality or remains a conceptual threat, its reveal is a clear sign that modern warfare continues to evolve in unexpected ways. The battle for power, quite literally, may soon be fought not with bombs that explode, but with bombs that silence the Grid.

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BY PRASHANTO BAGCHI

COVERING PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com