181–190 of 259 posts
It's interesting to try to game out who might be motivated to commit to an attack like this, at the (small compared to the state or country) scale it was at. I think we can rule out any kind of state actor, even if they were acting through a proxy. The risk/reward just isn't there, and this is not a hard attack to plan, so there's no point in carrying out a "test". If the goal were to send a message, well, this just…
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Terrorism has a specific meaning. All these are what one would call sabotage. It would be terrorism if the saboteurs disabled the substations in support of an attack terrorizing civilians. Example, they shoot up a substation so that police are unable to respond to a siege on some government agency or a hostage situation at a bank.
You can absolutely sabotage as a terrorist though. They aren't mutually exclusive. Damaging property if the motives and outcome align with what we consider terrorism is terrorism. But the meaning of terrorism is rather vague, and broad. If I blow up a substation and it causes blackouts and chaos, that can be terrorism.
You're absolutely right: blowing up substations can be terrorism. But you need someone claiming the attack and making demands.
The 60 Minutes' report mentioned the first known incident occurred in Morgan Hill, CA.
Same setup as Morgan Hill had: chain-linked fence instead of a high solid wall. I used to bicycle around that area when I was a kid.
I think someone watched 60 Minutes and went copycat. The 60 Minutes' report mentioned the first known incident occurred in Morgan Hill, CA. Same setup as Morgan Hill had: chain-linked fence instead of a high solid wall. I used to bicycle around that area when I was a kid.
"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been…
Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…
The far right literature e.g. The Turner Diaries, describes terror cells funding themselves through theft so theft/sabotage should be expected together with such groups.
"The Order" - a real life group modelled on The Turner Diaries robbed banks and armoured cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_g...
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I'm just very wary of the 'white supremacist terrorism' narrative that politicians and alphabet agencies have been trying to sell lately to justify increases in domestic surveillance/police state infrastructure. And don't get me wrong, I spend plenty of time on 4chan watching this shit, I know there are some truly hateful and dangerous people out there. But It doesn't seem like they're as organized as the narrative w…
> 'white supremacist terrorism' narrative that politicians and alphabet agencies have been trying to sell If white supremacist terrorist attacks are actually happening (and they are), then it's not a fictional narrative that the public is being told. Furthermore, I'm curious how that is linked to the following point. > increases in domestic surveillance/police state infrastructure I'd like to point out that given tha…
According to Statista[0] there were 660,288 officers in the US in 2021. Even one racist cop is too many, granted. But if we assume the maximum on 'hundreds', 999/660,288 = 0.0015.
0.15% is still a problem, but your article makes it sound like a pervasive problem, which it clearly isn't. That article also spends about half its length heavily implying that Kyle Rittenhouse was a far-right white nationalist militant hunting protestors. If you watched the trial, you would know that's certainly untrue despite the prosecutor & news' best efforts to paint him otherwise. This article is exactly an example of the false narrative I was talking about.
White nationalists are fucking scary. But outlets like The Guardian are making money fear mongering that they're lurking behind every corner, that your police and firemen and friends and neighbors are all cryptofascists.
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I wonder if it's just a crank. Like a guy that got fired from the power company vs some ideological motivation.
Or copycat. People are fired from power companies all the time but how often do they damage equipment? I don't actually know but you'd think we'd hear about these attacks more.
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Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and s…
Especially with the Washington attack happening so soon after the one in North Carolina, the most notable thing to me was that both attacks occurred close to a couple of our most important Army bases, in counties where many troops live with their families off-base. Fort Bragg and Fort Lewis (JBLM) are both home to a corps headquarters, special operations units, and other rapid-response forces. This was rarely mention…
If they took out the power on the base to disrupt operations then maybe but from my time at Ft Bragg all that would’ve caused is an inconvenience even if we were in the middle of an alert.
…now that I think about it I’m surprised they never cut the power on us when they did one of the alert readiness tests.
My wild, unsubstantiated guess: This is being taken very seriously because the power grid, as Grady points out, is incredibly vulnerable and out in the open. I don’t think it’s because there’s some conspiracy by Russia or whatever.
Russia isn’t engaging in some conspiracy, but they’ve certainly successfully run influence operations targeting the disaffected and vulnerable. There’s plenty of open source information about how active Russian agents were influential in organizations like the NRA. The United States is less stable than it was 30 years ago. The rot is starting in the periphery with the lack of opportunity or prosperity in rural Americ…