What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

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 isn't going to cut it. The US military will crush you regardless of the status of a power substation in North Carolina.

However, it could easily have been done by someone with a political agenda in favor of a state actor but not in any way endorsed by them, or by someone with a general political motive. Here's the catch with that: For such a person, there is no point to doing this unless you later claim responsibility and gain notoriety. If your goal is ideological, you'd use the chaos you created to try to spread your ideology. If your goal is to have your demands heard, well, you'd have to make those demands first. (Of course, it could be the attackers meant to do that but chickened out when they saw what an overwhelming response this provoked, or something).

It's possible somebody did it by accident or because they are mentally unstable and their dog told them to, etc. Can never discount that. However, I think the most likely explanation is actually that this is a criminal act that was done with some only proximately related goal in mind - blackmailing an energy executive? Stealing something of value from somewhere in the area of attack? Distract authorities while conducting some other illicit behavior somewhere - like a break-in to some other piece of infrastructure - for whatever reason?

Hopefully we find out someday. (And I mean, hopefully we stop this stuff from happening, but that is gonna take some doing.)

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.

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The economic incentive for stealing a car is a lot more obvious and mundane than attacking the power grid. It's not unreasonable to second guess (or is it first guess?) the motive in that context.

It's pretty obvious when you compare the number of annual car thefts to the number of attacks on substations. This is an unusual event, it may have an unusual explanation.

I don't completely agree with that definition. A bank robber may briefly instill terror to the people in the bank, but it's not an act of terror. However, if it's committed by a group (like the Hearst heir) then because it's in support of further activities, I would classify it as terrorism.

Often, governments, (not just the US but in general) use the term in order to enlist more sympathy from disinterested civilians in order to add support for government response and also to curb sympathy for the group or individuals. So protesters in Belarus or China, etc, they get labeled terrorists.