Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

practical.engineering

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 259 posts

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#81

Post by Helithumper »

mc32 wrote: post #5

"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…

In your second link, the article specifically states "McRae probably wasn’t acting as an ecosaboteur."

I don't know how you read that and came to the conclusion that "attacks by so called environmentalists" when the article comes to the opposite conclusion.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#82

Post by lucb1e »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #3

Answer: we don’t know, but there is a $75k FBI reward if you know.

Not quite what the video is about. The $75k is for finding the persons which facilitates finding the motive (which, to be fair, is what more people will be interested in), not the 'what happened' with technical content (which is more of an HN type of interest). The video answers the question in the title.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#83

Post by mistermann »

Waterluvian wrote: post #32
Spooky23 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s true. Press your thumb ever so lightly on the social scale for enough decades and it adds up.

"Karma is a bitch" as the saying goes.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#84

Post by kavefish »

The video inspired me to explore the open source grid map at atlas.eia.gov, but it sure looks like the online map was locked down.

Despite the sidebar saying the map is visible to the public, the maps never load and I'm seeing access denied errors for map resources in the console.

There could be multiple explanations for the map to stop loading, but the error messages sure give me the impression that it was to restrict access to this information, and that makes me a little sad even though I can understand why it might be tempting to restrict given the circumstances.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#85

Post by LarryMullins »

mc32 wrote: post #76
LarryMullins wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bank robber may briefly instill terror to the people in the bank, but it's not an act of terror. Political motive is a key part of that definition. Simple greed isn't a political motive, but if somebody started robbing banks because they had an axe to grind with the federal reserve, I think that would probably qualify as terrorism.

I don't think political motive is sufficient. Turning off the lights does not by itself instill fear and terror --there are things individuals or groups could tack on that would, of course. For example OWS was political and caused some property damage [as well as euro climate activists throwing substances at artworks], but I would be loath to classify either terrorism. I guess the action in ATL regarding a police rai…

Unlawful violence is the other part of that definition. Two components: unlawful violence and a political motive. Not either/or, terrorism requires both.

> OWS was political and caused some property damage

Marginal example. I think most of the property damage was incidental to what they were doing; camping in city parks. Insofar as the property damage was deliberate vandalism, it seems like marginal terrorism. To pick an similar example that seems a lot more clear; if the KKK throws a brick through the window of a business owned by a black person, that's obviously terrorism right?

All in all I think wiktionary's definition is pretty good.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#86

Post by nabakin »

kavefish wrote: post #84

The video inspired me to explore the open source grid map at atlas.eia.gov, but it sure looks like the online map was locked down. Despite the sidebar saying the map is visible to the public, the maps never load and I'm seeing access denied errors for map resources in the console. There could be multiple explanations for the map to stop loading, but the error messages sure give me the impression that it was to restri…

The map loads for me on Firefox for Android, though it takes a minute.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#87

Post by Retric »

grecy wrote: post #75
geepound wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They knew enough to shoot a part that is filled with fluid and hard to replace. They might have lacked the knowledge of "the grid" to make such an attack go beyond one county, but there was some degree of thought put into that attack. It's easier to attack than defend.

> It's easier to attack than defend Interestingly, I'd wager that very little infrastructure in developed countries was designed with any thought of defending it from it's own citizens.

A lot of infrastructure is built with some concept of defense in mind from public trash cans to nuclear power plants.

The electrical grid is largely ignored because it’s so big and distributed over such a large area it’s difficult for small groups to attack it successfully. So the focus is on limiting cascading failures. Shooting equipment only caused local damage and things got back to normal in a week.

It was unpleasant for those affected, but you can catch people conducting repeated attacks a lot easier than you can harden all this infrastructure.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#88

Post by mc32 »

LarryMullins wrote: post #85
mc32 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think political motive is sufficient. Turning off the lights does not by itself instill fear and terror --there are things individuals or groups could tack on that would, of course. For example OWS was political and caused some property damage [as well as euro climate activists throwing substances at artworks], but I would be loath to classify either terrorism. I guess the action in ATL regarding a police rai…

Unlawful violence is the other part of that definition. Two components: unlawful violence and a political motive. Not either/or, terrorism requires both. > OWS was political and caused some property damage Marginal example. I think most of the property damage was incidental to what they were doing; camping in city parks. Insofar as the property damage was deliberate vandalism, it seems like marginal terrorism. To pic…

I think we mostly agree, but have some small differences in some aspects.

To elaborate, I don't like the weaseliness of "unlawful" as well as "violence". (to put it bluntly, in some contexts violence is anything form touching a shoulder to punching a nose and beyond --and who decides lawfulness and unlawfulness?) I'm _not_ saying they are undefinable but rather in some contexts their definitions are given great latitude.

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#89

Post by lucb1e »

MisterTea wrote: post #49

I wonder if the perpetrators are thinking about the people they are blacking out. Because if they are trying to incite something it will most likely be their hanging. I highly doubt the populous are going to rally behind their cause when their heat and lights are out. Even worse if there are people who depend of refrigeration for diabetes medication or oxygen generators, etc.

One can say the same for literally any act of terrorism, I think?

Re: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

#90

Post by anigbrowl »

htag wrote: post #43
jfengel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're rare because nobody is doing them. If some group decides that it's a thing to do, it will increase rapidly in frequency. I don't know what the limitations are, and maybe natural disasters will continue to dominate. But I wouldn't extrapolate just because it hadn't been the mechanism of choice so far.

> it will increase rapidly in frequency There's what, 1000-10000x the number of law enforcement personal, national guard, and active military than electrical substations? If these attacks were to rapidly increase over a few days we'd just post guards with guns and cameras at every substation while we pour a thick and tall wall of concrete around all the sensitive bits.

That's far from free in terms of direct, logistical, or opportunity costs, and even high concrete walls are easily defeatable with a little imagination. The main problem for would-be attackers is discoverability - preparing and escaping without detection is quite challenging.

Opportunities for teamwork are limited by the FBI's outstanding abilities to infiltrate social networks and entrap hotheads, keeping militant types in a constant state of paranoia and distrust. It's hard to accrue the necessary knowledge alone, harder to locate peers (though this varies with geography and economic power), and very hard to coordinate. Doing so online has obvious security difficulties, and professional criminal networks aren't easily accessible or sympathetic. The feds can't catch everyone, but they can drastically raise the cost of force multipliers.

Post reply on HN