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What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

practical.engineering

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

#91

Post by InspiredIdiot »

ivraatiems wrote: post #61

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…

If the attacker's ultimate goal is ideological but their proximate goal is chaos and they think they have a large enough group of similarly motivated people the purpose could be quite simply to show that it can be done. Do it, don't get caught, and wait for the copycats. It doesn't even matter if their ultimate goals and the original attacker's align.

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

#93

Post by LarryMullins »

InspiredIdiot wrote: post #91
ivraatiems wrote: post #61

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…

If the attacker's ultimate goal is ideological but their proximate goal is chaos and they think they have a large enough group of similarly motivated people the purpose could be quite simply to show that it can be done. Do it, don't get caught, and wait for the copycats. It doesn't even matter if their ultimate goals and the original attacker's align.

Without a publicized motive, it might create a "stand alone complex" of copycats copying copycats without any unifying ideology between them. Each copying the other for their own personal reasons. I think school shootings work like this.

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

#94

Post by briHass »

Spooky23 wrote: post #22
Waterluvian wrote: post #7

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…

Plenty of places in the US that aren't safe for outsiders. Any major city has dozens of such areas, especially at night.

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

#95

Post by baybal2 »

LarryMullins wrote: post #35
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.

I think it probably doesn't take an electrical engineer to figure out that destroying the radiators would put the substation out of action at least temporarily, but it does show they put a bit of thought into it at least. It doesn't seem like a case of a dumbass using the substation for target practice on a whim, it all seems very deliberate and purposeful.

It's not the radiators, it's the transformator itself.

Shorted winding == complete replacement needed for high voltages, and a single bullet would be more than enought to break insulation on the winding many times.

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

#96

Post by electrondood »

kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #33
panarky wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".

This is a disingenuous analogy.

The likelihood that a person would attack four substations to rob a business is extremely low, and it's therefore reasonable to assume that their stated motive was a lie.

The likelihood that a person would even attack one substation for the same aim is still low, in my opinion.

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

#97

Post by mr_toad »

gonzo41 wrote: post #21
LarryMullins wrote: post #10

It's quite interesting that they also attacked a substation that looked important on a map, but wasn't actually vital. I think some of the early reporting about this incident suggested they "knew what they were doing", but the apparent misidentification of one of their targets perhaps suggests the perpetrators were making educated guesses, without detailed/insider knowledge of how the system worked.

I bet they used the wrong maps. Like a topo or regular driving map. If they'd gone that one step further and gotten the utility GIS layers Tthings could have gotten a lot more out of hand.

Assuming they knew how to use GIS software, or had even heard of it.

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

#98

Post by electrondood »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #27
JasonFruit wrote: post #4

I'm much more interested in the motivations of the people involved.

It's bonkers (and infuriating) to me that domestic terrorists launched an attack on their own home soil and it wasn't front page news everywhere the next day.

[flagged]

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

#99

Post by dylan604 »

abirch wrote: post #92
kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who?

You don't know the Muffin Man who lives on Drury Lane? You might also not know about the little old lady, or that the wheels on the bus go round and round
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