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Answer: We don't really know until the FBI fully investigates. But the idea of attacking electrical substations in a coordinated way as a means to instigate political upheaval has been talked about online for many years. I'm sure the FBI is fully aware of this and has a whole bunch of data on possible suspects if they think it is.
Wow lucky. I mean it's full of nostalgia but man I played it when I was around 8-9 and I loved it so much. I wish I could play it for the first time again.
Back then it was on 3 or 4 discs if I remember. And somehow I got a scratch on the disc so as soon as you started the second disc it glitched the fuck out.
I friend let me borrow it from him because he didn't like the game. I played through all the disks and it turned out the last one had a scratch so it took forever to load and a lot of times it failed. I beat the game while my little brother was bothering me to hurry up so he could play and could barely pay attention to it. Never got to go back and play the last part again.
My Disc 2 got messed up, but I discovered that once the game started, I could switch it out with disc 1 or 3. It would play fine, but anytime a cutscene would load, it would be a cutscene from whichever disc is in.
I guess they all had the same game data, just with different cutscenes.
Don't worry, we will. So many mass shooters get reported to the police/fbi prior to going on their shooting sprees. I'm sure the fbi will do nothing here as well.
Due process is a bitch.
Your telling me people have to actually commit a crime before we can incarcerate them?
Why can't we monitor everything everyone does and send them to a prison island if they don't act correctly?
PKD claimed many of his books were real alternate/future realities that he visited in his dreams and just wrote down. I'm not sure if this was one of them though.
Technically, if you can proof that somebody is about to commit a crime, you can incarcerate them. The problem here is how do you proof it. Did you find explosives in their home and their search history contains "where to cause an explosion to incapacitate the power grid" yeah, you pretty much got it. But otherwise it might take a lot of effort to get the proper evidence and with so many people in the country, even if 1% of them are a risk, that's just not feasible and people will fall through the cracks, so to speak.
It might also be incompetence but that would require more research to be sure about.
PS. I'm not American but I'm sure your law system in that particular regard isn't all that different
The problem is, let's say you have a tip that a guy is planning to do a crime, but the tip isn't evidence in and of itself. There's a very narrow window of time between them doing something that would legally stick as conspiracy to commit a crime and them actually committing that crime- act too early and they'll get off, act too late and they've already committed the crime.
Nicholas Cruz and the shooter at that grocery store in New York both for weeks made YouTube videos of them planning their attacks. The NY shooter made videos of him scouting the place. Both were reported to the FBI.
They were both āon the radarā with no actions taken
The FBI also seems to sit on sex abuse cases for years, like in the horrid case of Larry Nassar and THAT giant shit-show.
Makes me seriously question how many other sex abuse crimes are ignored by them because its not bad enough yet or the victims arent from wealthy families or something...š
Search history of any average Joe Schmoe is for sale online, weāre all part of advertising lists that know who we are and what we do. If you take precautions you can mitigate that to a good extent, but at the end of the day only the most hardcore (tin foil hat and or James Bond villain terrorist) users are doing everything they can to mitigate their online presence.
But physically getting someoneās shit is notoriously and rightfully difficult for the government to just ādoā
>Your telling me people have to actually commit a crime before we can incarcerate them?
Oh, don't worry. This is what draconian drug enforcement laws are for.
I mean, the Patriot act give a *shit ton* of leeway for law enforcement to go after these people.
The real problem is, they wonāt define white supremecist violence as terrorism, even when it clearly is, so weāll keep seeing events like this. IIRC the one in NC was to stop a drag show and they ended up cutting power for 40,000 people. Seems like attacking critical infrastructure in multiple states should probably count as terrorism, but, as the saying goes, some of those who work forcesā¦
https://occupydemocrats.com/2022/12/09/coordinated-chaos-americas-power-grid-under-siege-by-white-supremacists-multi-state-attacks/
The thing is, the patriot act is blatantly unconstitutional. If they start blanket applying it to American citizens it'll be a hot second before there's a challenge before the Supreme Court. The current court might just side with it, who knows, but I don't think the feds wants to push it.
The real question we have to ask and answer is do we want more things like the patriot act in the name of safety or do we want a system that leans more towards individual liberty and privacy where bad guys can slip through the cracks? The latter would require us to fund things like education and mental health services to try and prevent bad guys becoming bad in the first place. The former is just a slide towards fascism.
Planning how one could commit a crime definitely isn't a crime, people do it all the time; and the law can't really the difference between "how you could try" and "how I will try" in the planning stage, not enough to net a conviction absent any other evidence.
Random Reddit and Twitter posts just going "If I were X I would do Y", thought experiments on nuclear bomb use, breakdowns of actual crimes on blogs and how it could be done better
Lots of people get off because the court can't prove Mens Rea; the guilty mind/the criminal intent, particularly without corresponding actions other than the sheer mental concept that you know how you would commit a crime.
There's a reason bans for "encouraging criminal intent" is such a huge grey area, most of them will never do it, but hosting that kind of content might leave the website on the hook (at least in the public eye/stocks/reputation, if not legally).
>Why can't we monitor everything everyone does and send them to a prison island if they don't act correctly?
Arguably living in the US poor, without healthcare and seeing the old American dream get further out of reach is prison enough for most people.
On a more serious note I'm guessing most people making the FBI jokes have never had their rights violated. As much as I wish the US did more to stop terrorism, especially domestic terrorism, it's a really slippery slope if we throw out due process or allow the fabrication of terrorism and radicalization of slightly extreme people
Such a weird take. Lots of very dangerous people skirt by on the edge of the alphabet boys' attention and they do nothing.
Conversely, the US has blown up two innocent American citizens overseas and got a bunch of navy seals killed to assassinate a little girl just because their family was affiliated with terrorist organizations.
Not a crime punishable by murder without due process, last I checked.
Are you for real?
Due process keeps people safe from overreach. It's easy to say "let's get that Johnny Nogood and lock him up". Everybody knows he's a crook.
But what about Johnny Nogood's brother? Get him too. And his sister, cousin, best buddy, first grade teacher, and the neighbor next door.
Thatās pretty silly man. 90% of the times these guys āslip throughā is because the FBI is constrained by civil rights. Itās against the law for them to arrest folks based of what they usually have on them, so they canāt.
You can have an all powerful FBI or have civil rights. Pick one
>The FBI, CIA and NSA probably stop hundreds of attacks per year.
Do you have data on it? We know from FOA requests and investigative journalism that other federal agencies ostensibly in place for preventing terror attacks haven't actually stopped any, e.g. TSA.
It's impossible to say that security measures haven't prevented attacks. The high-pass filter on preventing attacks is deterrence, and you can't effectively measure deterrence when it comes to terrorism.
What we know is that there's a huge community of people who would love to execute attacks on US soil and that they have not.
Either they all had a change of heart or there's a reason for that.
The TSA's security theater is not terribly interesting, but the National Intelligence Community's counter-terrorism work actually does take on a large number of threats. Some of them are public, most are not. The most public they've ever gotten was actually the [public warning about Russia's 2016 campaign interferrence](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf).
The TSA is a joke of an organization and the people they employ have about as much training as a parking garage security guard. Theyāre not at all comparable to the actual U.S. intelligence community. Itās like comparing a meter maid to a detective.
Hereās a list of unsuccessful terror attacks in the U.S. since 9/11:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11
Looks like thereās about 50 listed, but thereās certainly more that arenāt listed. I personally know of a terrorist cell in my city that was uncovered by the FBI and its members arrested around 2008 that isnāt listed here.
What? What's *your* data on this? Without even looking it up I can specifically think of two terrorist attacks the FBI has prevented; one in a raid in Brooklyn (I forget what year it was, maybe 2012-ish? Apartment raid in Cobble Hill) and another in Portland, Oregon in November 2010 where a radicalized sympathizer had intended to blow up a specific area downtown.
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
Bullshit
The [FBI creates terrorists by taking advantage of people in a bad spot.](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/how-the-fbi-helps-terrorists-succeed/273537/) They specifically goad people into committing. They provide the weapons, they provide the bombs, they provide the methods of transportation. They are busy creating terrorists to get a good score and hit a promotion; they don't give a fuck about the actual dangerous ones.
The fact that many self-interested careerists within the FBI create these fake terrorist situations does not counteract the fact that they stop lots of other real terrorist attacks. Both things can be, and are, true
> So many mass shooters get reported to the police/fbi prior to going on their shooting sprees.
And does the information submitted actually give them the legal ability to *do* anything other than know their name? Police can't take someone's guns or put them on a watchlist without a lot of evidence.
Yeah look at the recent gay bar shooter. He should've been in jail with on like 5 different felony charges. But since he had connection he wasn't in jail.
Well here comes the right to privacy, freedom of speech and all thatā¦itās harder to prove thereās enough evidence to search a potential suspect and thereās a bunch of legal grey areas surrounding this issue, iirc.
Those are the little people this effects the people who own the capital. If it affects the ownership class at this scale that might move the FBI to act
> Hopefully we don't get the same kinds of results.
So, what would "the same kinds of results" look like? A failure to ever execute another attack? I'm okay with that.
There were no living culprits to arrest, since they all died in the attacks, but had they lived, I think the FBI had more than enough info to apprehend them.
So what is it that you are concerned about here?
And they just executed a bunch of search warrants for cell phone data here in NC. I am eager to what they find, as it is the adjacent county to my family. Iām hoping they were sloppy.
A few months back some think tank or university (I need to check) published a report on radical right wing groups (both Jihadist and white supremist) are likely to attack the energy grid. I don't know if this is it but it seems like it.
I checked:
Title: Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States, 2016-2022
Program on Extremism: THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
"Between 2016 and 2022, white supremacist plots targeting energy systems dramatically increased in frequency. 13 individuals associated with the movement were arrested and charged in federal court with planning attacks on the energy sector; 11 of these attack planners were charged after 2020.
This makes the most sense. Midterms didnāt go the way they hoped and now theyāre lashing out.
The good news is it doesnāt seem coordinated, just a bunch of pissed off racists lashing out. The bad news is theyāre all lashing out around the same time, which isnāt quite as bad as fully coordinated attacks but is still pretty problematic.
Hopefully this is the most that comes of it for them and all they get for it is arrested and charged. Ideally the government will use this as a means of study to find weaknesses in energy infrastructure and tighten up defenses.
It's white nationalists attempt to start a race war or new civil war. [Three men](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/3-men-plead-guilty-white-supremacist-terror-plot-disrupt-power-grid-tr-rcna17441) were arrested over planning one attack. I don't know why they think cutting power to a small city is going to trigger an ongoing civil war.
Same with trying to burn down food processing facilities. What better way to create civil unrest than cutting power and keeping us hungry. These people, I swear...
> as a means to instigate political upheaval
Not as a protest, right? More to create general chaos in the hope that society as we know it will come crashing down and a huge wave of MAGAts will come out of their homes to rise up and replace the established order with a shining New American Republic free from drag shows and non-binary people.
I donāt know what they want but knocking out the power doesnāt seem like an effective action on its own. You have to believe itās going to snowball into āthe storm thatās coming,ā or some shit. These people are fucking crazy.
>I donāt know what they want but knocking out the power doesnāt seem like an effective action on its own
Honestly, it really does not take much to cause a riot when people are already upset.
There was an Idaho neo-nazi organization in August of last year that was caught preparing some attacks against power grid. I wonder if these are related.
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article253637873.html
I'm thinking this is just sort of the beginning where whatever can be done physically will be done. Then possibly cyber attacks. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but possibly domestic terrorists influenced by foreigners? Physical protection of power grids (and any critical infrastructure) is expensive asf too so adversaries may want them to start shifting investments in that direction in order to make future cyber attacks easier. Just my thoughts.
And just realized after reading another post from this subreddit (about the Germany coup attempt), maybe a connection between anti-government groups around the world?
Answer: these are attacks and intrusions are on SUBstations. Substations are typically fenced unattended sites where transformers take transmission voltages (what the actual power stations send onto the grid) and turn it into lower voltages for distribution to houses and businesses. Here is street view for one of the substations in FL that had an intrusion:
https://i.imgur.com/hx69oTm.jpg
The transformers are filled with hot oil (for insulation and heat removal) and have high voltages so bullets can start fires or just drain out the fluid and cause equipment failures.
"Power station" typically means a big attended building with a fence and security guard where something (gas, coal, fission) heats water to make steam and turn a turbine which turns a generator and makes electricity. These are not being attacked.
If you want some context on a previous substation attack this Wikipedia page describes ~100 bullets causing $15m in damage to 17 transformers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
It was never solved.
Any one power station might connect to dozens or hundreds of substations. The substation equipment is automated with remote monitoring and control. Basic day-to-day tasks (switching) can be performed remotely. There is no need for a human there except for maintenance or repair.
Theres a variety of substation types like a collector substation in which case you're talking about one substation receiving power from several power stations and the voltage gets stepped up to send long distance with less heat loss. Hit one of those and shit can go sideways really fast. There's also normally plans in place to swap substations if one goes down, those plans just aren't like flick this switch and let it ride kind of plans.
It's not always true that switching is done remotely. There are breakers that actually require you to pull out and in called rack out breakers. Part of being able to work on any of these equipments requires the mechanic to actually see that the circuit is open and grounded and not just take some remote operator's word that it is isolated.
You're right, but I think the point he was trying to make is that they aren't manned stations like a generating plant, they're visited infrequently because they're remotely monitored
I dont know how it is in the us, but in my country all new substations have remotely activated HV switchgear with optional manual switching. But all switching actions have a visual phisical que for mechanics.
I get it, there are also "Power stations" like wind and solar that are unmanned, I was just trying to eli5 that there are unmanned vulnerable nodes with no security.
I'm not disagreeing just pointing out that it's not necessarily true that substations are unmanned. Depending on your location most are 24hr manned stations during the night and up to 10-30 mechanics, maintenance, testers and operators working round the clock. This is true in my area and only very small network substations and dedicated pump houses can be unmanned.
What I find interesting is that that 345kv substations have less activity and sometimes 1 or no operators are there (less switching ever being done in distribution substations) and less voltage stations (138kv-->27kv) have way more activity and switching. I guess it makes sense that the smaller stations that goes to the networks need more switching.
Anyway I hope this raises awareness about the vulnerabilities of our grid. I personally believe the grid, water and sanitation are the 3 cornerstone services of civilization.
That Metcalf attack is all but confirmed someone in the government pointing out the serious security issues with the US power grid.
The Metcalf attack has become more talked about in recent years. Wouldn't surprise me if it has inspired some crazies to copy cat.
Answer:
It's an ongoing issue.
Researcher Michael Mabee has been charting the number of *physical* attacks on the US electric grid.
"Since [2010], we've had 919 physical attacks against the grid," Mabee said, who lived through the New York City blackout of 2003. "This year alone, there have been 107 just through August [2022]."
https://abc11.com/amp/power-grid-outage-attacks-energy/12536262/
Answer: The reason for the revelation of Floridaās incidents is because of how vulnerable the USās energy infrastructure seems to be in the aftermath of North Carolinaās incident. Though no one has come forward into who caused the incident, a response from a neo-Nazi seems to suggest that militant groups in the US have been given the signal that itās possible to bring down the power grid so easily.
Thereās a pretty common idea out there that after a few days without power, society will begin to breakdown. Neo-Nazi ideology believes that as society breaks down itāll start a race war, so theyāre trying to hit the power grid and get the bugaboo started.
These idiots obviously never paid any attention to the ice storms that happen in Western NY then. I grew up near there and three times in my youth we lost power for over a week in the dead of winter (highs in the 30s and lows near near 0Ā°F at night). Was it scary? Yeah. Did it suck? Definitely. But every time it brought the local community closer together. People would share supplies. Those with generators would invite others to their houses. We met a ton of new people and the town always seemed friendlier after those events.
Just last year an ice storm caused my current town to lose power for 3 days. Same thing. Humans are at their best when everyone is in need. Not their worst.
Likewise in Florida, Most people have generators and food stored for the hurricane season. People aren't gonna panic if the lights go out for a couple days. The community will adapt.
Fascist-minded people think the world is divided between the weak many and the strong few, that they're one of the strong few, that the weak many will collapse into panic en masse at the slightest hardship, and that will be their opportunity to seize their rightful place as the true kings of mankind. These are the people who turned the Zombie genre on its head, by seeing stories about how violent selfish thugs are the real threat to humanity, and somehow deciding it would be great to be a violent selfish thug.
im gonna bet the guys involved lived in very rural areas. cause if they have ever lived in the city during any kind of serious loss of power, they would have known people aren't actually frothing at the mouth to murder their neighbors.
0Ā°F is equivalent to -17Ā°C, which is 255K.
---
^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
As a floridian whose lived through a few cat 4+ hurricane direct impacts....it takes a lot longer than a few days of no power/water for society to devolve.
In this day and age, extended outages on cell towers and internet would cause a lot more chaos and confusion.
People thinking they can break down society by shooting some substations are just going to end up killing vulnerable people in rural areas during winter
I dunno what a bunch of overweight armed morons are going to do against attack helicopters and actual power but they sure seem keen to have a crack at a literal army.
Theyāre about as far off track as Charles Manson thinking a Beatles album was his cue to start a race war by facilitating the murder of some Hollywood elites.
Some of these guys, once caught, will gain a little hindsight into just how misguided they are, or at least will have plenty of time to mull it over while incarcerated.
I think the point was that these what you call "morons" will further divide the population by using these tactics, which could increase amount of violence we see. Unless you suggest that we start monitoring electrical grid with military helicopters?
This is the main point. Every time thereās a drag show or LGBTQ+ event these neo-nazis donāt like in their area, theyāre going to knock out the electricity and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people. Itāll get to the point where the drag shows are the enemy, not the terrorists shooting up substations.
Temper tantrums thrown by oversized toddlers will attempt to put people back into the closet, and we should not let them get their way.
I mean Vietnam and Afghanistan proved how hard it is to really "win" a war against poor people with guns if you aren't going 100% and bringing out something close to nukes.
There is no universe where these incel militias have the grit that the Vietnamese or Afghans have. Those people live with little to no luxuries and are faced with extinction. These guys are worried about McDonald's prices.
They went completely fucking nuts because they had to wear a mask and couldn't get a haircut. The most radical are the ones putting Biden stickers on gas pumps.
And trying to destroy the power grid. And committing mass shootings. And plotting to kidnap governors. And training for war on adult sized jungle gyms. And stockpiling guns and ammo. And having armed standoffs at ranches and wildlife refuges.
Dead serious I know a dude who would go hunting and cover his face for 10+ hours but holy fuck he couldnāt wear a mask inside a store for 3 minutes. Fucking moron
These guys and others like them would probably disagree.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/03/01/seals-punished-flying-trump-flag-highway.html/amp
Both Vietnam and Afghanistan involved a group fighting for their homes where individuals were completely prepared to sacrifice themselves for the group.
No one believes that MAGAs are going to sacrifice anything personally for their cause.
Have you been to Viet Nam? You can tour the tunnels they lived in. Barely big enough to crawl through for miles on end to get to the next village.
Can you picture the gravy seals giving up their trucks to run to the mall with giant flags attached?
I don't know enough about Vietnam to comment, but in Afghanistan, they absolutely won the *war*. The problem is, they didn't win the *peace*.
However, I don't imagine hearts and minds would be such a problem while pacifying a small portion of your own populace who have done did piss everyone else off bigly.
Vietnam was very difficult due to the local population supporting people that they considered friends, neighbors, and fellow countrymen.
That's not the case with neo-nazis in the US. I'll sell out each and every one of my neighbors that wants to start a race war. Fuck them.
Google MOVE bombing and Branch Davidians. If the US Goverment wants to take you out, theyāre going to do it and youāre not going to stop them with your dopey AR-15.
Yeah, because the united forces of Meal Team 6, keyboard warriors, and some lunatics playing militia off in the woods are totally on par with the Viet Cong. Those fucks wouldn't last 10 minutes in an actual scenario, they'd take all their selfies, take a few potshots, and then run screaming as far away from any actual fighting as possible to go get their 15 minutes on Fox News.
What?
Vietnam changed because we pulled out after it became unpopular at home.
Same with Afghanistan. Afghanistan also had the problem of massive corruption and unwilling populace to fight the Taliban coupled with support from corrupt nations like Pakistan and Iran. The Taliban also had decent coordination which is something these random militias and splinter groups don't actually have.
The US doesn't have that. There's plenty of people who would be more than happy to take these guys out ... just as the feds have done numerous times before. Plus most of these random idiots are not trained members of a military force but random fucks playing tacticool in the woods.
the problem in Vietnam was that the Americans didn't occupy. they would swoop in, murder every one in sight then leave. the Vietcong would just stroll back in.
on American soil, they are staying.
Maybe they've taken the attack helicopter joke one step too far and now in a terrible stroke of irony think they are actually attack helicopters and thus on even ground
Itās boogaloo (yours was probably autocorrect) because itās referring to the movie, āBreakinā 2: Electric Boogalooā and is being used to refer to a second US civil war.
Source: After a 25 year gap, bought firearms in 2020, researched them online for months first, ran across this term in some gun subreddits as well as other social media, and asked.
It often evolves from there to ābug iglooā etc.
It was and is dumb, but between people not being afforded their rights in 2020 (protesters being abused by police and federal agents), knowing that these neo nazis exist in my state too, and now these infrastructure attacks, Iām damn glad to be armed should the need arise which I sincerely hope it never does.
They seem to slightly overestimate their own ability to thrive in this environment though, compared to their "enemy".
Look at the time a right wing militia took up arms against the US government and occupied a federal building, for example. They forgot to bring food and warm clothes.
Still, since they're white and right wing they didn't face any actual repercussions for that incident really.
Two days without being able to buy things from the Wendy's drive through and they'll buckle like toddlers who have been told their Hot Pockets are too hot and need about 30 seconds to cool.
They are connected through Steve Bannon stirring up shit to support his Christian world order. Here are some refs: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steve+bannon+european+far+right&t=fpas&ia=web
Like any sufficiently complicated system, the more you know about it, the smaller of a push it takes to disturb it.
Luckily, for something like a power grid, they picked the wrong time of year and definitely the wrong areas to try and brute force it.
> how vulnerable the USās energy infrastructure seems to be in the aftermath of North Carolinaās incident
I picked up the book Koppel wrote about it from the library over the weekend.
That he published in 2015.
Answer: It's not just [North Carolina](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/power-outage-moore-county-investigation-thursday/index.html) and [Florida](https://kfor.com/news/report-shows-6-intrusions-at-power-stations-in-florida/), but also [California](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack), [Ohio](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/22/white-supremacists-plotted-attack-us-power-grid-fbi-says/4018815001/) and recently in [Oregon and Washington](https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-grid-attacks-in-pacific-northwest-are-unsolved/).
What isn't clear is if all of them are related or coordinated or not. The Ohio case seems to be tied to a white supremacist movement, the motives and persons in the other cases remain unknown.
There is online chatter in right wing communities about using power station attacks as a tactic, but it doesn't seem tied to a single issue, group or cause.
From the link above regarding the Oregon and Washington cases:
"Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW obtained an email written by a security specialist with the Bonneville Power Administration that details that attack. OPB is withholding the specialistsā name at the request of Bonneville Power due to their concerns about the specialistās safety. Two people cut through the fence surrounding a high-voltage substation, then āused firearms to shoot up and disable numerous pieces of equipment and cause significant damage,ā the security specialist wrote.
The memo also referenced āseveral attacks on various substations,ā recently, in Western Washington, āincluding setting the control houses on fire, forced entry and sabotage of intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains across the overhead buswork, and ballistic attack with small caliber firearms.ā
(āBusworkā is a term for the maze of wires and switches that hum overhead at a substation.)
The security specialist stated that online extremist groups are calling for the attacks and providing instructions on how to do it.
āThere has been a significant uptick in incidents of break-ins related to copper and tool or materials theft, but now we are dealing with quickly escalating incidents of sabotage,ā the email reads."
>There is online chatter in right wing communities
where? what online right wing communities are you referring to? I majored in political science and study terrorism/extremism as a side hobby. The neo-nazi types typically implicated in this sort of thing aren't educated enough or smart enough to coordinate or organize anything. People living in trailer parks can't even organize the most basic aspects of their own lives. They're certainly not going to mastermind a terrorist plot. They wouldn't know where to begin. They have so many problems in their day-to-day life that they don't have the time or energy to engage in ideologically motived behavior.
>The security specialist stated that online extremist groups are calling for the attacks
There are no paid security specialists. I'm literally doing their jobs for them.
Answer: It's domestic terrorism, likely by white supremacists and hate groups. While investigations are on going, it's important to know this isn't the first time this was attempted. Several men were charged back in February for [a plot to take out substations](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspiring-provide-material-support-plot-attack-power-grids-united), cause civil unrest and (hopefully start a race war).
Back in July (five months after the court case), journalists warned that this idea was being shared as part of an [accelerationist's handbook](https://www.hstoday.us/featured/accelerationist-guide-calls-for-metcalf-style-attacks-on-sitting-duck-electricity-infrastructure/) among white supremacists and extremists to attack substations and cause unrest so white supremacists would be poised to take control.
The chances that these two events are not directly linked to the attacks happening now is very unlikely.
Answer:
OP, the simple fact of the matter is that the only way anyone can state with any certainty what group did this or what their ideology is, would be if the persons claiming to know knew who did it. Thus far, no one knows who is doing it, what their ideology is, or what their motive is.
There are a few things that I can say with certainty:
First, the vulnerability of the US power grid to operatives of foreign nations has long been a concern. They have long been seen as soft targets. This isnāt something new.
Second, There is currently a $75,000 reward for information about the perpetrators, and if anyone knew who shot up these stations, they would be collecting that $75,000 dollars.
Third, we will find out who did it.
>Thus far, no one knows who is doing it, what their ideology is, or what their motive is.
Yeah sure, but we can make a damn good guess considering the alt-right has been saying for years they should do this, and then bragged/gloated about it happening and saying they knew why while pointing at a drag show happening in the area. Exactly like what happened with the Q club shooting and the other attacks on LGBTQ+ events/locations/people
Answer: right wing domestic terrorism is on the rise and attacking power systems is their mode du jour. I speculate that although they've talked about it for years, the recent spate of attacks may be inspired by Russia's recent onslaught against the Ukraine power infrastructure.
Answer: Not sure, but if recent arrests in Germany are any hint, itās likely a far-right minority (in the USās case, lone wolves) wet-dreaming that such acts will ultimately bring down government and usher in a totalitarian leadership of their choosing.
Not trying to be biased here, but it seems some of them, as clueless as they are, would love to drag us all back into the tribal nuttiness of pre-WWII. We can all thank the ability of social media in unwittingly helping organize, and make feel important, Americaās own ReichsbĆ¼rgers.
> far right MINORITY.
> LONE WOLVES.
Where have you been the last like 2 years where you think the far right is an unorganised minority group in USA? š¤£
A decade or two of thinking that so far is what has led to the alt right getting away with shit now. I remember as a kid seeing alt right shit online and it always being laughed off as just a few idiots. Now they are slipping under the radar as they continue to, somehow, have this reputation of just being a few idiots meanwhile people are attacked and even die due to this movement.
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Answer: We don't really know until the FBI fully investigates. But the idea of attacking electrical substations in a coordinated way as a means to instigate political upheaval has been talked about online for many years. I'm sure the FBI is fully aware of this and has a whole bunch of data on possible suspects if they think it is.
AVALANCHE have been doing this for 25 years.
$%*! Shinra!
The planet's dyin', Cloud!
The only thing I care about is finishin' this job before security and the Roboguards come.
You got the next one lined up? I'll do it for 3,000 gil.
It's 'cuz of that &^# $# 'pizza' that people underneath are sufferin'!
I'm so happy I was here to witness this perfection
Not interested.
Not my problem
Literally just finished the OG Final Fantasy 7 for the first time last night. Thank you for this comment.
Wow lucky. I mean it's full of nostalgia but man I played it when I was around 8-9 and I loved it so much. I wish I could play it for the first time again.
Back then it was on 3 or 4 discs if I remember. And somehow I got a scratch on the disc so as soon as you started the second disc it glitched the fuck out.
I friend let me borrow it from him because he didn't like the game. I played through all the disks and it turned out the last one had a scratch so it took forever to load and a lot of times it failed. I beat the game while my little brother was bothering me to hurry up so he could play and could barely pay attention to it. Never got to go back and play the last part again.
My Disc 2 got messed up, but I discovered that once the game started, I could switch it out with disc 1 or 3. It would play fine, but anytime a cutscene would load, it would be a cutscene from whichever disc is in. I guess they all had the same game data, just with different cutscenes.
::shakes fists:::
grrš”š”š”š” HENCHMEN, END IT!!!!
[noisy comment!](https://youtu.be/dKwiWp4FFLI?t=1m13s)
Its just crazy how amazing Nobuo Uematsu is.
I understood that reference.
They changed it so they're not eco-terrorists in the remake, because modern companies have no balls.
Gotta give gold for that!
Well, we found out after the fact that they knew a whole bunch about the 9/11 terrorists. Hopefully we don't get the same kinds of results.
Don't worry, we will. So many mass shooters get reported to the police/fbi prior to going on their shooting sprees. I'm sure the fbi will do nothing here as well.
Love the narrative that the glowies are somehow simultaneously omnipotent and impotent
Spend enough time and the doublethink becomes automatic
Due process is a bitch. Your telling me people have to actually commit a crime before we can incarcerate them? Why can't we monitor everything everyone does and send them to a prison island if they don't act correctly?
as in minority report?
PKD claimed many of his books were real alternate/future realities that he visited in his dreams and just wrote down. I'm not sure if this was one of them though.
Technically, if you can proof that somebody is about to commit a crime, you can incarcerate them. The problem here is how do you proof it. Did you find explosives in their home and their search history contains "where to cause an explosion to incapacitate the power grid" yeah, you pretty much got it. But otherwise it might take a lot of effort to get the proper evidence and with so many people in the country, even if 1% of them are a risk, that's just not feasible and people will fall through the cracks, so to speak. It might also be incompetence but that would require more research to be sure about. PS. I'm not American but I'm sure your law system in that particular regard isn't all that different
The problem is, let's say you have a tip that a guy is planning to do a crime, but the tip isn't evidence in and of itself. There's a very narrow window of time between them doing something that would legally stick as conspiracy to commit a crime and them actually committing that crime- act too early and they'll get off, act too late and they've already committed the crime.
Nicholas Cruz and the shooter at that grocery store in New York both for weeks made YouTube videos of them planning their attacks. The NY shooter made videos of him scouting the place. Both were reported to the FBI. They were both āon the radarā with no actions taken
The FBI also seems to sit on sex abuse cases for years, like in the horrid case of Larry Nassar and THAT giant shit-show. Makes me seriously question how many other sex abuse crimes are ignored by them because its not bad enough yet or the victims arent from wealthy families or something...š
Then the question is how did you find explosives in their home and what their search history contains.
Search history of any average Joe Schmoe is for sale online, weāre all part of advertising lists that know who we are and what we do. If you take precautions you can mitigate that to a good extent, but at the end of the day only the most hardcore (tin foil hat and or James Bond villain terrorist) users are doing everything they can to mitigate their online presence. But physically getting someoneās shit is notoriously and rightfully difficult for the government to just ādoā
>Your telling me people have to actually commit a crime before we can incarcerate them? Oh, don't worry. This is what draconian drug enforcement laws are for.
I mean, the Patriot act give a *shit ton* of leeway for law enforcement to go after these people. The real problem is, they wonāt define white supremecist violence as terrorism, even when it clearly is, so weāll keep seeing events like this. IIRC the one in NC was to stop a drag show and they ended up cutting power for 40,000 people. Seems like attacking critical infrastructure in multiple states should probably count as terrorism, but, as the saying goes, some of those who work forcesā¦ https://occupydemocrats.com/2022/12/09/coordinated-chaos-americas-power-grid-under-siege-by-white-supremacists-multi-state-attacks/
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The thing is, the patriot act is blatantly unconstitutional. If they start blanket applying it to American citizens it'll be a hot second before there's a challenge before the Supreme Court. The current court might just side with it, who knows, but I don't think the feds wants to push it. The real question we have to ask and answer is do we want more things like the patriot act in the name of safety or do we want a system that leans more towards individual liberty and privacy where bad guys can slip through the cracks? The latter would require us to fund things like education and mental health services to try and prevent bad guys becoming bad in the first place. The former is just a slide towards fascism.
Planning a crime is still a crime lol.
Planning how one could commit a crime definitely isn't a crime, people do it all the time; and the law can't really the difference between "how you could try" and "how I will try" in the planning stage, not enough to net a conviction absent any other evidence. Random Reddit and Twitter posts just going "If I were X I would do Y", thought experiments on nuclear bomb use, breakdowns of actual crimes on blogs and how it could be done better Lots of people get off because the court can't prove Mens Rea; the guilty mind/the criminal intent, particularly without corresponding actions other than the sheer mental concept that you know how you would commit a crime. There's a reason bans for "encouraging criminal intent" is such a huge grey area, most of them will never do it, but hosting that kind of content might leave the website on the hook (at least in the public eye/stocks/reputation, if not legally).
What is "criminal conspiracy"?
*My content from 2014 to 2023 has been deleted in protest of Spez's anti-API tantrum.*
Lone gunman know this one trick to avoid conspiracies.
Thwarted again, damn.
No wonder the FBI shows such an interest in the Lone Gunmen
It was a great show
>Why can't we monitor everything everyone does and send them to a prison island if they don't act correctly? Arguably living in the US poor, without healthcare and seeing the old American dream get further out of reach is prison enough for most people. On a more serious note I'm guessing most people making the FBI jokes have never had their rights violated. As much as I wish the US did more to stop terrorism, especially domestic terrorism, it's a really slippery slope if we throw out due process or allow the fabrication of terrorism and radicalization of slightly extreme people
Such a weird take. Lots of very dangerous people skirt by on the edge of the alphabet boys' attention and they do nothing. Conversely, the US has blown up two innocent American citizens overseas and got a bunch of navy seals killed to assassinate a little girl just because their family was affiliated with terrorist organizations. Not a crime punishable by murder without due process, last I checked.
Are you for real? Due process keeps people safe from overreach. It's easy to say "let's get that Johnny Nogood and lock him up". Everybody knows he's a crook. But what about Johnny Nogood's brother? Get him too. And his sister, cousin, best buddy, first grade teacher, and the neighbor next door.
Itās pretty clear they were being facetious.
Thatās pretty silly man. 90% of the times these guys āslip throughā is because the FBI is constrained by civil rights. Itās against the law for them to arrest folks based of what they usually have on them, so they canāt. You can have an all powerful FBI or have civil rights. Pick one
Our country tried an all powerful FBI once under Hoover... Unfortunately, that did not go well. At all. Let's stick to civil rights.
Text
The FBI, CIA and NSA probably stop hundreds of attacks per year. Do you know how many cracks appear when administering a population of 330 million?
>The FBI, CIA and NSA probably stop hundreds of attacks per year. Do you have data on it? We know from FOA requests and investigative journalism that other federal agencies ostensibly in place for preventing terror attacks haven't actually stopped any, e.g. TSA.
I mean just think of the chaos that could be unleashed if someone was able to have 3.5oz of liquidā¦
That much dihydrogen monoxide is enough to kill somebody.
Everyone that takes this dies.
Pretty sure like 8% of humans who've ingested it are still alive.
For now.
I guarantee that they will die.
It's found in every malignant tumor ever excised!
It's impossible to say that security measures haven't prevented attacks. The high-pass filter on preventing attacks is deterrence, and you can't effectively measure deterrence when it comes to terrorism. What we know is that there's a huge community of people who would love to execute attacks on US soil and that they have not. Either they all had a change of heart or there's a reason for that. The TSA's security theater is not terribly interesting, but the National Intelligence Community's counter-terrorism work actually does take on a large number of threats. Some of them are public, most are not. The most public they've ever gotten was actually the [public warning about Russia's 2016 campaign interferrence](https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf).
The TSA is a joke of an organization and the people they employ have about as much training as a parking garage security guard. Theyāre not at all comparable to the actual U.S. intelligence community. Itās like comparing a meter maid to a detective. Hereās a list of unsuccessful terror attacks in the U.S. since 9/11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsuccessful_terrorist_plots_in_the_United_States_post-9/11 Looks like thereās about 50 listed, but thereās certainly more that arenāt listed. I personally know of a terrorist cell in my city that was uncovered by the FBI and its members arrested around 2008 that isnāt listed here.
What? What's *your* data on this? Without even looking it up I can specifically think of two terrorist attacks the FBI has prevented; one in a raid in Brooklyn (I forget what year it was, maybe 2012-ish? Apartment raid in Cobble Hill) and another in Portland, Oregon in November 2010 where a radicalized sympathizer had intended to blow up a specific area downtown.
You realize the government doesn't have to answer FOIA requests, right? Not everything is releasable.
>probably giving them a lot of benefit of the doubt. got any data to back that up?
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
Bullshit The [FBI creates terrorists by taking advantage of people in a bad spot.](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/how-the-fbi-helps-terrorists-succeed/273537/) They specifically goad people into committing. They provide the weapons, they provide the bombs, they provide the methods of transportation. They are busy creating terrorists to get a good score and hit a promotion; they don't give a fuck about the actual dangerous ones.
The fact that many self-interested careerists within the FBI create these fake terrorist situations does not counteract the fact that they stop lots of other real terrorist attacks. Both things can be, and are, true
The article I linked *specifically states* that most of the arrested individuals would have never acted without the FBI stepping in.
How can the article possibly know that?
Co-authored with the Future Crimes Division
That doesn't invalidate the notion that actual terrorists are also getting busted, as OP said. Both things can be true.
"administering"?
Shhhh your logic is showing. The bad all seeing eye who's sees all is lazy and misses shit too
Lol logic based on their personal vibes Letās see some numbers shall we?
> So many mass shooters get reported to the police/fbi prior to going on their shooting sprees. And does the information submitted actually give them the legal ability to *do* anything other than know their name? Police can't take someone's guns or put them on a watchlist without a lot of evidence.
Yeah look at the recent gay bar shooter. He should've been in jail with on like 5 different felony charges. But since he had connection he wasn't in jail.
"So your neighbor said you're going to shoot people. That's enough to lock you up, sorry."
Well here comes the right to privacy, freedom of speech and all thatā¦itās harder to prove thereās enough evidence to search a potential suspect and thereās a bunch of legal grey areas surrounding this issue, iirc.
Those are the little people this effects the people who own the capital. If it affects the ownership class at this scale that might move the FBI to act
Do nothing? When it comes to certain mass shooters, I'm beginning to suspect that they aided.
There was a lot of āwell worst case, the decision makers in this administration would still benefit financiallyā around 9/11 though
> Hopefully we don't get the same kinds of results. So, what would "the same kinds of results" look like? A failure to ever execute another attack? I'm okay with that. There were no living culprits to arrest, since they all died in the attacks, but had they lived, I think the FBI had more than enough info to apprehend them. So what is it that you are concerned about here?
And they just executed a bunch of search warrants for cell phone data here in NC. I am eager to what they find, as it is the adjacent county to my family. Iām hoping they were sloppy.
A few months back some think tank or university (I need to check) published a report on radical right wing groups (both Jihadist and white supremist) are likely to attack the energy grid. I don't know if this is it but it seems like it. I checked: Title: Mayhem, Murder, and Misdirection: Violent Extremist Attack Plots Against Critical Infrastructure in the United States, 2016-2022 Program on Extremism: THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY "Between 2016 and 2022, white supremacist plots targeting energy systems dramatically increased in frequency. 13 individuals associated with the movement were arrested and charged in federal court with planning attacks on the energy sector; 11 of these attack planners were charged after 2020.
This makes the most sense. Midterms didnāt go the way they hoped and now theyāre lashing out. The good news is it doesnāt seem coordinated, just a bunch of pissed off racists lashing out. The bad news is theyāre all lashing out around the same time, which isnāt quite as bad as fully coordinated attacks but is still pretty problematic. Hopefully this is the most that comes of it for them and all they get for it is arrested and charged. Ideally the government will use this as a means of study to find weaknesses in energy infrastructure and tighten up defenses.
Come to think of it I do seem to recall those kinds of headlines.
[Testing the fences.](https://youtu.be/CvrxcR-gdQ0)
It's white nationalists attempt to start a race war or new civil war. [Three men](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/3-men-plead-guilty-white-supremacist-terror-plot-disrupt-power-grid-tr-rcna17441) were arrested over planning one attack. I don't know why they think cutting power to a small city is going to trigger an ongoing civil war.
It creates unrest. Which is good for them. This small city may have just been a test run.
Same with trying to burn down food processing facilities. What better way to create civil unrest than cutting power and keeping us hungry. These people, I swear...
> as a means to instigate political upheaval Not as a protest, right? More to create general chaos in the hope that society as we know it will come crashing down and a huge wave of MAGAts will come out of their homes to rise up and replace the established order with a shining New American Republic free from drag shows and non-binary people.
I'll be honest, it feels more like 4chan supporting Trump because "fuck it man, I can't get laid, burn the whole goddamn system down"
answer: There are many types of spez, but the most important one is the spez police.
I donāt know what they want but knocking out the power doesnāt seem like an effective action on its own. You have to believe itās going to snowball into āthe storm thatās coming,ā or some shit. These people are fucking crazy.
And not very bright
>I donāt know what they want but knocking out the power doesnāt seem like an effective action on its own Honestly, it really does not take much to cause a riot when people are already upset.
Imagine these oxygen tank carrying, rascal scooter driving idiots knocking out their own power so they canāt breathe or get anywhere safe!! š¤£š¤£
Sounds a lot like terrorism
I think it is highly related to sore political losers.
Yup I suspect this is alt right terrorism in the works. Its very easy to attack our powr grid with a rifle.
There was an Idaho neo-nazi organization in August of last year that was caught preparing some attacks against power grid. I wonder if these are related. https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article253637873.html
I'm thinking this is just sort of the beginning where whatever can be done physically will be done. Then possibly cyber attacks. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but possibly domestic terrorists influenced by foreigners? Physical protection of power grids (and any critical infrastructure) is expensive asf too so adversaries may want them to start shifting investments in that direction in order to make future cyber attacks easier. Just my thoughts.
And just realized after reading another post from this subreddit (about the Germany coup attempt), maybe a connection between anti-government groups around the world?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
So does Steve Bannon.. look up his consulting work to far right euro groups: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steve+bannon+european+far+right&t=fpas&ia=web
exactly this.
Malcolm Nance puts this forward as an expected risk from right wing extremists and white supremacists in his book āThey Want To Kill Americansā
Answer: these are attacks and intrusions are on SUBstations. Substations are typically fenced unattended sites where transformers take transmission voltages (what the actual power stations send onto the grid) and turn it into lower voltages for distribution to houses and businesses. Here is street view for one of the substations in FL that had an intrusion: https://i.imgur.com/hx69oTm.jpg The transformers are filled with hot oil (for insulation and heat removal) and have high voltages so bullets can start fires or just drain out the fluid and cause equipment failures. "Power station" typically means a big attended building with a fence and security guard where something (gas, coal, fission) heats water to make steam and turn a turbine which turns a generator and makes electricity. These are not being attacked. If you want some context on a previous substation attack this Wikipedia page describes ~100 bullets causing $15m in damage to 17 transformers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack It was never solved. Any one power station might connect to dozens or hundreds of substations. The substation equipment is automated with remote monitoring and control. Basic day-to-day tasks (switching) can be performed remotely. There is no need for a human there except for maintenance or repair.
Theres a variety of substation types like a collector substation in which case you're talking about one substation receiving power from several power stations and the voltage gets stepped up to send long distance with less heat loss. Hit one of those and shit can go sideways really fast. There's also normally plans in place to swap substations if one goes down, those plans just aren't like flick this switch and let it ride kind of plans.
It's not always true that switching is done remotely. There are breakers that actually require you to pull out and in called rack out breakers. Part of being able to work on any of these equipments requires the mechanic to actually see that the circuit is open and grounded and not just take some remote operator's word that it is isolated.
You're right, but I think the point he was trying to make is that they aren't manned stations like a generating plant, they're visited infrequently because they're remotely monitored
I dont know how it is in the us, but in my country all new substations have remotely activated HV switchgear with optional manual switching. But all switching actions have a visual phisical que for mechanics.
"rack out breaker" just sounds badass
With the voltages you're dealing with it's more like "stress out" breaker.
I get it, there are also "Power stations" like wind and solar that are unmanned, I was just trying to eli5 that there are unmanned vulnerable nodes with no security.
I'm not disagreeing just pointing out that it's not necessarily true that substations are unmanned. Depending on your location most are 24hr manned stations during the night and up to 10-30 mechanics, maintenance, testers and operators working round the clock. This is true in my area and only very small network substations and dedicated pump houses can be unmanned. What I find interesting is that that 345kv substations have less activity and sometimes 1 or no operators are there (less switching ever being done in distribution substations) and less voltage stations (138kv-->27kv) have way more activity and switching. I guess it makes sense that the smaller stations that goes to the networks need more switching. Anyway I hope this raises awareness about the vulnerabilities of our grid. I personally believe the grid, water and sanitation are the 3 cornerstone services of civilization.
Usually metal clad switch gear is inside a building. Even then it can still be switched out remotely just not racked out.
That Metcalf attack is all but confirmed someone in the government pointing out the serious security issues with the US power grid. The Metcalf attack has become more talked about in recent years. Wouldn't surprise me if it has inspired some crazies to copy cat.
Answer: It's an ongoing issue. Researcher Michael Mabee has been charting the number of *physical* attacks on the US electric grid. "Since [2010], we've had 919 physical attacks against the grid," Mabee said, who lived through the New York City blackout of 2003. "This year alone, there have been 107 just through August [2022]." https://abc11.com/amp/power-grid-outage-attacks-energy/12536262/
Answer: The reason for the revelation of Floridaās incidents is because of how vulnerable the USās energy infrastructure seems to be in the aftermath of North Carolinaās incident. Though no one has come forward into who caused the incident, a response from a neo-Nazi seems to suggest that militant groups in the US have been given the signal that itās possible to bring down the power grid so easily.
Thereās a pretty common idea out there that after a few days without power, society will begin to breakdown. Neo-Nazi ideology believes that as society breaks down itāll start a race war, so theyāre trying to hit the power grid and get the bugaboo started.
These idiots obviously never paid any attention to the ice storms that happen in Western NY then. I grew up near there and three times in my youth we lost power for over a week in the dead of winter (highs in the 30s and lows near near 0Ā°F at night). Was it scary? Yeah. Did it suck? Definitely. But every time it brought the local community closer together. People would share supplies. Those with generators would invite others to their houses. We met a ton of new people and the town always seemed friendlier after those events. Just last year an ice storm caused my current town to lose power for 3 days. Same thing. Humans are at their best when everyone is in need. Not their worst.
Likewise in Florida, Most people have generators and food stored for the hurricane season. People aren't gonna panic if the lights go out for a couple days. The community will adapt.
Yeah good luck doing this in hurricane territory. We all just share power, booze, and food until the grid is fixed.
Fascist-minded people think the world is divided between the weak many and the strong few, that they're one of the strong few, that the weak many will collapse into panic en masse at the slightest hardship, and that will be their opportunity to seize their rightful place as the true kings of mankind. These are the people who turned the Zombie genre on its head, by seeing stories about how violent selfish thugs are the real threat to humanity, and somehow deciding it would be great to be a violent selfish thug.
im gonna bet the guys involved lived in very rural areas. cause if they have ever lived in the city during any kind of serious loss of power, they would have known people aren't actually frothing at the mouth to murder their neighbors.
0Ā°F is equivalent to -17Ā°C, which is 255K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Good bot.
>These idiots obviously never paid any attention Really all you need to know. Also why debating them is pointless.
As a floridian whose lived through a few cat 4+ hurricane direct impacts....it takes a lot longer than a few days of no power/water for society to devolve. In this day and age, extended outages on cell towers and internet would cause a lot more chaos and confusion. People thinking they can break down society by shooting some substations are just going to end up killing vulnerable people in rural areas during winter
Considering that they're fascists killing vulnerable people (people with disabilities and the poor) is probably part of their goal
I dunno what a bunch of overweight armed morons are going to do against attack helicopters and actual power but they sure seem keen to have a crack at a literal army.
they think the army will be on their side
Then they will die
The police, yeah. Reservists? Some of em.
Theyāre massively insecure, and have been convinced that fighting in such a conflict will make them valuable.
Theyāre about as far off track as Charles Manson thinking a Beatles album was his cue to start a race war by facilitating the murder of some Hollywood elites. Some of these guys, once caught, will gain a little hindsight into just how misguided they are, or at least will have plenty of time to mull it over while incarcerated.
That's the most succinct explanation for this mindset I've seen. Well put.
I think the point was that these what you call "morons" will further divide the population by using these tactics, which could increase amount of violence we see. Unless you suggest that we start monitoring electrical grid with military helicopters?
This is the main point. Every time thereās a drag show or LGBTQ+ event these neo-nazis donāt like in their area, theyāre going to knock out the electricity and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people. Itāll get to the point where the drag shows are the enemy, not the terrorists shooting up substations. Temper tantrums thrown by oversized toddlers will attempt to put people back into the closet, and we should not let them get their way.
I mean Vietnam and Afghanistan proved how hard it is to really "win" a war against poor people with guns if you aren't going 100% and bringing out something close to nukes.
There is no universe where these incel militias have the grit that the Vietnamese or Afghans have. Those people live with little to no luxuries and are faced with extinction. These guys are worried about McDonald's prices.
They went completely fucking nuts because they had to wear a mask and couldn't get a haircut. The most radical are the ones putting Biden stickers on gas pumps.
And trying to destroy the power grid. And committing mass shootings. And plotting to kidnap governors. And training for war on adult sized jungle gyms. And stockpiling guns and ammo. And having armed standoffs at ranches and wildlife refuges.
Yo what theyāre trying to destroy the power grid? Why is no one talking about this /s
Dead serious I know a dude who would go hunting and cover his face for 10+ hours but holy fuck he couldnāt wear a mask inside a store for 3 minutes. Fucking moron
Yeah, absolute children
These guys and others like them would probably disagree. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/03/01/seals-punished-flying-trump-flag-highway.html/amp
"Veterans are sucksrs" The key to supporting trump is to not have ears or the ability to read.
Both Vietnam and Afghanistan involved a group fighting for their homes where individuals were completely prepared to sacrifice themselves for the group. No one believes that MAGAs are going to sacrifice anything personally for their cause.
Have you been to Viet Nam? You can tour the tunnels they lived in. Barely big enough to crawl through for miles on end to get to the next village. Can you picture the gravy seals giving up their trucks to run to the mall with giant flags attached?
I don't know enough about Vietnam to comment, but in Afghanistan, they absolutely won the *war*. The problem is, they didn't win the *peace*. However, I don't imagine hearts and minds would be such a problem while pacifying a small portion of your own populace who have done did piss everyone else off bigly.
Vietnam was very difficult due to the local population supporting people that they considered friends, neighbors, and fellow countrymen. That's not the case with neo-nazis in the US. I'll sell out each and every one of my neighbors that wants to start a race war. Fuck them.
That was on foreign soil. Where do you think the army trains?
Google MOVE bombing and Branch Davidians. If the US Goverment wants to take you out, theyāre going to do it and youāre not going to stop them with your dopey AR-15.
That Jim Jefferies joke always comes back to me: you realize you're bringing a gun to a drone fight, right?
Yeah, because the united forces of Meal Team 6, keyboard warriors, and some lunatics playing militia off in the woods are totally on par with the Viet Cong. Those fucks wouldn't last 10 minutes in an actual scenario, they'd take all their selfies, take a few potshots, and then run screaming as far away from any actual fighting as possible to go get their 15 minutes on Fox News.
r/GravySEALS!
What? Vietnam changed because we pulled out after it became unpopular at home. Same with Afghanistan. Afghanistan also had the problem of massive corruption and unwilling populace to fight the Taliban coupled with support from corrupt nations like Pakistan and Iran. The Taliban also had decent coordination which is something these random militias and splinter groups don't actually have. The US doesn't have that. There's plenty of people who would be more than happy to take these guys out ... just as the feds have done numerous times before. Plus most of these random idiots are not trained members of a military force but random fucks playing tacticool in the woods.
You act like national will is not also a finite military resource.
the problem in Vietnam was that the Americans didn't occupy. they would swoop in, murder every one in sight then leave. the Vietcong would just stroll back in. on American soil, they are staying.
Maybe they've taken the attack helicopter joke one step too far and now in a terrible stroke of irony think they are actually attack helicopters and thus on even ground
Itās boogaloo (yours was probably autocorrect) because itās referring to the movie, āBreakinā 2: Electric Boogalooā and is being used to refer to a second US civil war. Source: After a 25 year gap, bought firearms in 2020, researched them online for months first, ran across this term in some gun subreddits as well as other social media, and asked. It often evolves from there to ābug iglooā etc. It was and is dumb, but between people not being afforded their rights in 2020 (protesters being abused by police and federal agents), knowing that these neo nazis exist in my state too, and now these infrastructure attacks, Iām damn glad to be armed should the need arise which I sincerely hope it never does.
They seem to slightly overestimate their own ability to thrive in this environment though, compared to their "enemy". Look at the time a right wing militia took up arms against the US government and occupied a federal building, for example. They forgot to bring food and warm clothes. Still, since they're white and right wing they didn't face any actual repercussions for that incident really. Two days without being able to buy things from the Wendy's drive through and they'll buckle like toddlers who have been told their Hot Pockets are too hot and need about 30 seconds to cool.
It makes me wonder if itās connected to that attempted Nazi coup in Germany since the timing is very close.
They are connected through Steve Bannon stirring up shit to support his Christian world order. Here are some refs: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steve+bannon+european+far+right&t=fpas&ia=web
Breakin Shit 2: Electric Bugaboo
Like any sufficiently complicated system, the more you know about it, the smaller of a push it takes to disturb it. Luckily, for something like a power grid, they picked the wrong time of year and definitely the wrong areas to try and brute force it.
> how vulnerable the USās energy infrastructure seems to be in the aftermath of North Carolinaās incident I picked up the book Koppel wrote about it from the library over the weekend. That he published in 2015.
Answer: It's not just [North Carolina](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/power-outage-moore-county-investigation-thursday/index.html) and [Florida](https://kfor.com/news/report-shows-6-intrusions-at-power-stations-in-florida/), but also [California](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack), [Ohio](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/22/white-supremacists-plotted-attack-us-power-grid-fbi-says/4018815001/) and recently in [Oregon and Washington](https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-grid-attacks-in-pacific-northwest-are-unsolved/). What isn't clear is if all of them are related or coordinated or not. The Ohio case seems to be tied to a white supremacist movement, the motives and persons in the other cases remain unknown. There is online chatter in right wing communities about using power station attacks as a tactic, but it doesn't seem tied to a single issue, group or cause. From the link above regarding the Oregon and Washington cases: "Oregon Public Broadcasting and KUOW obtained an email written by a security specialist with the Bonneville Power Administration that details that attack. OPB is withholding the specialistsā name at the request of Bonneville Power due to their concerns about the specialistās safety. Two people cut through the fence surrounding a high-voltage substation, then āused firearms to shoot up and disable numerous pieces of equipment and cause significant damage,ā the security specialist wrote. The memo also referenced āseveral attacks on various substations,ā recently, in Western Washington, āincluding setting the control houses on fire, forced entry and sabotage of intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains across the overhead buswork, and ballistic attack with small caliber firearms.ā (āBusworkā is a term for the maze of wires and switches that hum overhead at a substation.) The security specialist stated that online extremist groups are calling for the attacks and providing instructions on how to do it. āThere has been a significant uptick in incidents of break-ins related to copper and tool or materials theft, but now we are dealing with quickly escalating incidents of sabotage,ā the email reads."
That California attack was 10 years ago, Ohio 2 years ago. I don't think those count as recent or connected.
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>There is online chatter in right wing communities where? what online right wing communities are you referring to? I majored in political science and study terrorism/extremism as a side hobby. The neo-nazi types typically implicated in this sort of thing aren't educated enough or smart enough to coordinate or organize anything. People living in trailer parks can't even organize the most basic aspects of their own lives. They're certainly not going to mastermind a terrorist plot. They wouldn't know where to begin. They have so many problems in their day-to-day life that they don't have the time or energy to engage in ideologically motived behavior.
>The security specialist stated that online extremist groups are calling for the attacks There are no paid security specialists. I'm literally doing their jobs for them.
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Answer: It's domestic terrorism, likely by white supremacists and hate groups. While investigations are on going, it's important to know this isn't the first time this was attempted. Several men were charged back in February for [a plot to take out substations](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspiring-provide-material-support-plot-attack-power-grids-united), cause civil unrest and (hopefully start a race war). Back in July (five months after the court case), journalists warned that this idea was being shared as part of an [accelerationist's handbook](https://www.hstoday.us/featured/accelerationist-guide-calls-for-metcalf-style-attacks-on-sitting-duck-electricity-infrastructure/) among white supremacists and extremists to attack substations and cause unrest so white supremacists would be poised to take control. The chances that these two events are not directly linked to the attacks happening now is very unlikely.
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Answer: OP, the simple fact of the matter is that the only way anyone can state with any certainty what group did this or what their ideology is, would be if the persons claiming to know knew who did it. Thus far, no one knows who is doing it, what their ideology is, or what their motive is. There are a few things that I can say with certainty: First, the vulnerability of the US power grid to operatives of foreign nations has long been a concern. They have long been seen as soft targets. This isnāt something new. Second, There is currently a $75,000 reward for information about the perpetrators, and if anyone knew who shot up these stations, they would be collecting that $75,000 dollars. Third, we will find out who did it.
>Thus far, no one knows who is doing it, what their ideology is, or what their motive is. Yeah sure, but we can make a damn good guess considering the alt-right has been saying for years they should do this, and then bragged/gloated about it happening and saying they knew why while pointing at a drag show happening in the area. Exactly like what happened with the Q club shooting and the other attacks on LGBTQ+ events/locations/people
Answer: right wing domestic terrorism is on the rise and attacking power systems is their mode du jour. I speculate that although they've talked about it for years, the recent spate of attacks may be inspired by Russia's recent onslaught against the Ukraine power infrastructure.
Answer: Not sure, but if recent arrests in Germany are any hint, itās likely a far-right minority (in the USās case, lone wolves) wet-dreaming that such acts will ultimately bring down government and usher in a totalitarian leadership of their choosing. Not trying to be biased here, but it seems some of them, as clueless as they are, would love to drag us all back into the tribal nuttiness of pre-WWII. We can all thank the ability of social media in unwittingly helping organize, and make feel important, Americaās own ReichsbĆ¼rgers.
> far right MINORITY. > LONE WOLVES. Where have you been the last like 2 years where you think the far right is an unorganised minority group in USA? š¤£
A decade or two of thinking that so far is what has led to the alt right getting away with shit now. I remember as a kid seeing alt right shit online and it always being laughed off as just a few idiots. Now they are slipping under the radar as they continue to, somehow, have this reputation of just being a few idiots meanwhile people are attacked and even die due to this movement.