Power Station Sabotage, with Molly Conger

Molly Conger joins Robert, Garrison, and James to discus the recent attacks on power substations and how they relate to growing awareness of accelerationist plots against critical infrastructure.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It could happen here is a podcast, and it is
kind of happening here because they're just was just an
attack on uh, several power substations in the city of
North or city in the state of North Carolina. UM,
that left something like forty people without power for several days.

(00:25):
I believe that at the moment at least one person
died as a result of this. There have been car crashes.
It's pretty fucked up, and uh, we are going to
be talking about that. Obviously. As a result of this
number one, there were a lot of immediate suspicions that
came out that this was tied towards Drag Queen uh
story hour type event that was going to be being

(00:46):
held UM on the day that the attack was carried out.
There's suspicions that this is the result of far right activity. UM,
and uh yeah, we're gonna talk about that and everything
around that right now. UM. We have on the episode
for today myself, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and we are
also bringing in friend of the pod researcher and woman

(01:10):
about town. Um, but not this town, a different town
because we live on opposite sides of the country. Molly
Conger Molly, I've been saying your last name wrong for years,
even though we've been friends for quite a while. I
don't know why I never said anything. It's come up
so many times. Yeah, um, so, Garrison, you've kind of
been taking point on putting together this one, So I'm

(01:30):
gonna let you kind of take the reins unless you
want me to uh to to to direct this more.
But I do think kind of the place to start
is are we watching a gigantic right wing insurgency unfold
or is this a more complex case? And obviously the
answer is the latter, as it is anytime someone poses
a question like that, no is we're gonna We're gonna

(01:50):
We're gonna pick this the simple, more scary, more inflammatary
option and leave it at that. Yeah, twet, let's get
said tweet. No so yes. Um. The aftermath of the
North Carolina attack has kind of it's gotten a lot
of people to learn about infrastructure attacks for the first
time and get really scared about them and realize that

(02:12):
this is a problem, and then start bringing up past
incidents when this has happened and trying to draw this
like overall pattern, which isn't entirely incorrect, but the way
they're going about it is not very responsible nor really
well informed. Yeah. So one of the things we've seen
is like the there have been a lot of attack Like, uh,

(02:37):
it does seem accurate to say that over the course
of the last year or two there have been more
attacks on power infrastructure. UM. But that doesn't mean we
have we have lots of data on this. It has
the past five years there has been a pretty strong
increase in the number of attacks on power stations. And
it's also true that this is a thing the right

(02:59):
has been, the far right, like the Nazi right in particular,
has been trying to get people to do for longer
than anyone on this podcast has been alive. UM. This
goes back to the Turner Diaries even pre that stuff.
This is in siege, um, and this is you know,
there has been very recently this summer a couple of
pieces of fairly well put together Nazi propaganda that was

(03:23):
advocating for people to carry out attacks like this. And
the reason is that it's easy and it's high impact.
It's very easy to funk up a power substation. All
you need is a gun, um, and it's very easy
to get away with it because most of them have
effectively zero security. Yeah, and it explained how to do
it as well. Right, sorry, like it it was literally

(03:44):
a guide to fucking up a substation. Yeah, because they're specific.
We're not going to give you guys a guide to
fucking up power substations on this podcast, but it's not hard.
Next week, Yeah, that's next week in our three partner
it's on the Patreon. You've got to be on the Patreon.
That's that's the Patreon special episode, how to Destroy power
Infrastructure for Fun and Profit. No, but I think too,

(04:06):
if you're trying to propagandize people to take action, you know,
we've all seen plenty of manifestoes from people who carried
out mass shootings trying to propagandize people to take action
in that effect. Um, but we've also seen the chats
when somebody fails, right, Like, if somebody doesn't get what
they call it, you know, a high score. If somebody
carries out a mass shooting that doesn't result in very
many debts, it's embarrassing for them. But this is for

(04:30):
the perpetrator, relatively low stakes. If you fail, no one
will know. If you miss, no one will know Um,
if you hit the you know, if you hit it
and it just looks like vandalism and the power doesn't
go out, no one will know that you failed, and
you can try again later. You don't die. And that's
that's the title of one of the one of the
pieces of propaganda that I sent to you, right The
title of it is make It Count, which is an

(04:52):
impredated form of a quote from Siege. I wish it's
a Nazi and I'm not going to read the film
annual from general. The general gist of the quote is
that you know, the price of failure is death. So
whatever you choose to do, make it count. So this
is a way to relatively low stakes for the perpetrator,

(05:14):
way to have a very high impact with low risk
of personal failure. And what I did find, and we'll
get off. We'll move to the broader topic in a second,
because I think focusing too much on the Nazis right
now is going to frame things the wrong way. But
one of the things I did find interesting about that
piece of propaganda was the acknowledgement and the introduction that
like carrying out these mass shootings is not going to

(05:34):
accomplish our broader goals in part because people have gotten
and neared to them. Whereas destroying power infrastructure, if you
can funk up the grid, they believe that's going to
like and I think, obviously this is a silly line
of thought, but they think it's going to like lead
to the I mean, this is always what I think
it's going to lead to, like the race war that
they want, right, That's that's the thinking there be. And

(05:55):
that equation is like a two B two s like
this and question mark mark race war. Yeah, they're Nazis,
you know, they're Nazis. They're not right about things. But
the fact that all this propaganda is out there, the
fact that they've been talking about this so long, is
part of why everyone is convinced that, like there's this
massive new insurgency that's just broken out and that that's

(06:17):
what all of these attacks are, which doesn't mean that
none of them are. Um. It's also worth noting that
the year before this happened in the same state in
North Carolina, a group of Nazis were arrested by the
FEDS for trying to attack power infrastructure, and they also
had plans on the Pacific Northwest, where there have been
in Washington Portland attacks on some power infrastructure. Um, and

(06:39):
they also they're also just so happens to be a
lot of Nazis here. Yeah, the both the Carolinias and
the Pacific and the Pacific Northwest are home to a
lot of people who self described as like militant neo
Nazi accelerationists. And what I think we should do now
before we get too much off this and we can
return to this topic, is talk about the fact that,

(07:02):
and this is kind of the important context, a lot
of people who aren't Nazis funk up electrical grids all
the time. It's actually very easy, and people seem to
just enjoy it americ. I think there's there's there's been
a lot of missteps people have taken in talking about
this and kind of you know, some people have gotten

(07:22):
scared and have kind of you know, uh not not
looked at this uh fully analytically in a way that
is actually really helpful, because there's been a lot of
kind of retrospective misinformation going around on attacks that have
happened in the in the past few months that I've
only really gotten reported on. Are noticed in the wake

(07:45):
of the North Carolina attack, which is kind of caused
this narrative to come out that since the North Carolina attack,
there's been like a bajillion of other other attacks happening
in quick succession, which actually isn't true. So that's I first,
I want to talk about the types of stuff that
is that people are generally getting wrong about this because
it's a good a good deal. People are are are

(08:07):
misunderstanding some some of what's going on here. Um. So
there was this, you know, pretty pretty viral uh story
made by a new station in Florida that came out
a few days ago talking about how it's all caps
substations targeted. Reports shows intrusions had Duke Energy power stations

(08:28):
in Tampa Bay and elsewhere in Florida. So very scary
obviously because Duke Energy is also the place in North
Carolina that was attacked, founded by the guy who invented
the modern cigarette. By the way, based based yes, but
if you if you look, if you look at the
actual story, these intrusions that they're talking about happened last September.

(08:51):
They did not. They did not happen a few days ago.
And then also similarly, for the first time, there was
reporting on a whole bunch of substation attacks in the
Pacific Northwest. Uh, that reporting was dropped after the North
Carolina attacks in part because a memo was was was
posted by a few different news sites that they probably

(09:11):
did open records requests in the wake of the North
Carolina attack. They found this memo, reported on it, and
now people have this, you know, have learn learn about
this other thing that happened in November. So, but people
who don't, who really are only looking at headlines or
only looking at tweets UM or posts wherever, right, Uh,
they look at these attacks and they look at you know,

(09:31):
the succession of them becoming public after the North Carolina thing,
and they're kind of drawing this narrative that these things
have happened one after another and it's part of this
brand new wave of things, and it is part of
a wave of things on like the broad sense, but
it's not all happened within the past two weeks. So
the first thing is like, when it's super easy for

(09:53):
a disinformation and misinformation to spread very rampantly in the
aftermath of these types of attacks, UM, and these types
of incidents, you know, some of these probably are not
attacks UM. And it's really easy to kind of glom
onto an erative that's compelling and scary, and if you
just dig it a little a little bit deeper, deeper,

(10:13):
you'll realize there's a whole bunch of context that you're missing.
So that's always an important first step when when these
things are happening. Yeah, and it's part of the part
of the story here. I think part of why it's
important to understand that, like the surgeon, attacks on power
infrastructure is a thing, but it's not necessarily tied to
the fact that Nazis are attacking the power infrastructure is that,

(10:34):
like it's easy to do, it's easy to do casually.
And this has been known for a while. About a
decade ago, two thirteen, there was an attack in the
Bay Area on I think was it was it too
power substations. Um, yeah, the Metcalf sniper and we don't
know how many people were involved, but suspected it's it's

(10:54):
it's it's suspected more than one. Yes, yes, sniper. And
this was a very if if this was a practice attack,
a training attack, then it was a very effectively carried
out one. Because we still don't know who did it,
and regardless of the mode of this incidence of has
been mythologized in a lot of extremist circles as like
an example of here's a successful thing that is replicable

(11:18):
and you can get away with it. This is this
is one of the most highly referenced incidents of infrastructure
attack on you know, across you know, whether you're like
uh Anti Siev bloodite or whether you're a neo Nazi accelerationist.
This is, this specific attack is highly referenced. And we'll

(11:39):
circle back to this towards the end. But because I'm
going to quote from a recent report by the George
Washington University on power substation attacks. Um, they are, they
are extremely common. They are they are becoming increasingly common
since white supremacists are not the only ones who do them.
They were also from from twenty six to nineteen, a

(11:59):
whole bunch of Isis inspired terrorism also hit some substations
across the United States. They are, they are, They're not
exclusively done by wet supremacists, and there's also sometimes they're
just shot at by random people with guns. And let's
be honest. So the Metcalf attack, it's not impossible that

(12:23):
it was just an usually lucky group of ye who's
who wanted to shoot some power infrastructure. We have no idea.
I think the number of rounds fired directly in yeah,
I probably make that unlikely. Almost every intelligence agency will
disagree with you on that, Robert. They didn't catch they
didn't catch ship. But to Robert's point, I think, I

(12:46):
think there is some value in remembering that a drunk
guy in the woods might love to fire a gun
at something that's gonna spark. And he's going to shoot
a gun, you might as well shoot it a lot. No,
I I probably wouldn't shoot it two times. It was
very It was It was very anyway, I there is
we and we talked about this a bit in our planning.
There was one attack and Molly, you probably could recall

(13:08):
the year better than I was. But it was a
couple of years ago where the guy attacked to power substation.
Because he and he talked about this at length in
his trial, he thought people were on their phones too much,
so I said, I sent this one to the other
I loved. I love to find a court record. I'd
love to spend all my all my pocket change on

(13:29):
pacer And they given me access to the law library.
So I spent all day today, UM, looking for any
case We're not not just charged, were convicted of any
case where USC eighteen USC thirteen sixty six was brought up.
So thirteen sixty six is the federal statute for damaging
or conspiring to damage and energy facility. And so energy

(13:51):
facility means power lines, power substations, coal mines, nuclear facilities,
any place where power is made, right, so it's a
pretty broad atute. And so I looked up a few
dozen cases where that was on the table to sort
of bring the temperature down and say, like, okay, aside
from Nazis trying to cause a race, war, water, some
other things that lead to somebody getting charged with this,

(14:13):
other motivations, other scenarios. UM. In that case was Jason
wood Ring, UM. Jason wood Ring in August, he tried
to use a this is a quote from some news
coverage the time, tried to lasso a train with a
cable attached to a high voltage tower. He is still

(14:42):
in prison righton. Was distracted by their screens, by their phones,
by their gaming, and he just wanted people to remember
what's important. So he tried to lack the train high
voltage wire. Now, I probably yeah, we probably don't need

(15:04):
to add this. He was a big enthusiast of methamphetamy.
He has some court ordered substance abuse treatment, and we
wish him nothing but the best, right. I think he's
going to be just fine. But so I found some
other cases where there was an intentional attack with the
you know, with the stated intention of bringing down the grid,

(15:25):
but for like non Nazi reasons. In the early two thousand's, UM,
a bunch of E l F activists were charged with
thirteen sixty six for arsons to energy facilities. UM, this
is an odd one. In twenty nineteen, a guy named
Stephen McCrae was sentenced for attacking one substation by shooting

(15:45):
out the cooling fins, and as part of his plea agreement,
he admitted to three other attacks. UM. He got caught
because he told a friend of his that he'd been
shooting shipped up. I was concerned and when to the FBI,
and they had his friend record some of theirs bad friends. Yea,

(16:06):
and so he said things like he stated motive was
attacking corporate America so some couldn't be done about global warming.
He wasn't noted as an environmental activist, but he was
concerned about the corporations, which I don't know, Alex Jones
code in language. Globalists come from a couple of different places. Yeah, yeah,

(16:30):
listen people maybe, but he right before his arrest, he
told his friend that he was planning a brand Daddy
event that would make national news and shut down the
whole West coast. Okay, Okay, that's maybe. That's sometimes kids.
Don't tell that to your friend. Yeah, anyone, your friend

(16:53):
is still snitching and that sucks. But like, don't don't
tell that to your According to the euro of Prisons
innate locator, which is another tool I really enjoy, he
was released in September. That's yeah. This I think it
helps to make the point that like, this is not

(17:14):
all are mostly Nazis doing this kind of thing, A
lot of people trying to make about the you know,
these sort of I found a third case that sort
of fits the same pattern, a guy who shot out
a transformer for reasons I can't quite discern based on
the court railings. But again, in all three of these cases,
the Miles Maynard case in Alabama in two thousand eight,
Jason woodreyteen Stephen McCrae in twenty nine. They all had

(17:37):
court ordered psyche valves, and in McCrae's case, there were
questions about his compency to stand trial. Miles Miles Maynard
died shortly after being released from prison. These are people
who were not well. Yeah, not that not that being
unwell or having the subs problem makes you shoot a substation.
But these aren't explicitly ideological. These are people who just

(17:59):
got an idea their head and I didn't control it. Well. Yeah,
And I think part of when you're kind of looking
at just any of these attacks, you're trying to discern
as stuff pops into the news, is this likely part
of an insurgent trend? Or is this like some dudes
fucking around? One of them would be like, what was

(18:19):
the how much like how much effort and planning does
it look like when into the Metcalf attack looks like
quite a lot. I would say the most recent Portland's
Washington attacks, given the extent to which there were breakings,
looked like it was very A lot of steps had
to had to go in. So let's have an ad
break and then we'll go into some more actual details
of the North Carolina attack and some of the Pacific

(18:40):
Northwest ones, and then kind of circle back to why
people are talking about accelerationism so much. Yeah, you know
who loves planning a series of infrastructure attacks. The sponsors
of this show attacks on the infrastructure of your wallet.

(19:08):
We're bulk And nothing that we said before the break
can legally be called incitement. Um, it's a joke. It's fine.
So now we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit
more about the details of the North Carolina attack and
some of the attacks in the Pacific Northwest, and yeah,
just getting get into some more of the actual details
that have been going on with these most recent attacks

(19:29):
that have kind of caused people to speculate on various things. So,
the agencies involved in investigating the North Carolina More County
attack have disclosed very little information about what's happened. Uh,
They've they've said that the equipment was hit by gunfire
and that the shooters appeared to know what they were doing. Uh.

(19:50):
Investigators have found nearly two dozen shell casings from high
power rifles in the area around and people lost power
are and uh that power outage lasted for like at
least five days as as the company tried to replace
these very large pieces of equipment, many of which were

(20:10):
damaged beyond repair. So investigators are zoning in on two
threads of possible motives centered around extremist behavior for the
for the for the attack that happened last last Sunday.
One of these. One of these is writings by extremists
on online forms encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, as well

(20:33):
as a series of recent disruptions of lgbt Q plus
events across the nation by domestic extremists, according to law
enforcement sources disclosed to CNN. So these these are the
two things that people are looking into. Initial uh speculation,
like of the night of the shooting centered on right
wing backlash towards a drag show that was set to

(20:55):
be held that same day at a nearby theater. The
drug show was shut down as it was going on
because the power went out UM, and there was a
local a local activist made some cryptic comments on their
Facebook and they then received a police visit the police
about it. I also like that the this person who

(21:18):
who made these cryptic posts UM was also an Army
psychological operations officer, so they literally worked in pop Yeah,
like her job was psyops. And this was the person
that that that posted about this big tied to the

(21:40):
Drag Show. So take that as as you will. Um.
This person's group earlier that day had had a protest
UH involving armed individuals in military gear to to you know,
push back against the h the Drag Show. So but
but yeah, So those are the two threads investigators are

(22:02):
looking into. Is one accelerationist rhetoric and writings that has
gotten more popular the past few years. And then two
maybe connected to this wave of of of like anti
queer stuff. Let's see, UM. One what what One interesting
kind of thing of note is that three weeks before

(22:23):
this attack, another substation was deliberately disabled in eastern and
North Carolina. This this this stack happened on Friday, November eleventh.
It shut down electricity for about twelve thousand homes and businesses.
Power was restored in a few hours, though this one,
this one was easier to fix. UM. In a statement
posted on the company's website for a few days after

(22:45):
the incident, UH, they described it as vandalism, and the
company said that vandals quote damaged transformers, causing them to
leak coolant oil, but the statement does not explicitly say
what the method was. And this is a not uncommon
because you're trying to like find people who might have
Like that's part of how you can make a case

(23:05):
against people is if you can prove they know details
of the case that aren't publicly possible, Like there's a
reason why they're not going to say what caliber the
weapon is or whatever. Yeah, they did say it wasn't
the same as the one used in the Metcalf attack,
which was seven six too short, So yes, but the
gun that was used on the December, North Carolina attack
was different than the case. Things found at at the

(23:31):
doesn't mean much. That does not mean much at all.
I know there was a lot of initial sort of
anger and frustration over the use of the word vandalism
and the initial reporting. Um, I think it's fine to
use that word because when you don't know what happened,
all you can see that happened is that someone damaged property.
We don't know the motivations behind it. We don't know

(23:53):
that they intended to knock out power because, like we said,
sometimes people in the woods just shoot it ship because
it's it's funny. So I think it's fair to not
want to use that word. But I think in initial reporting,
especially from authorities, especially from people who could get suit
reliable later down the line, the word vandalism is not incorrect. No,
and it's this is like I think, if you're at

(24:16):
if you want to know, like what would immediately set
someone someone off that like something is likely not vandalism. Well,
the Metcalf attack is good because so much was fired
at the transformer. I would say if like the thing
that would make me think maybe this is just some
you who fucking around is if it's thirty rounds are
less fired and there's no attempt to actually break onto
the facility kind of a standard capacity magazine. Which the

(24:42):
reason why because because the North Carolina attack in December
did not have many rounds. But the reason why it
isn't we do know it's intentional is two substations were hit,
like like one person hit one, then travel and went
to another, and it was like, I just seem like
a lot of a lot of people's sort of expressing
this outrage. But you know is we're tying these other

(25:03):
instance to it, you know, the ones in Florida, the
ones in Pacific Northwest when we have very little information,
it's okay to call it vandalism because that's the baseline,
right that you don't have to If you start using
terrorism for every minor incident, it it dilutes it. It's
not helpful, it creates the area. So I just wanted
to on the table. I mean, like so, even in

(25:24):
like November, the FBI was issuing warnings of of of
reported threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or
ethnically motivated extreme ideologies to quote create civil disorder and
inspire further violence. So FBI was sending bulletins to to
private industry UM multiple times in the past two months.

(25:48):
There's been a lot of bulletins being sent out, which
is I think part of why this in the aftermath
of the attacks, with all these public record requests and
more reporting on it, where people are realizing how much
of a thing is actual The is UM I think
and and and a tax with these on on sub
stations or other power grain infrastructure are definitely more common

(26:09):
than what you might think, and do seem to be
increasing in frequency on in the in the broad sense,
and some of some of them are certainly have, as
we know from arrest that have taken place are part
of decentralized right wing attempts at an insurrection. That's not
wrong to say, it's just the problem is larger and
more complicated than that, and to some extent it's a

(26:32):
problem of like like I I would, I would be
shocked if part of the explanation for why this is
happening so much more is not that Americans have a
shipload of guns and during the pandemic people were bored
and kind of going crazy, Like you know, people have
no chill. Yeah, they have no chill. They're stuck at
home and you're out in the middle of nowhere, and
it's easy to do and you want to see something spark.

(26:54):
That's part of the problem, right, yeah, I mean, and
they have an increasing since there's there were seventy reports
of emergency every electric incidents and disturbances caused by suspected
physical attacks, sabotage or vandalism from January to August two UM.
That figure represents increase around reports in which is the

(27:19):
first year that there's comparable data for, and it's it's
also worth really noting that there is and was as
soon As this happened in metcalf In, suggestions were made
as to a really easy way to make it harder
to do this, which would not be wildly expensive, which
is to put sandbags in front of the coolant systems,
which will block most conventional rounds. And at that point, yeah,

(27:44):
not not hard to accomplish, and it would also let
you know, anyone who is going to get around those
sandbags ideologically committed, right whatever. The reason why there is
so many of these attacks is because a lot of
these very important pieces of infrastructure are highly visible and

(28:06):
really only protected by a channelingk fence. So in a
lot of cases an attack can be carried out without
even entering any kind of restricted grounds. You can point
a gun through a channel link fence and and do
the thing. I mean, you can be yeah, hundreds of
yards away, right, It's very like a three oh eight.
You could be easily several hundred yards away, out of

(28:26):
the range of any camera, and you could take enough
pot shots to destroy it. It It has that kind of
penetrative power. A thirty at six, you know, yeah, not hunting, right,
whether your granddad has you know, yeah, anyone who shoots
elk regularly could do this, you know, without any without
without any realistic way of catching them if you're out
in a rural area. I'm kind of shocked that these

(28:49):
people actually didn't like in terms of like I don't know, like, um,
there's there's this. We can talk about this later. But
obviously the area they're in has a very high concentration
of very heavily trained people an unconventional warfare. But oh
yes we should that is that is a factor in
North Carolina that all of this is occurring on the
outskirts of Fort Bragg and a year ago people who

(29:10):
were active duty Marines attempted to carry out a similar attack,
and we're not Do we want to talk about a
little bit about that, specifically about Robin Sage. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's relevant certainly. Like the first thing I
thought when I thought about this area was like, oh, ship,
that's right by Serthern Pines. I think maybe the show
was supposed to happen in Seven Pines, which is kind

(29:32):
of central to the United States Army Special Forces community,
and a few times a year there people newly qualifying
to be SF soldiers will do an exercise called Robin Sage.
It's it's military laping. Yeah, well like them, Yeah, yes,
it's the military doing lapping, but also not the military, right,

(29:54):
So like people I'm sure will be familiar, and people
who enjoy Twitter dot com will be familiar in the
fact that they the United States have sometimes helped rebel
movements across the world to overthrow a government. So it's
the thing that it likes to do. It's yeah, it's
shocking that the yeah, they every revolution in fact has
been fermented by the United States and the CIA specifically

(30:14):
because people can't think for themselves, and so they what
they do in robin stage is they practice training a
rebel movement that's comprised to civilians, right or untrained fighters.
So these people will go out in small teams in
pil and then they'll meet a bunch of people who
are not soldiers. They might be former soldiers, they might
be local volunteers, there might be people from the area, um,

(30:37):
and they will train them for a few days, right,
just like they would if they were actually training up
like a gorilla army. And then they'll do a simulated
attack which you might recognize us potentially a bad idea
which which we now might be seeing as an issue
because someone someone didn't attack. So like you have in
that area a ton of SF troops, right, and who

(30:59):
span the artical spectrum, and a ton of randos who
have been trained by SF troops in guerrilla warfare, right,
unconventional warfare is what they call it. And if you
were doing unconventional warfare, this would be a very effective
thing to do, right. That's why there's been this massive
panic about cyber attacks on the grid, especially since the
start of the war in Ukraine. Very funny we panicked

(31:20):
about cyber attacks from the fact you could just go
shoot it. You don't need to be that complex. But
that's right, it's a weak point and and you would
know that if you've been practicing unconventional warfare, and so
like this happening in this very specific area kind of
racing flags from me. It's not super weird that this
is the second time in the course of a year

(31:41):
that there's been an attempt or successful attack on North
Carolina power infrastructure, right, Like, it's not suprised. This is
at the very least the DHS is not surprised about this.
Earlier this year, they've they've issued many alerts warning that
domestic right and extremists are gonna are planning to target
the power grid. UM. In February three, people like to

(32:03):
plead guilty, which we already talked about. UM. There was
those people arrested in Idaho. They were planning attacks on
on power stations and highlighting, highlighting locations of transformers and
other substations and other power infrastructure and planning to take
them out and then using the black oats to go
do other crimes, including assassinating ideological opponents. So like, there's

(32:28):
there's been a lot of there's been a lot of
extra focus on people's plans to do infrastructure attacks and uh,
you know, plans on like, hey, this seems like a problem,
and people have been talking about it more because it
does seem to there isn't at least increasingly high, high
high profile cases UM and at least in the case
of this past one in North Carolina, the d the

(32:50):
DHS is currently saying that it does appear to be
deliberate UM, and they're they're investigating to see if it's
if it is tied to ideological motive UM. But again
it's it is worth emphasizing that not all of these
things are are these types of incidents. Like an example
of something that I think has been misreported on is

(33:10):
this recent attack or it's not an attack, but it's
been reported as an attack. In South Carolina, UM on
December seventh, there was an individual in a truck that
opened fire near a a Dooke Energy facility. UM employees
witnessed the struck pull up. It was around five thirty pm. UH.
This guy opened fire and what appeared to be a

(33:31):
long gun and then sped away. No one was hurt,
there was no outages, there was no reported property damage.
UM and currently sheriffs are saying that this was that
this was a completely random act that was that wasn't
even targeted at the power station. They said that the
only connection between this shooting and the power station was

(33:52):
their proximity. This wasn't an actual attack on a power station.
This was just a coincidence. But because this was a
few days after this attack in North Carolina, people can
read headlines about someone shooting outside of power station in
South Carolina and get turned into this big thing and
you're like, that's actually not what's going on. You need
to look a little bit closer. Similarly with this stuff
in Florida, UH, you know, there's been a lot of retroactively,

(34:15):
you know, trying to apply this this this accelerations idea
onto those onto those instances as well, when there's simply
not the evidence. Yeah, it's um. One of the things
you have to, like, as talking about the fat the
folks who are like insurrection ary, one of the force
multipliers they have is that the United States has a

(34:36):
tremendous amount of people who are just assholes and have guns, um,
and that that's just their own guns, guns they stole
from the military. That that is also a factor specific
James's point about the proximity to Fort Bragg though, you
know for Bragg in Campball June obviously different branch of
the military, different parts of the state of North Carolina.
But you know there was that attack last month. It

(34:57):
was near Camp La June. We have the Camp La
June sell that was wrapped up. They're actually still awaiting
trial on the third superseding indictment. And they were stealing guns, right,
or at least they got cons from the military. The
initial indictment was for illegal for trafficking any illegal guns. Yeah. Yeah,
the Marine cort lost a ton of plastic explosive at

(35:17):
twenty nine palms last year as well, like a very
large amount, which is is concerning, Yeah, a startling quantity
of high explosives. Right, And so I was combing comers
for anything mentioning Fort Bragg looking for other cases related
to this specific geografo area because the More County is
literally right outside Fort Brag, which is where the U. S.

(35:41):
Army Special Horses um are are hanging out. And so
this would not be the first time we had radicalized
soldiers out of Fort Bragg. I mean, you go back
to the eighties, Michael Tubbs, a founding member of the
League of the South, did his first terrorism when he
and some other Special Forces buddies committed armed robbery of
machine guns from the Army for the clan. Yeah, with

(36:02):
the intention of using them to start a race war. Yeah.
But then in August of this year, a Special Forces
soldier named Killian Ryan was indicted for lying on his
security clearance application. He had already been granted a security clearance.
Mind you, he had been granted this clearance um, but
it turns out he was a Nazi. I don't know

(36:23):
how the security clearance process didn't catch the fact that
his email address was Nazi ace fourteen eight at gmail
dot com that he and sometimes sometimes it's sometimes it's
it's hard to check. You know, there's lots of simple

(36:44):
mistakes that anyone could make. Anybody can make this kind
of this thing. So you know, you see, this wasn't
a surprise to DHS and it shouldn't be. These are
the mistakes. UM. I also did want to note, as
we're talking about these Special Forces guys and the potential
of them being radical, there's also Timothy McVeigh. Well, Timothy
McVeigh was regular army, Um, but he washed out a

(37:06):
Special Forces. Yeah, he didn't quite make it. Um. But
what's his name? Yeah? Um, yeah, there's this is this
is like not a this is not an uncommon thing.
Currently writing a story that includes a large section about
a marine that tried to steal equipment, uh from military

(37:31):
bases to then go do a mass shooting at a synagogue. Um,
and this guy has what was a Nazi before he
joined the Marines, and he shot on the Marines until
we figured out what's going on. We have got to
shut this down until we figured out what's going on.
So um, Yeah, and you've got Eric Rudolph, the guy

(37:51):
who carried out the Olympic Park bombings in nineties six
was was with the first Airborne Division. He was an
air Assault specialist UM and he carried out the bombing
of the Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, and then went
on the run for months. I think, yeah, and he
was a Nazi by the way, Oh it was. He
was on the run for a long time. He detail

(38:13):
all the squirrel and nothing he did in the woods. Yes. Uh.
And by the way, he carried out a number of
other bombings, including he carried out a bombing of an
abortion clinic. He carried out the bombing of a lesbian bar. Um.
We talked about this earlier this year on Yeah. We
we did part of one of our mini series we
talked about this guy. We had we had, we had

(38:34):
a whole episode dedicated to him. I I do want
to briefly talk about some of the stuff happening in
the Pacific Northwest as well, and how this ties in
and how there is as opposed to some of the
incidents that were like the incident in South Carolina. Stuff
in the Pacific Northwest, while happening previous to the North
Carolina attack, does seem to be deliberate, UM and has
there has been some interesting pieces of information that have

(38:57):
come out in the past few days. So the electrical
grid has been physically attacked at least six times in
Oregon and western Washington since mid November. Attackers used firearms
and at least some of the incidents in both states,
and some power customers in Oregon and Washington experienced at
least brief service disruptions as a result of the attacks.
Just two days before the North Carolina attacks, the FBI

(39:21):
and Organs Tighten Fusion Center issued a memo that warned
utilities about this about both these recent attacks and how
there could be more of them, UH, saying quote, power
companies in organ Washington have reported physical attacks on substations
using hand tools, arson, firearms, and metal chains, possibly in
response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.

(39:45):
UH continuing to say that in recent attacks, criminal actors
by passed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting
nearby fires, shooting equipment for my distance, or throwing objects
over the fence and on too. The equipment and the aim,
according to memo is quote violent anti government criminal attack,
which is kind of a catch all term that these

(40:08):
people use for a whole bunch of kind of white
supremacists affiliated accelerationist violence. It's kind of a silly term
because these people really aren't anti government. They just they
just want they're anti this government because they think this
government is too liberal. Um. But but yeah, so there

(40:28):
was there was an attack on a substation in Clackumus
County on Thanksgiving morning. The power company calls this a
deliberate physical attack. Um. This is the one where two
people cut through fences and use firearms to shoot up
and disabled numerous pieces of equipment. A security specialist for
the company wrote this kind of brief on it and
and and has mentioned how that there are local people

(40:52):
who are affiliated with you know, larger networks of extremist
groups that have called for such attacks and have provided
instructions on how to do these types of things, um
and saying, quote, there's been a significant uptick in incidence
of break ins related to copper and tool or materials theft,
but now we are dealing with quickly escalating incidents of sabotage. Um.

(41:15):
So that's the kind of that that's that's the brief
from the security security specialist who works at this power
company UM. Four days after that Thanksgiving morning attack, there
was another incident at a Portland General Electric substation, also
in the clack of this area. So these things happened
pretty close to one another in the same county. Some
of the same people were affected. A few details on
this one have been released UM, but the PG and

(41:37):
E team said that quote, our teams have assessed the
damage and have begun to repair the impacted facilities. Knocking
out the lights is it can be an end goal,
right that everyone it's it's dark, and if everyone's inconvenience,
and there's an idea that you know, making things worse
will help fence sitters radicalized towards towards the right and
become accelerations themselves. But that darkness it's not its own

(42:01):
end goal for some of these people, you know, in
the the Campbell of June cell in the Collins case,
they specifically spelled out in some of their planning discussions
that the darkness was stepped one once the lights were out,
Once UM infrastructure was damaged, the police were distracted, communications
were down, people couldn't use their cell phones. They would
use that period of chaos to carry out a series

(42:22):
of targeted assassinations. And that's not a new idea either. UM.
I found a case from the nineties even UM, this
case from the late nineties, the North American Militia. It
was a splinter group from the Michigan Militia Wolverines Randy
Graham and Ken Carter went down in this case. UM.
They were reconning targets including power stations, TV stations, and

(42:45):
military based federal buildings, and their plan was to knock
out communications and power and use that period of chaos
to kill several federal judges and politicians. So this is
a recurring theme. You know that this case was in
the nineties, and then we have that recent case, the
Collins case. The Skuyes haven't even been tried yet, UM,
and the stated intention is to use that period of
chaos to do additional crimes of terrorism. And I mean

(43:09):
there has been more incidents that definitely do seem to
be intentional, Like beyond the ones in Oregon, there was
also ones in western Washington UM that that included setting
the control houses on fire force entry and sabotage of
intricate electrical control systems causing short circuits by tossing chains
over the overhead bus work and a ballistic attack with
small caliber firearms, And so that's that's a lot of

(43:32):
stuff going into uh of like like in terms of
planning and preparation going into something that's happening. That's a
perfect example. Yeah, And if you're, as a general rule,
if you are encountering one of these stories and you're
trying to determine should I put this in my head
as something that is maybe part of something bigger or
something that might be people fucking around? That's the kind

(43:54):
of stuff to look for, is like how much effort
went into it, how elaborate was it? Does it seem
planning was involved? I would say. Another thing is like
does it seem is it timed for something like Thanksgiving? Right? Like,
it's not an accident that they picked Thanksgiving to attack
a substation. Because if you're trying to do something that's
going to have an impact doing it on a day
like that where everybody's at home, people are and there's

(44:16):
also a higher power draw in general, Like, there's a
lot of reasons why someone would want to do that,
but it all points towards this is something that's part
of an organized set of actions. As opposed to the
normal thing of Americans attacking their own power infrastructure for
no good reason. Yeah, which we love to do. Do

(44:37):
you do you know? Do you know what else we
we love to do? Robert consume goods and services. That's right.
We love, we loves and our hero based Lasso King
would say, that's part of the problem. Hey, we're back,

(45:02):
all right, Garrison, take us take us home, which hopefully
is not Fort Bragg No, yeah, yeah, okay, but this
podcast is run by the usual Yeah, hopefully hopefully not
so so. Yeah. The past year, we've seen federal authorities
multiple times worn about these types of threats to critical infrastructure.

(45:23):
There was a local bulletin posted in late November after
the attacks in Oregon and Washington, UH saying that the
targets of potential violence includes public gatherings, faith based institutions,
l g B, t Q plus communities, UM schools, racial
and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, and US critical infrastructure.

(45:45):
So it's it's definitely, it's definitely something that are the
people are talking about more as incidents have have do
do seem to be getting more common. Um, now I'm
gonna I'm gonna gonna use some of the research from
a not an article, but I guess not quite a
study like this. Uh, I don't know how to describe

(46:05):
it in an analysis piece. I guess from George Washington
University's program on Extremism entitled Mayhem a Murder and Misdirection
Violent extremist attack plots against critical infrastructure in the United States.
So since twenty nineteen we spremacist attacks and plots against
critical infratructure. Uh, you do seem to have distinctly increased

(46:29):
between two white spermacis plots targeting energy systems dramatically increased
in their frequency. Thirteen individuals associated with the overall white
spermacist movement were arrested and charged in federal court with
planning attacks on the energy sector. Eleven of these attack
planners were charged after the rise of eccelorationist ideology and

(46:51):
doctor in during the past decade did likely fuel these
increased attacks. Um within the white spermacist mill use that
are targeting critical infratruc sure and and the energy sector
in particular. So if if you look at the data
from twenty two, if you look at ninety four cases
of individuals who are alleged to have planned quote violent

(47:11):
extremist attacks. UH. Fifty of those people identified as white supremacists,
and thirty seven percent of those incidents involved some level
of planning UH, specifically planning attacks on critical infrastructure. Now,
six of those sixteen white supremacist plotters had discernible tangible

(47:33):
connections to named groups and organizations like the base Attamwafen
Division and the National Socialist Movement. And but in fourteen
out of the sixteen people were known participants in a
greater kind of online network that connects various like cells
or even just aesthetic styles common among the neo Nazis

(47:53):
accelerationist movement. So and one of the more kind of
interesting data points is the number of white sermacist plots
that are specifically focused on the energy sector, relating to
nuclear reactors, materials, um with the waste sector, and of
course power substations. UH. There's thirteen thirteen cases of individuals

(48:14):
who reportedly planned to conduct attacks on a variety of
energy infrastructure, from small assaults on local on local power
lines to potentially devastating attacks on power grids or even
nuclear facilities and UH and those represent eight seven percent
of the white sermacist related cases in which critical infstructure
was targeted. So most of that is specifically on power grids.

(48:35):
Like that's that is, that is what these focus on.
And the first case within this data point range of
two UH dates back to seventeen when a former Florida
National Guardsman and the founder of Adam Often Division was
arrested in Florida and charged with um, you know, unlawful
possession of FLOSIT advices and FLICA materials. Uh. They one

(48:58):
of one of one of the guy's roommates, who was
also a member of Adam Often told told jurors that
this guy intended to target a number of different locations
for explosive attacks using this material, including a Jewish synagogue,
power lines, and a new and a nearby nuclear reactor site. Um.
And this guy in his apartment had had a propaganda

(49:20):
and and book materials on the functioning of nuclear reactors
and other power supply stuff. So like you know, that's
these types of things that people study on and then
plan out to do. And what we're seeing more commonly
now is of very intensive propaganda team putting together kind
of manuals on how to do these types of things.
Both both like both for like to inspire you to

(49:42):
do it, but also like instruction manuals and like here's
here's where you should shoot. Here's like here's how to
actually do it, and it's it's there unfortunately designed quite well.
And that's something that is newer, that is a direct
product of the types of aesthetically driven UH propaganda that

(50:03):
has flourished on sites like Telegram, and they're they're getting
quite good at making propaganda. It's not just it's not
just you know, random random books strewn upon your apartment anymore.
It's very well made documents online. So the three, the
three men who just pleaded guilty in February for their

(50:25):
their conspiracy to attack power facilities. One of those men,
Jackson Saywall. In the the original complaint, it says, you know,
Um Cook had recruited his friends, say Well to join
the cause. From the outset. Cook believed say walls graphic
design skills could be an asset to the group's propaganda effort,
so he was recruited to the cell because he was

(50:46):
good at graphic design. Now I read these manifestos, I
would not say the graphic design is good, but it's
certainly better than sort of a cut and paste scene. Right,
there's a clear digital design element here, um, and that's
on purpose and they know that that's how they're going
to get eyes on this stuff. I mean, Robert, we
both read all those manifestos in the last couple of days.
They are certainly a step up. They are what they

(51:07):
what they make me think of is when I first
when I first got into reporting on extremism, it was
because I went through every issue of like ISISS magazine
debat right after the BOTA clon attacks and it's number one,
Like there was when that Adam Waffan guy killed his
roommates and had he had converted to Islam and was
like very much um into isis There was this like

(51:30):
surprise from people who don't think a lot about this stuff.
But a lot of these guys had a lot of
admiration for the way that ICE has put together their
propaganda campaign, which included a lot of very detailed guides
for how to do things like carry out rent vehicles
and carry out vehicular attacks. Right like this is um,
you know, we're this is the way terrorism works. And

(51:51):
these guys are taking a little bit of a different tack.
But again, not that like as as Molly pointed out,
there were a number of ISIS inspired attacks on power
infrastructure just did get a ton of of of play.
But like, none of this is like, all of this
is is in line with the trends that we have
seen globally in the way in which insurgent movements function.

(52:12):
And I think you know this well produced easily spread
propaganda and these online networks they created to spread this propaganda.
I mean that we're not just you know, we have
these cases of these organized cells that got caught, but
it's not just organized cells that have the capacity to
carry out these attacks. Because any idiot in the telegram
group can open that manifesto with the detailed instructions for

(52:33):
carrying out an identical attacked disseminates and becomes contagious. There's this.
There's this. People who talk about a lot online now
about stochastic terrorism, and some of us here might be
a little bit to blame to that, but a lot
of times they're they're getting it wrong. Um, because what's
what what these Nazis are doing. This is inspirational terrorism,

(52:53):
which has been a thing for as long as terrorism
has existed. I mean, that's why they have their calendar
of Saints, you know, yeah, exactly. And there's a lot
of debate about, like Whendy you stochastic terrorism, but kind
of in my mind, when I tend to think it's
appropriate is when the attempt is to kind of use
the way algorithms on various sights on the Internet work
to spread propaganda that's meant to cause that's meant to

(53:15):
inspire attacks, because that is it's a type of inspirational terrorism.
But it's it's it's clearly a new evolution of it
because of its reliance on those networks. But this is
again we're getting into the weeds. Is there anything else
you wanted to kind of get into here, Garrison? I
mean no, I kind of I kind of wanted to
wrap up by talking about some of the terrogram stuff.
So I think we we kind of we kind of
hit on a lot of stuff that I that I

(53:36):
wanted to mention. I mean, in twenty nineteen, two years
after that first uh that that that first attack of
twenty seventeen, two years later, uh Bew Maryman was was
arrested for planning to blow up power grid substations. He
was member of Adam offen um, and we already are
we already talked about We already talked about the two

(53:57):
other kind of main instance that are well known of
from and then stuff that is that that just got
um uh, there was there was court cases as recently
February two. We also mentioned in terms of the their
their plans to take out power stations to then carry
out assassinations. So those are two other insidents that I
wanted to mention, um, But yeah, I mean it's I

(54:22):
think the the other kind of aesthetic similarity I think
is that I think we actually are seeing some of
the some of the recent telegram stuff also take cues
from not only like isis and is not terrorism, but
also some of the types of anarchist writing that have
that have has gotten more popular since you know, uh,
the left type stuff Like where I think we're seeing

(54:45):
some of some of the aesthetic stylings feels very reminiscent
of like early crime think um, some of it, some
of it is is similar to things around um the
types of like eco sabotage manuals that that were that
were very popular in the nineties and two thousands. Um.
You know, some of the techniques are very similar because

(55:05):
both eco terrorists and UH excelration accelerationist nazis both find
value and attacking things like powers and powers of power
substations UM or you know, burning down five G towers.
That's a big emphasis of this recent like almost three
hundred page manifesto and instruction manuals. They focus a lot

(55:27):
on how, you know, in early regular people felt inspired
to burn down five G towers, people who are not
otherwise extremists, and how how do we get people who
are regular people to get to that point where they're
willing to damage public infrastructure? And that's kind of a
lot what a lot of what that three hundred page

(55:48):
kind of manifesto slash manual tries to talk about mm
hm an it's uh, if we want to end on
on a hopeful note, I have at least sort of
a small bright spot for us UM. It's in the
original UM affidavit for the search warrant into Liam Collins,
the head of the Camp Lejune cell Um so that

(56:12):
a original affidavit for the search warrant um in his case.
The FBI agent writing the affidavit says that they first
started looking into Collins because he was docked in the
Iron March leagues. So they were we were reading those
dockses and they said, oh wow, a marine who's a Nazi.
We should talk to him. So, you know, when doing
this work in identifying these people from these leagues and

(56:34):
sort of the slog of picking through, like maybe this
guy's a fucking nobody, but we will identify them so
their communities can keep an eye on them. That work matters.
That work made it into Newsweek, and it made it
to the FBI. It's a weird filter system, but eventually
this guy got caught before he committed a massive nationwide
active terror. So keep doxy Nazis and it works. In

(56:56):
a similar incident, there was an officer of the Lafayette
Police depart MINT that joined I believe this this exact
same terrorist cell that was then he was he was
he was docked by anti fascists and then he turned
and snitched on his fellow Nazis. Um So the investigation

(57:16):
opened because of the docks and they've got a powerful
cooperating witness because of another docks. It makes them nervous
if eyes are on them, they can't conduct covert operations.
So keep docs in your local Nazis like it can
it can literally be like in terms of these cells
planning to do assassinations of people, it can actually save
people's lives if these people are actually serious and are

(57:37):
willing to carry out their plans that they are you know,
actively training for actively preparing materials for um. This type
of work is is some of the most solid anti
fascist research that people of that people have done. It
absolutely saved lives, I've no doubt about that, will continue
to save lives. So docs Nazis, and you know, if

(58:00):
if you're drunk out in the woods and one of
your buddies says, hey, why don't we shoot a power substation,
don't do it. You can just shoot can stop signs.
It's the America stop signs, expired fire extinguishers. Those are
fun to shoot. Let me make all of the people
turn off this podcast in a bit of rage and
then and then have a mortal crisis. So yeah, uh

(58:25):
to the anti cit people who have built a radio
out of sticks, I realized that podcasts don't come out
through the radio. Tragic anyway, the episode so you think
it could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.

(58:45):
For more podcasts from cool zone Media. Visit our website
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