“Neo-Nazis Say Attack Leaving 40,000 Americans in Dark Is Only the Beginning”, Dec 8, 2022, Tom O'Connor, Newsweek, <https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/neo-nazis-say-attack-leaving-40-000-americans-in-dark-is-only-the-beginning/ar-AA152Xyc?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=b547b82403ae4317db37dfcf9b79c457>
“As Gas Prices Reshape Midterms, U.S. Extremists Plot to Attack Energy Sites”, Oct 27, 2022, TOM O'CONNOR AND NAVEED JAMALI, Newsweek, at <https://www.newsweek.com/gas-prices-reshape-midterms-us-extremists-plot-attack-energy-sites-1754554>
In yet another manifestation of the growing incidence of Right-Wing Terrorism inside the U.S. we see this deliberate sabotage of an electrical substation in Moore County, North Carolina. The first article here “Neo-Nazis Say Attack Leaving 40,000 Americans in Dark Is Only the Beginning” is early article on the event, and from a well-known Corporate Controlled Media outlet. It is a fairly good article though it shows its ruling class roots in its sources. These are mostly governmental counter terrorism organizations and experts in the Electrical Energy Industry. Their comments are fine as far as they go. In addition Tom O'Connor published an earlier article in collaboration with Naveed Jamali, also posted here: “As Gas Prices Reshape Midterms, U.S. Extremists Plot to Attack Energy Sites”
The mostly dubious source in the first article is the ultra-zionist Rita Katz, and her organization SITE, who can find an Islamic Terrorist under every tree and who has a long history of blaming everything on Islamic Terrorists. As I recall she led the campaign to prevent the building of a Mosque in Lower Manhattan after the 9-11 events.
The right-wing learned part of their craft from the successful insurgencies conducted by the Left in a variety of places. They don't have the sort of class follow up that successful leftist insurgencies had but the techniques, unfortunately, are useful to them.
Neo-Nazis Say Attack Leaving 40,000 Americans in Dark Is Only the Beginning
Tom O'Connor, Newsweek, Dec 8, 2022, at <https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/neo-nazis-say-attack-leaving-40-000-americans-in-dark-is-only-the-beginning/ar-AA152Xyc?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=b547b82403ae4317db37dfcf9b79c457>
Amid a long-running campaign by far-right communities threatening to attack the nation's power grid, domestic extremists cheered when two still unattributed shootings at North Carolina substations plunged tens of thousands of people into darkness.
Beyond celebration, however, their comments called for more, bigger attacks targeting critical infrastructure on U.S. soil. Experts told Newsweek that the attack in Moore County, North Carolina, as well as in similar previous attacks across the country, may only be the start of a more destructive campaign.
Prior to Saturday's attacks and in the leadup to the midterm election, Newsweek obtained documents demonstrating dozens of instances of radical groups and individuals sharing threats online against critical infrastructure sites across the nation, along with materials designed to advance such plots. Now, two new reports show how far-right communities, including neo-Nazis, reacted to the most recent sabotage.
The Moore County Sheriff's Office has yet to establish a perpetrator or motive in the December 3 attack, but initial suspicion has centered on right-wing backlash toward a drag show set to be held that same day at the Sunrise Theater in the town of Southern Pines.
That event inspired protests involving armed individuals clad in military gear and the participation of groups such as Moore County Citizens for Freedom, whose director, former U.S. Army psychological operations officer Emily Grace Rainey, was questioned by the Moore County Sheriff's Office after the attack.
Rainey, who was implicated in the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol by pro-President Donald Trump crowds seeking to overturn the presidential election, attributed the substation shootings to "God," whom she said was "chastising Moore County" over the drag show.
Far-right chatter also drew a connection between the attacks and the drag show, which was ultimately held in spite of its detractors. One neo-Nazi Telegram post laden with slurs against the LGBT+ community and shared with Newsweek by the SITE Intelligence Group celebrated the "magnificent act of sabotage" as a "beautiful escalation" in a broader culture war.
Another neo-Nazi publication warned that "these attacks will only continue" unless such events are not held. A number of posts on message board 4Chan described specific tactics to cause further damage to the power grid, and others proposed conducting similar actions in larger cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. because they "are not majority white."
Rita Katz, founder and executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, told Newsweek that the Moore County attack is consistent with the neo-Nazi messaging promulgated online.
"The sabotage against the North Carolina substation aligns perfectly with directives and methods seen in accelerationist neo-Nazi communities," she said, "which we at SITE have exhaustively reported on."
"If this was indeed a far-right terrorist attack, my worry is that it will serve as a proof of concept for other far-right extremists," Katz explained. "Immediately after the reports about the attacks, we at SITE saw such communities praise what happened in North Carolina and call for more, while sharing more directives about what to target and how to do so. Some have specifically suggested large cities."
But Katz, who recently authored the book "Saints and Soldiers: Inside Internet-Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capitol Siege" on the threat posed by saboteurs to digital infrastructure, explained how targeting infrastructure as "a key objective for accelerationist neo-Nazis, who care less about any distinct outcome and far more about sowing any kind of chaos."
"It is these communities that have inspired mass shooters all over the world," she stated. "Thus, if this act of sabotage was indeed inspired by these communities, it is yet more proof how dangerous these online spaces are, as I described in my recent book on Internet-age terrorism."
A second report shared with Newsweek by the Middle East Media Research Institute's (MEMRI) Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor (DTTM) featured a neo-Nazi collective on Telegram calling for more attacks on substations and railways, as well as grocery stores and centers for the online megastore Amazon.
The same channel forwarded a video from another account that showed two men armed with rifles opening fire on what one describes as a "water plant." The clip ends with the message "Kill Infrastructure" and is subtitled in English and Russian.
Some of the content in the two reports overlapped with one another, and with materials previously seen by Newsweek in October in a corporate intelligence security memo and an intelligence assessment issued by the California State Threat Assessment Center.
One earlier post by a neo-Nazi publication in summer referenced by Katz included "a detailed manual" that called power grids "the main satiating tool the system uses to keep the masses from rioting" and advised on ways to inflict maximum damage.
"The guide even advised on what to target when 'shooting at substations,' which notably fits with the reported method by which the substations in North Carolina were attacked," Katz said. "Since this manual was released, its many sections have been regularly shared across neo-Nazi online venues."
With such material readily available to would-be saboteurs, DTTM Director Simon Purdue told Newsweek that "the threat posed by attacks on critical infrastructure cannot be underestimated."
"The situation in Moore County offers only a glimpse into the chaos that attacks such as this can cause, and larger scale assaults could bring disruption on a statewide or even national level," Purdue said, referencing "a steady slew of manifestos, social media posts, videos and even instruction manuals on this kind of attack being produced by extremists over the past few years."
Purdue noted that "this is not the first attempted attack on electrical infrastructure by extremist groups," and that many threats envision much more ambitious attacks against critical infrastructure across the nation.
Should such an attack succeed, the consequences could far exceed those experienced by Moore County.
"If a large-scale attack were to occur in a major city or against a major node in either the electrical, gas, or water infrastructure, we could see very deadly results," Purdue said. "Some accelerationists have spoken about using large-scale blackouts caused by such an attack as cover for further, directed terror attacks, while others have promoted the sewing of discord to incite riots or further violence."
"The Moore County case was small-scale when compared to some of the plans that we have seen," he added, "and infrastructure needs to be better protected against such attacks."
Newsweek has previously reported on concerns over the limited toolset available to federal law enforcement when it comes to pursuing domestic threats without any clear foreign connection, as is the case when investigating activity associated with groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
Further complicating federal probes is the fact that many of the far-right communities promoting ideologically driven attacks on infrastructure do not abide by traditional group structures.
"While some of these groups are indeed organized and structured, the kind of ideology that underlies an attack such as this often relies on leaderless resistance and directed self-radicalization," Purdue said. "Many extremists are moving away from the group model — believing that groups are vulnerable to infiltration or other targeting from law enforcement — and towards what they tend to call lone-wolf attacks."
"It bears saying, however, that no attack happens in a vacuum," he added, "and the dissemination of materials and radicalization process are very clearly intentional and directed."
But the digital, decentralized and domestic nature of the threat continues to serve as a potentially dangerous blind spot for federal agencies.
"We find that many of these real-world attacks come from singular individuals or small cells whose engagement with the wider extremist milieu happens primarily online," Purdue said.
"This makes intervention and disruption extremely difficult," he explained, "but law enforcement, Congress, and tech companies have a responsibility to prevent the dissemination of violent and harmful content online, and this will play a key role in preventing this kind of attack in future."
While such threats and attacks have persisted for years, including the infamous, unsolved April 2013 organized assault on a substation in Metcalf, California, far-right mobilization is on the rise overall, according to the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data (ACLED) Project.
An ACLED report released Tuesday found that "far-right activity in 2022 is on track to exceed the level of activity reported in 2021," a year already defined deep polarization in the wake of the January 6 riots. The report noted that the two primary factors driving this surge were "continued support of white supremacy and white nationalism," which ramped up last year, and "anti-LGBT+ mobilization," which has seen an uptick in activity since this summer.
The ACLED report also mentioned North Carolina specifically as a state in which "anti-LGBT+ rhetoric has long been salient." Data showed that, in the months leading up to the midterm election, "almost all demonstrations involving far-right groups were anti-LGBT+."
Meanwhile, the investigation continues on local, state and federal levels into what actually happened at the two Duke Energy substations in Moore County.
Major Andy Conway of the Moore County Sheriff's Office told Newsweek that at this stage "all possibilities are being explored and investigated," and that "no threats whatsoever were made prior to the incident."
A spokesperson for the FBI, which is also involved in the probe, told Newsweek that the Bureau "cannot comment" on "specific questions" regarding the ongoing investigation, but that "the FBI remains vigilant and works closely with our law enforcement partners on a daily basis to detect, disrupt, and dismantle any threats that may emerge."
"As always," the spokesperson added, "we ask members of the public to report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said that "DHS will continue to share information with the FBI and state and local authorities as the investigation unfolds." The spokesperson added that "CISA leadership and regional teams have offered support to Duke Energy as they work to restore service."
President Joe Biden also briefly addressed the issue Tuesday, saying the administration remained unaware of the identity the perpetrators, but that he and his officials were currently "running that down."
That same day, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke on both the administration's reaction to the attacks and what was being done to address the still-ongoing outages in Moore County.
"We condemn this apparent attack on critical infrastructure," Jean-Pierre said. "Federal law enforcement continues to support the investigation, and we will continue to monitor the situation as that investigation plays out."
"The Department of Energy is working with utilities in the region to ensure they have everything they need to restore power as quickly and safely as possible," she added.
Jean-Pierre also referenced Biden's critical infrastructure security initiatives, saying he has made "resilience to all hazards, both natural and manmade, a priority since day one of his administration."
And while she said these efforts "still have a long way to go," she touted the administration's progress in delivering results though initiatives such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.
"To protect against and limit the impacts of incidents like this," she explained, "we've worked closely with the private sector to strengthen resilience against the full spectrum of potential threats, including through utilizing new technologies and improving how government communicates and shares that information with the private sector, which owns the majority of our nation's critical infrastructure, as you all know."
An update provided Wednesday on Duke Energy's online outage map said that "equipment damaged from recent vandalism has either been repaired or replaced." In a statement on its website Wednesday night, the company announced that it "anticipates having nearly all customers restored by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday [December 7] in the aftermath of an attack on two major substations Saturday in Moore County."
Newsweek has contacted Moore County Citizens for Freedom for comment.
As Gas Prices Reshape Midterms, U.S. Extremists Plot to Attack Energy Sites
Oct 27, 2022, TOM O'CONNOR AND NAVEED JAMALI, Newsweek, at <https://www.newsweek.com/gas-prices-reshape-midterms-us-extremists-plot-attack-energy-sites-1754554>
As rising fuel costs threaten the political hopes of Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, an ominous chorus of online chatter among domestic extremists in the dark corners of the Internet advocating attacks on critical infrastructure across the nation may pose an even greater threat to U.S. consumers.
Newsweek has obtained two documents that offer an insight into the scope of the threat, including reports of several actual attacks that have happened in past few months.
The first is a corporate intelligence security memo detailing at least 15 instances over the course of just over a year showing suspected extremists openly threatening and calling for acts of sabotage against energy sites, especially electricity substations, but also including other targets such as cell towers and pipelines.
The material included documents that could serve to help groups and individuals in carrying out such attacks, including maps, manuals and instructions on the vulnerabilities of electricity infrastructure and readily accessible methods to disrupt their operation. Those behind the posts, which were shared across various online platforms and chat rooms, expressed ties to a number of anti-government ideologies, mostly far-right and neo-Nazi beliefs, but also including eco-militancy and at least one user who shared messaging supportive of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).
A number of these same messages were featured in a second document obtained by Newsweek, an intelligence assessment issued this month by the California State Threat Assessment Center, which cited government intelligence reports prepared by the Department of Homeland Security, among other sources.
This report went beyond simply exposing the desires of those seeking to do harm to also include recent notable incidents of groups or individuals acting out on such fantasies. This included an act of vandalism causing "fairly significant" damage at a transformer servicing the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota and a shooting that caused a chemical spill at a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) site in California, both of which occurred this past July. In March, thousands of customers in southern Oklahoma were reportedly left without power after bullets riddled a transformer site, causing a "major oil leak."
And in February, three men pled guilty to planning to recruit followers to attack electricity substations in a bid to take down the U.S. power grid, cost the government millions of dollars and "possibly spark a race war," the assessment found.
"We assess that Domestic Violent Extremists (DVE) will likely remain a threat to the electricity subsector through 2023 as DVEs share more detailed information stated as authoritative to convince adherents that they have the requisite knowledge of targets, vulnerabilities, tools, and techniques to succeed," the assessment stated.
The reports offer a glimpse into a murky world of largely anonymous individuals conspiring to undermine the power grid in furtherance of radical beliefs. Even the attacks that do take place, causing outages and damage, often go underreported.
One high-profile exception is a still unresolved 2013 case, in which a seemingly organized group of perpetrators cut fiber optic cables and opened fire against a PG&E substation in Metcalf, California. Since then, there have been numerous shootings targeting energy infrastructure in various parts of the country, including incidents not included in the two reports, which detailed bigger and more destructive plans to plunge the U.S. into darkness.
Brian Harrell, who served as assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security from December 2018 to November 2020, is among those who have expressed concern over these threats.
"DVEs are looking to make an impact with media attention," Harrell told Newsweek. "Today, we see active targeting and nefarious discussions in all corners of the dark web and chat rooms. Given the criticality of the energy sector, it's no surprise they are a prime target. Thankfully, the sector has made significant investments and improvements to keep bad actors out of critical substations and other sites."
"The utility industry is aware of these threats due to our ongoing relationship with our National Security partners," he said, noting that measures were being taken to shore up defenses.
"While any threat is significant, companies have worked to build redundancy and resilience into the power grid," Harrell said. "Critical services that all Americans depend on should never be used as part of a domestic terrorism plot."
Manny Cancel, senior vice president of the North American Electronic Reliability Corporation (NERC) and CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), said the issue is also on his radar.
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