Speaker 1: It could happen here is a podcast, and it is
Speaker 1: kind of happening here because they're just was just an
Speaker 1: attack on uh, several power substations in the city of
Speaker 1: North or city in the state of North Carolina. UM,
Speaker 1: that left something like forty people without power for several days.
Speaker 1: I believe that at the moment at least one person
Speaker 1: died as a result of this. There have been car crashes.
Speaker 1: It's pretty fucked up, and uh, we are going to
Speaker 1: be talking about that. Obviously. As a result of this
Speaker 1: number one, there were a lot of immediate suspicions that
Speaker 1: came out that this was tied towards Drag Queen uh
Speaker 1: story hour type event that was going to be being
Speaker 1: held UM on the day that the attack was carried out.
Speaker 1: There's suspicions that this is the result of far right activity. UM,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, we're gonna talk about that and everything
Speaker 1: around that right now. UM. We have on the episode
Speaker 1: for today myself, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and we are
Speaker 1: also bringing in friend of the pod researcher and woman
Speaker 1: about town. Um, but not this town, a different town
Speaker 1: because we live on opposite sides of the country. Molly
Speaker 1: Conger Molly, I've been saying your last name wrong for years,
Speaker 1: even though we've been friends for quite a while. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I never said anything. It's come up
Speaker 1: so many times. Yeah, um, so, Garrison, you've kind of
Speaker 1: been taking point on putting together this one, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let you kind of take the reins unless you
Speaker 1: want me to uh to to to direct this more.
Speaker 1: But I do think kind of the place to start
Speaker 1: is are we watching a gigantic right wing insurgency unfold
Speaker 1: or is this a more complex case? And obviously the
Speaker 1: answer is the latter, as it is anytime someone poses
Speaker 1: a question like that, no is we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: We're gonna pick this the simple, more scary, more inflammatary
Speaker 1: option and leave it at that. Yeah, twet, let's get
Speaker 1: said tweet. No so yes. Um. The aftermath of the
Speaker 1: North Carolina attack has kind of it's gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of people to learn about infrastructure attacks for the first
Speaker 1: time and get really scared about them and realize that
Speaker 1: this is a problem, and then start bringing up past
Speaker 1: incidents when this has happened and trying to draw this
Speaker 1: like overall pattern, which isn't entirely incorrect, but the way
Speaker 1: they're going about it is not very responsible nor really
Speaker 1: well informed. Yeah. So one of the things we've seen
Speaker 1: is like the there have been a lot of attack Like, uh,
Speaker 1: it does seem accurate to say that over the course
Speaker 1: of the last year or two there have been more
Speaker 1: attacks on power infrastructure. UM. But that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: have we have lots of data on this. It has
Speaker 1: the past five years there has been a pretty strong
Speaker 1: increase in the number of attacks on power stations. And
Speaker 1: it's also true that this is a thing the right
Speaker 1: has been, the far right, like the Nazi right in particular,
Speaker 1: has been trying to get people to do for longer
Speaker 1: than anyone on this podcast has been alive. UM. This
Speaker 1: goes back to the Turner Diaries even pre that stuff.
Speaker 1: This is in siege, um, and this is you know,
Speaker 1: there has been very recently this summer a couple of
Speaker 1: pieces of fairly well put together Nazi propaganda that was
Speaker 1: advocating for people to carry out attacks like this. And
Speaker 1: the reason is that it's easy and it's high impact.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to funk up a power substation. All
Speaker 1: you need is a gun, um, and it's very easy
Speaker 1: to get away with it because most of them have
Speaker 1: effectively zero security. Yeah, and it explained how to do
Speaker 1: it as well. Right, sorry, like it it was literally
Speaker 1: a guide to fucking up a substation. Yeah, because they're specific.
Speaker 1: We're not going to give you guys a guide to
Speaker 1: fucking up power substations on this podcast, but it's not hard.
Speaker 1: Next week, Yeah, that's next week in our three partner
Speaker 1: it's on the Patreon. You've got to be on the Patreon.
Speaker 1: That's that's the Patreon special episode, how to Destroy power
Speaker 1: Infrastructure for Fun and Profit. No, but I think too,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to propagandize people to take action, you know,
Speaker 1: we've all seen plenty of manifestoes from people who carried
Speaker 1: out mass shootings trying to propagandize people to take action
Speaker 1: in that effect. Um, but we've also seen the chats
Speaker 1: when somebody fails, right, Like, if somebody doesn't get what
Speaker 1: they call it, you know, a high score. If somebody
Speaker 1: carries out a mass shooting that doesn't result in very
Speaker 1: many debts, it's embarrassing for them. But this is for
Speaker 1: the perpetrator, relatively low stakes. If you fail, no one
Speaker 1: will know. If you miss, no one will know Um,
Speaker 1: if you hit the you know, if you hit it
Speaker 1: and it just looks like vandalism and the power doesn't
Speaker 1: go out, no one will know that you failed, and
Speaker 1: you can try again later. You don't die. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the title of one of the one of the
Speaker 1: pieces of propaganda that I sent to you, right The
Speaker 1: title of it is make It Count, which is an
Speaker 1: impredated form of a quote from Siege. I wish it's
Speaker 1: a Nazi and I'm not going to read the film
Speaker 1: annual from general. The general gist of the quote is
Speaker 1: that you know, the price of failure is death. So
Speaker 1: whatever you choose to do, make it count. So this
Speaker 1: is a way to relatively low stakes for the perpetrator,
Speaker 1: way to have a very high impact with low risk
Speaker 1: of personal failure. And what I did find, and we'll
Speaker 1: get off. We'll move to the broader topic in a second,
Speaker 1: because I think focusing too much on the Nazis right
Speaker 1: now is going to frame things the wrong way. But
Speaker 1: one of the things I did find interesting about that
Speaker 1: piece of propaganda was the acknowledgement and the introduction that
Speaker 1: like carrying out these mass shootings is not going to
Speaker 1: accomplish our broader goals in part because people have gotten
Speaker 1: and neared to them. Whereas destroying power infrastructure, if you
Speaker 1: can funk up the grid, they believe that's going to
Speaker 1: like and I think, obviously this is a silly line
Speaker 1: of thought, but they think it's going to like lead
Speaker 1: to the I mean, this is always what I think
Speaker 1: it's going to lead to, like the race war that
Speaker 1: they want, right, That's that's the thinking there be. And
Speaker 1: that equation is like a two B two s like
Speaker 1: this and question mark mark race war. Yeah, they're Nazis,
Speaker 1: you know, they're Nazis. They're not right about things. But
Speaker 1: the fact that all this propaganda is out there, the
Speaker 1: fact that they've been talking about this so long, is
Speaker 1: part of why everyone is convinced that, like there's this
Speaker 1: massive new insurgency that's just broken out and that that's
Speaker 1: what all of these attacks are, which doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: none of them are. Um. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: the year before this happened in the same state in
Speaker 1: North Carolina, a group of Nazis were arrested by the
Speaker 1: FEDS for trying to attack power infrastructure, and they also
Speaker 1: had plans on the Pacific Northwest, where there have been
Speaker 1: in Washington Portland attacks on some power infrastructure. Um, and
Speaker 1: they also they're also just so happens to be a
Speaker 1: lot of Nazis here. Yeah, the both the Carolinias and
Speaker 1: the Pacific and the Pacific Northwest are home to a
Speaker 1: lot of people who self described as like militant neo
Speaker 1: Nazi accelerationists. And what I think we should do now
Speaker 1: before we get too much off this and we can
Speaker 1: return to this topic, is talk about the fact that,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of the important context, a lot
Speaker 1: of people who aren't Nazis funk up electrical grids all
Speaker 1: the time. It's actually very easy, and people seem to
Speaker 1: just enjoy it americ. I think there's there's there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of missteps people have taken in talking about
Speaker 1: this and kind of you know, some people have gotten
Speaker 1: scared and have kind of you know, uh not not
Speaker 1: looked at this uh fully analytically in a way that
Speaker 1: is actually really helpful, because there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of retrospective misinformation going around on attacks that have
Speaker 1: happened in the in the past few months that I've
Speaker 1: only really gotten reported on. Are noticed in the wake
Speaker 1: of the North Carolina attack, which is kind of caused
Speaker 1: this narrative to come out that since the North Carolina attack,
Speaker 1: there's been like a bajillion of other other attacks happening
Speaker 1: in quick succession, which actually isn't true. So that's I first,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the types of stuff that
Speaker 1: is that people are generally getting wrong about this because
Speaker 1: it's a good a good deal. People are are are
Speaker 1: misunderstanding some some of what's going on here. Um. So
Speaker 1: there was this, you know, pretty pretty viral uh story
Speaker 1: made by a new station in Florida that came out
Speaker 1: a few days ago talking about how it's all caps
Speaker 1: substations targeted. Reports shows intrusions had Duke Energy power stations
Speaker 1: in Tampa Bay and elsewhere in Florida. So very scary
Speaker 1: obviously because Duke Energy is also the place in North
Speaker 1: Carolina that was attacked, founded by the guy who invented
Speaker 1: the modern cigarette. By the way, based based yes, but
Speaker 1: if you if you look, if you look at the
Speaker 1: actual story, these intrusions that they're talking about happened last September.
Speaker 1: They did not. They did not happen a few days ago.
Speaker 1: And then also similarly, for the first time, there was
Speaker 1: reporting on a whole bunch of substation attacks in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest. Uh, that reporting was dropped after the North
Speaker 1: Carolina attacks in part because a memo was was was
Speaker 1: posted by a few different news sites that they probably
Speaker 1: did open records requests in the wake of the North
Speaker 1: Carolina attack. They found this memo, reported on it, and
Speaker 1: now people have this, you know, have learn learn about
Speaker 1: this other thing that happened in November. So, but people
Speaker 1: who don't, who really are only looking at headlines or
Speaker 1: only looking at tweets UM or posts wherever, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: they look at these attacks and they look at you know,
Speaker 1: the succession of them becoming public after the North Carolina thing,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of drawing this narrative that these things
Speaker 1: have happened one after another and it's part of this
Speaker 1: brand new wave of things, and it is part of
Speaker 1: a wave of things on like the broad sense, but
Speaker 1: it's not all happened within the past two weeks. So
Speaker 1: the first thing is like, when it's super easy for
Speaker 1: a disinformation and misinformation to spread very rampantly in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of these types of attacks, UM, and these types
Speaker 1: of incidents, you know, some of these probably are not
Speaker 1: attacks UM. And it's really easy to kind of glom
Speaker 1: onto an erative that's compelling and scary, and if you
Speaker 1: just dig it a little a little bit deeper, deeper,
Speaker 1: you'll realize there's a whole bunch of context that you're missing.
Speaker 1: So that's always an important first step when when these
Speaker 1: things are happening. Yeah, and it's part of the part
Speaker 1: of the story here. I think part of why it's
Speaker 1: important to understand that, like the surgeon, attacks on power
Speaker 1: infrastructure is a thing, but it's not necessarily tied to
Speaker 1: the fact that Nazis are attacking the power infrastructure is that,
Speaker 1: like it's easy to do, it's easy to do casually.
Speaker 1: And this has been known for a while. About a
Speaker 1: decade ago, two thirteen, there was an attack in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area on I think was it was it too
Speaker 1: power substations. Um, yeah, the Metcalf sniper and we don't
Speaker 1: know how many people were involved, but suspected it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's suspected more than one. Yes, yes, sniper. And
Speaker 1: this was a very if if this was a practice attack,
Speaker 1: a training attack, then it was a very effectively carried
Speaker 1: out one. Because we still don't know who did it,
Speaker 1: and regardless of the mode of this incidence of has
Speaker 1: been mythologized in a lot of extremist circles as like
Speaker 1: an example of here's a successful thing that is replicable
Speaker 1: and you can get away with it. This is this
Speaker 1: is one of the most highly referenced incidents of infrastructure
Speaker 1: attack on you know, across you know, whether you're like
Speaker 1: uh Anti Siev bloodite or whether you're a neo Nazi accelerationist.
Speaker 1: This is, this specific attack is highly referenced. And we'll
Speaker 1: circle back to this towards the end. But because I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote from a recent report by the George
Speaker 1: Washington University on power substation attacks. Um, they are, they
Speaker 1: are extremely common. They are they are becoming increasingly common
Speaker 1: since white supremacists are not the only ones who do them.
Speaker 1: They were also from from twenty six to nineteen, a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of Isis inspired terrorism also hit some substations
Speaker 1: across the United States. They are, they are, They're not
Speaker 1: exclusively done by wet supremacists, and there's also sometimes they're
Speaker 1: just shot at by random people with guns. And let's
Speaker 1: be honest. So the Metcalf attack, it's not impossible that
Speaker 1: it was just an usually lucky group of ye who's
Speaker 1: who wanted to shoot some power infrastructure. We have no idea.
Speaker 1: I think the number of rounds fired directly in yeah,
Speaker 1: I probably make that unlikely. Almost every intelligence agency will
Speaker 1: disagree with you on that, Robert. They didn't catch they
Speaker 1: didn't catch ship. But to Robert's point, I think, I
Speaker 1: think there is some value in remembering that a drunk
Speaker 1: guy in the woods might love to fire a gun
Speaker 1: at something that's gonna spark. And he's going to shoot
Speaker 1: a gun, you might as well shoot it a lot. No,
Speaker 1: I I probably wouldn't shoot it two times. It was
Speaker 1: very It was It was very anyway, I there is
Speaker 1: we and we talked about this a bit in our planning.
Speaker 1: There was one attack and Molly, you probably could recall
Speaker 1: the year better than I was. But it was a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago where the guy attacked to power substation.
Speaker 1: Because he and he talked about this at length in
Speaker 1: his trial, he thought people were on their phones too much,
Speaker 1: so I said, I sent this one to the other
Speaker 1: I loved. I love to find a court record. I'd
Speaker 1: love to spend all my all my pocket change on
Speaker 1: pacer And they given me access to the law library.
Speaker 1: So I spent all day today, UM, looking for any
Speaker 1: case We're not not just charged, were convicted of any
Speaker 1: case where USC eighteen USC thirteen sixty six was brought up.
Speaker 1: So thirteen sixty six is the federal statute for damaging
Speaker 1: or conspiring to damage and energy facility. And so energy
Speaker 1: facility means power lines, power substations, coal mines, nuclear facilities,
Speaker 1: any place where power is made, right, so it's a
Speaker 1: pretty broad atute. And so I looked up a few
Speaker 1: dozen cases where that was on the table to sort
Speaker 1: of bring the temperature down and say, like, okay, aside
Speaker 1: from Nazis trying to cause a race, war, water, some
Speaker 1: other things that lead to somebody getting charged with this,
Speaker 1: other motivations, other scenarios. UM. In that case was Jason
Speaker 1: wood Ring, UM. Jason wood Ring in August, he tried
Speaker 1: to use a this is a quote from some news
Speaker 1: coverage the time, tried to lasso a train with a
Speaker 1: cable attached to a high voltage tower. He is still
Speaker 1: in prison righton. Was distracted by their screens, by their phones,
Speaker 1: by their gaming, and he just wanted people to remember
Speaker 1: what's important. So he tried to lack the train high
Speaker 1: voltage wire. Now, I probably yeah, we probably don't need
Speaker 1: to add this. He was a big enthusiast of methamphetamy.
Speaker 1: He has some court ordered substance abuse treatment, and we
Speaker 1: wish him nothing but the best, right. I think he's
Speaker 1: going to be just fine. But so I found some
Speaker 1: other cases where there was an intentional attack with the
Speaker 1: you know, with the stated intention of bringing down the grid,
Speaker 1: but for like non Nazi reasons. In the early two thousand's, UM,
Speaker 1: a bunch of E l F activists were charged with
Speaker 1: thirteen sixty six for arsons to energy facilities. UM, this
Speaker 1: is an odd one. In twenty nineteen, a guy named
Speaker 1: Stephen McCrae was sentenced for attacking one substation by shooting
Speaker 1: out the cooling fins, and as part of his plea agreement,
Speaker 1: he admitted to three other attacks. UM. He got caught
Speaker 1: because he told a friend of his that he'd been
Speaker 1: shooting shipped up. I was concerned and when to the FBI,
Speaker 1: and they had his friend record some of theirs bad friends. Yea,
Speaker 1: and so he said things like he stated motive was
Speaker 1: attacking corporate America so some couldn't be done about global warming.
Speaker 1: He wasn't noted as an environmental activist, but he was
Speaker 1: concerned about the corporations, which I don't know, Alex Jones
Speaker 1: code in language. Globalists come from a couple of different places. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: listen people maybe, but he right before his arrest, he
Speaker 1: told his friend that he was planning a brand Daddy
Speaker 1: event that would make national news and shut down the
Speaker 1: whole West coast. Okay, Okay, that's maybe. That's sometimes kids.
Speaker 1: Don't tell that to your friend. Yeah, anyone, your friend
Speaker 1: is still snitching and that sucks. But like, don't don't
Speaker 1: tell that to your According to the euro of Prisons
Speaker 1: innate locator, which is another tool I really enjoy, he
Speaker 1: was released in September. That's yeah. This I think it
Speaker 1: helps to make the point that like, this is not
Speaker 1: all are mostly Nazis doing this kind of thing, A
Speaker 1: lot of people trying to make about the you know,
Speaker 1: these sort of I found a third case that sort
Speaker 1: of fits the same pattern, a guy who shot out
Speaker 1: a transformer for reasons I can't quite discern based on
Speaker 1: the court railings. But again, in all three of these cases,
Speaker 1: the Miles Maynard case in Alabama in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Jason woodreyteen Stephen McCrae in twenty nine. They all had
Speaker 1: court ordered psyche valves, and in McCrae's case, there were
Speaker 1: questions about his compency to stand trial. Miles Miles Maynard
Speaker 1: died shortly after being released from prison. These are people
Speaker 1: who were not well. Yeah, not that not that being
Speaker 1: unwell or having the subs problem makes you shoot a substation.
Speaker 1: But these aren't explicitly ideological. These are people who just
Speaker 1: got an idea their head and I didn't control it. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think part of when you're kind of looking
Speaker 1: at just any of these attacks, you're trying to discern
Speaker 1: as stuff pops into the news, is this likely part
Speaker 1: of an insurgent trend? Or is this like some dudes
Speaker 1: fucking around? One of them would be like, what was
Speaker 1: the how much like how much effort and planning does
Speaker 1: it look like when into the Metcalf attack looks like
Speaker 1: quite a lot. I would say the most recent Portland's
Speaker 1: Washington attacks, given the extent to which there were breakings,
Speaker 1: looked like it was very A lot of steps had
Speaker 1: to had to go in. So let's have an ad
Speaker 1: break and then we'll go into some more actual details
Speaker 1: of the North Carolina attack and some of the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest ones, and then kind of circle back to why
Speaker 1: people are talking about accelerationism so much. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: who loves planning a series of infrastructure attacks. The sponsors
Speaker 1: of this show attacks on the infrastructure of your wallet.
Speaker 1: We're bulk And nothing that we said before the break
Speaker 1: can legally be called incitement. Um, it's a joke. It's fine.
Speaker 1: So now we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the details of the North Carolina attack and
Speaker 1: some of the attacks in the Pacific Northwest, and yeah,
Speaker 1: just getting get into some more of the actual details
Speaker 1: that have been going on with these most recent attacks
Speaker 1: that have kind of caused people to speculate on various things. So,
Speaker 1: the agencies involved in investigating the North Carolina More County
Speaker 1: attack have disclosed very little information about what's happened. Uh,
Speaker 1: They've they've said that the equipment was hit by gunfire
Speaker 1: and that the shooters appeared to know what they were doing. Uh.
Speaker 1: Investigators have found nearly two dozen shell casings from high
Speaker 1: power rifles in the area around and people lost power
Speaker 1: are and uh that power outage lasted for like at
Speaker 1: least five days as as the company tried to replace
Speaker 1: these very large pieces of equipment, many of which were
Speaker 1: damaged beyond repair. So investigators are zoning in on two
Speaker 1: threads of possible motives centered around extremist behavior for the
Speaker 1: for the for the attack that happened last last Sunday.
Speaker 1: One of these. One of these is writings by extremists
Speaker 1: on online forms encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, as well
Speaker 1: as a series of recent disruptions of lgbt Q plus
Speaker 1: events across the nation by domestic extremists, according to law
Speaker 1: enforcement sources disclosed to CNN. So these these are the
Speaker 1: two things that people are looking into. Initial uh speculation,
Speaker 1: like of the night of the shooting centered on right
Speaker 1: wing backlash towards a drag show that was set to
Speaker 1: be held that same day at a nearby theater. The
Speaker 1: drug show was shut down as it was going on
Speaker 1: because the power went out UM, and there was a
Speaker 1: local a local activist made some cryptic comments on their
Speaker 1: Facebook and they then received a police visit the police
Speaker 1: about it. I also like that the this person who
Speaker 1: who made these cryptic posts UM was also an Army
Speaker 1: psychological operations officer, so they literally worked in pop Yeah,
Speaker 1: like her job was psyops. And this was the person
Speaker 1: that that that posted about this big tied to the
Speaker 1: Drag Show. So take that as as you will. Um.
Speaker 1: This person's group earlier that day had had a protest
Speaker 1: UH involving armed individuals in military gear to to you know,
Speaker 1: push back against the h the Drag Show. So but
Speaker 1: but yeah, So those are the two threads investigators are
Speaker 1: looking into. Is one accelerationist rhetoric and writings that has
Speaker 1: gotten more popular the past few years. And then two
Speaker 1: maybe connected to this wave of of of like anti
Speaker 1: queer stuff. Let's see, UM. One what what One interesting
Speaker 1: kind of thing of note is that three weeks before
Speaker 1: this attack, another substation was deliberately disabled in eastern and
Speaker 1: North Carolina. This this this stack happened on Friday, November eleventh.
Speaker 1: It shut down electricity for about twelve thousand homes and businesses.
Speaker 1: Power was restored in a few hours, though this one,
Speaker 1: this one was easier to fix. UM. In a statement
Speaker 1: posted on the company's website for a few days after
Speaker 1: the incident, UH, they described it as vandalism, and the
Speaker 1: company said that vandals quote damaged transformers, causing them to
Speaker 1: leak coolant oil, but the statement does not explicitly say
Speaker 1: what the method was. And this is a not uncommon
Speaker 1: because you're trying to like find people who might have
Speaker 1: Like that's part of how you can make a case
Speaker 1: against people is if you can prove they know details
Speaker 1: of the case that aren't publicly possible, Like there's a
Speaker 1: reason why they're not going to say what caliber the
Speaker 1: weapon is or whatever. Yeah, they did say it wasn't
Speaker 1: the same as the one used in the Metcalf attack,
Speaker 1: which was seven six too short, So yes, but the
Speaker 1: gun that was used on the December, North Carolina attack
Speaker 1: was different than the case. Things found at at the
Speaker 1: doesn't mean much. That does not mean much at all.
Speaker 1: I know there was a lot of initial sort of
Speaker 1: anger and frustration over the use of the word vandalism
Speaker 1: and the initial reporting. Um, I think it's fine to
Speaker 1: use that word because when you don't know what happened,
Speaker 1: all you can see that happened is that someone damaged property.
Speaker 1: We don't know the motivations behind it. We don't know
Speaker 1: that they intended to knock out power because, like we said,
Speaker 1: sometimes people in the woods just shoot it ship because
Speaker 1: it's it's funny. So I think it's fair to not
Speaker 1: want to use that word. But I think in initial reporting,
Speaker 1: especially from authorities, especially from people who could get suit
Speaker 1: reliable later down the line, the word vandalism is not incorrect. No,
Speaker 1: and it's this is like I think, if you're at
Speaker 1: if you want to know, like what would immediately set
Speaker 1: someone someone off that like something is likely not vandalism. Well,
Speaker 1: the Metcalf attack is good because so much was fired
Speaker 1: at the transformer. I would say if like the thing
Speaker 1: that would make me think maybe this is just some
Speaker 1: you who fucking around is if it's thirty rounds are
Speaker 1: less fired and there's no attempt to actually break onto
Speaker 1: the facility kind of a standard capacity magazine. Which the
Speaker 1: reason why because because the North Carolina attack in December
Speaker 1: did not have many rounds. But the reason why it
Speaker 1: isn't we do know it's intentional is two substations were hit,
Speaker 1: like like one person hit one, then travel and went
Speaker 1: to another, and it was like, I just seem like
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people's sort of expressing
Speaker 1: this outrage. But you know is we're tying these other
Speaker 1: instance to it, you know, the ones in Florida, the
Speaker 1: ones in Pacific Northwest when we have very little information,
Speaker 1: it's okay to call it vandalism because that's the baseline,
Speaker 1: right that you don't have to If you start using
Speaker 1: terrorism for every minor incident, it it dilutes it. It's
Speaker 1: not helpful, it creates the area. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to on the table. I mean, like so, even in
Speaker 1: like November, the FBI was issuing warnings of of of
Speaker 1: reported threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or
Speaker 1: ethnically motivated extreme ideologies to quote create civil disorder and
Speaker 1: inspire further violence. So FBI was sending bulletins to to
Speaker 1: private industry UM multiple times in the past two months.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of bulletins being sent out, which
Speaker 1: is I think part of why this in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the attacks, with all these public record requests and
Speaker 1: more reporting on it, where people are realizing how much
Speaker 1: of a thing is actual The is UM I think
Speaker 1: and and and a tax with these on on sub
Speaker 1: stations or other power grain infrastructure are definitely more common
Speaker 1: than what you might think, and do seem to be
Speaker 1: increasing in frequency on in the in the broad sense,
Speaker 1: and some of some of them are certainly have, as
Speaker 1: we know from arrest that have taken place are part
Speaker 1: of decentralized right wing attempts at an insurrection. That's not
Speaker 1: wrong to say, it's just the problem is larger and
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, and to some extent it's a
Speaker 1: problem of like like I I would, I would be
Speaker 1: shocked if part of the explanation for why this is
Speaker 1: happening so much more is not that Americans have a
Speaker 1: shipload of guns and during the pandemic people were bored
Speaker 1: and kind of going crazy, Like you know, people have
Speaker 1: no chill. Yeah, they have no chill. They're stuck at
Speaker 1: home and you're out in the middle of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: it's easy to do and you want to see something spark.
Speaker 1: That's part of the problem, right, yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: they have an increasing since there's there were seventy reports
Speaker 1: of emergency every electric incidents and disturbances caused by suspected
Speaker 1: physical attacks, sabotage or vandalism from January to August two UM.
Speaker 1: That figure represents increase around reports in which is the
Speaker 1: first year that there's comparable data for, and it's it's
Speaker 1: also worth really noting that there is and was as
Speaker 1: soon As this happened in metcalf In, suggestions were made
Speaker 1: as to a really easy way to make it harder
Speaker 1: to do this, which would not be wildly expensive, which
Speaker 1: is to put sandbags in front of the coolant systems,
Speaker 1: which will block most conventional rounds. And at that point, yeah,
Speaker 1: not not hard to accomplish, and it would also let
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who is going to get around those
Speaker 1: sandbags ideologically committed, right whatever. The reason why there is
Speaker 1: so many of these attacks is because a lot of
Speaker 1: these very important pieces of infrastructure are highly visible and
Speaker 1: really only protected by a channelingk fence. So in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases an attack can be carried out without
Speaker 1: even entering any kind of restricted grounds. You can point
Speaker 1: a gun through a channel link fence and and do
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean, you can be yeah, hundreds of
Speaker 1: yards away, right, It's very like a three oh eight.
Speaker 1: You could be easily several hundred yards away, out of
Speaker 1: the range of any camera, and you could take enough
Speaker 1: pot shots to destroy it. It It has that kind of
Speaker 1: penetrative power. A thirty at six, you know, yeah, not hunting, right,
Speaker 1: whether your granddad has you know, yeah, anyone who shoots
Speaker 1: elk regularly could do this, you know, without any without
Speaker 1: without any realistic way of catching them if you're out
Speaker 1: in a rural area. I'm kind of shocked that these
Speaker 1: people actually didn't like in terms of like I don't know, like, um,
Speaker 1: there's there's this. We can talk about this later. But
Speaker 1: obviously the area they're in has a very high concentration
Speaker 1: of very heavily trained people an unconventional warfare. But oh
Speaker 1: yes we should that is that is a factor in
Speaker 1: North Carolina that all of this is occurring on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Fort Bragg and a year ago people who
Speaker 1: were active duty Marines attempted to carry out a similar attack,
Speaker 1: and we're not Do we want to talk about a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, specifically about Robin Sage. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's relevant certainly. Like the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought when I thought about this area was like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: that's right by Serthern Pines. I think maybe the show
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen in Seven Pines, which is kind
Speaker 1: of central to the United States Army Special Forces community,
Speaker 1: and a few times a year there people newly qualifying
Speaker 1: to be SF soldiers will do an exercise called Robin Sage.
Speaker 1: It's it's military laping. Yeah, well like them, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's the military doing lapping, but also not the military, right,
Speaker 1: So like people I'm sure will be familiar, and people
Speaker 1: who enjoy Twitter dot com will be familiar in the
Speaker 1: fact that they the United States have sometimes helped rebel
Speaker 1: movements across the world to overthrow a government. So it's
Speaker 1: the thing that it likes to do. It's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: shocking that the yeah, they every revolution in fact has
Speaker 1: been fermented by the United States and the CIA specifically
Speaker 1: because people can't think for themselves, and so they what
Speaker 1: they do in robin stage is they practice training a
Speaker 1: rebel movement that's comprised to civilians, right or untrained fighters.
Speaker 1: So these people will go out in small teams in
Speaker 1: pil and then they'll meet a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are not soldiers. They might be former soldiers, they might
Speaker 1: be local volunteers, there might be people from the area, um,
Speaker 1: and they will train them for a few days, right,
Speaker 1: just like they would if they were actually training up
Speaker 1: like a gorilla army. And then they'll do a simulated
Speaker 1: attack which you might recognize us potentially a bad idea
Speaker 1: which which we now might be seeing as an issue
Speaker 1: because someone someone didn't attack. So like you have in
Speaker 1: that area a ton of SF troops, right, and who
Speaker 1: span the artical spectrum, and a ton of randos who
Speaker 1: have been trained by SF troops in guerrilla warfare, right,
Speaker 1: unconventional warfare is what they call it. And if you
Speaker 1: were doing unconventional warfare, this would be a very effective
Speaker 1: thing to do, right. That's why there's been this massive
Speaker 1: panic about cyber attacks on the grid, especially since the
Speaker 1: start of the war in Ukraine. Very funny we panicked
Speaker 1: about cyber attacks from the fact you could just go
Speaker 1: shoot it. You don't need to be that complex. But
Speaker 1: that's right, it's a weak point and and you would
Speaker 1: know that if you've been practicing unconventional warfare, and so
Speaker 1: like this happening in this very specific area kind of
Speaker 1: racing flags from me. It's not super weird that this
Speaker 1: is the second time in the course of a year
Speaker 1: that there's been an attempt or successful attack on North
Speaker 1: Carolina power infrastructure, right, Like, it's not suprised. This is
Speaker 1: at the very least the DHS is not surprised about this.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, they've they've issued many alerts warning that
Speaker 1: domestic right and extremists are gonna are planning to target
Speaker 1: the power grid. UM. In February three, people like to
Speaker 1: plead guilty, which we already talked about. UM. There was
Speaker 1: those people arrested in Idaho. They were planning attacks on
Speaker 1: on power stations and highlighting, highlighting locations of transformers and
Speaker 1: other substations and other power infrastructure and planning to take
Speaker 1: them out and then using the black oats to go
Speaker 1: do other crimes, including assassinating ideological opponents. So like, there's
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: extra focus on people's plans to do infrastructure attacks and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, plans on like, hey, this seems like a problem,
Speaker 1: and people have been talking about it more because it
Speaker 1: does seem to there isn't at least increasingly high, high
Speaker 1: high profile cases UM and at least in the case
Speaker 1: of this past one in North Carolina, the d the
Speaker 1: DHS is currently saying that it does appear to be
Speaker 1: deliberate UM, and they're they're investigating to see if it's
Speaker 1: if it is tied to ideological motive UM. But again
Speaker 1: it's it is worth emphasizing that not all of these
Speaker 1: things are are these types of incidents. Like an example
Speaker 1: of something that I think has been misreported on is
Speaker 1: this recent attack or it's not an attack, but it's
Speaker 1: been reported as an attack. In South Carolina, UM on
Speaker 1: December seventh, there was an individual in a truck that
Speaker 1: opened fire near a a Dooke Energy facility. UM employees
Speaker 1: witnessed the struck pull up. It was around five thirty pm. UH.
Speaker 1: This guy opened fire and what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: long gun and then sped away. No one was hurt,
Speaker 1: there was no outages, there was no reported property damage.
Speaker 1: UM and currently sheriffs are saying that this was that
Speaker 1: this was a completely random act that was that wasn't
Speaker 1: even targeted at the power station. They said that the
Speaker 1: only connection between this shooting and the power station was
Speaker 1: their proximity. This wasn't an actual attack on a power station.
Speaker 1: This was just a coincidence. But because this was a
Speaker 1: few days after this attack in North Carolina, people can
Speaker 1: read headlines about someone shooting outside of power station in
Speaker 1: South Carolina and get turned into this big thing and
Speaker 1: you're like, that's actually not what's going on. You need
Speaker 1: to look a little bit closer. Similarly with this stuff
Speaker 1: in Florida, UH, you know, there's been a lot of retroactively,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to apply this this this accelerations idea
Speaker 1: onto those onto those instances as well, when there's simply
Speaker 1: not the evidence. Yeah, it's um. One of the things
Speaker 1: you have to, like, as talking about the fat the
Speaker 1: folks who are like insurrection ary, one of the force
Speaker 1: multipliers they have is that the United States has a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of people who are just assholes and have guns, um,
Speaker 1: and that that's just their own guns, guns they stole
Speaker 1: from the military. That that is also a factor specific
Speaker 1: James's point about the proximity to Fort Bragg though, you
Speaker 1: know for Bragg in Campball June obviously different branch of
Speaker 1: the military, different parts of the state of North Carolina.
Speaker 1: But you know there was that attack last month. It
Speaker 1: was near Camp La June. We have the Camp La
Speaker 1: June sell that was wrapped up. They're actually still awaiting
Speaker 1: trial on the third superseding indictment. And they were stealing guns, right,
Speaker 1: or at least they got cons from the military. The
Speaker 1: initial indictment was for illegal for trafficking any illegal guns. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Marine cort lost a ton of plastic explosive at
Speaker 1: twenty nine palms last year as well, like a very
Speaker 1: large amount, which is is concerning, Yeah, a startling quantity
Speaker 1: of high explosives. Right, And so I was combing comers
Speaker 1: for anything mentioning Fort Bragg looking for other cases related
Speaker 1: to this specific geografo area because the More County is
Speaker 1: literally right outside Fort Brag, which is where the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army Special Horses um are are hanging out. And so
Speaker 1: this would not be the first time we had radicalized
Speaker 1: soldiers out of Fort Bragg. I mean, you go back
Speaker 1: to the eighties, Michael Tubbs, a founding member of the
Speaker 1: League of the South, did his first terrorism when he
Speaker 1: and some other Special Forces buddies committed armed robbery of
Speaker 1: machine guns from the Army for the clan. Yeah, with
Speaker 1: the intention of using them to start a race war. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then in August of this year, a Special Forces
Speaker 1: soldier named Killian Ryan was indicted for lying on his
Speaker 1: security clearance application. He had already been granted a security clearance.
Speaker 1: Mind you, he had been granted this clearance um, but
Speaker 1: it turns out he was a Nazi. I don't know
Speaker 1: how the security clearance process didn't catch the fact that
Speaker 1: his email address was Nazi ace fourteen eight at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com that he and sometimes sometimes it's sometimes it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to check. You know, there's lots of simple
Speaker 1: mistakes that anyone could make. Anybody can make this kind
Speaker 1: of this thing. So you know, you see, this wasn't
Speaker 1: a surprise to DHS and it shouldn't be. These are
Speaker 1: the mistakes. UM. I also did want to note, as
Speaker 1: we're talking about these Special Forces guys and the potential
Speaker 1: of them being radical, there's also Timothy McVeigh. Well, Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh was regular army, Um, but he washed out a
Speaker 1: Special Forces. Yeah, he didn't quite make it. Um. But
Speaker 1: what's his name? Yeah? Um, yeah, there's this is this
Speaker 1: is like not a this is not an uncommon thing.
Speaker 1: Currently writing a story that includes a large section about
Speaker 1: a marine that tried to steal equipment, uh from military
Speaker 1: bases to then go do a mass shooting at a synagogue. Um,
Speaker 1: and this guy has what was a Nazi before he
Speaker 1: joined the Marines, and he shot on the Marines until
Speaker 1: we figured out what's going on. We have got to
Speaker 1: shut this down until we figured out what's going on.
Speaker 1: So um, Yeah, and you've got Eric Rudolph, the guy
Speaker 1: who carried out the Olympic Park bombings in nineties six
Speaker 1: was was with the first Airborne Division. He was an
Speaker 1: air Assault specialist UM and he carried out the bombing
Speaker 1: of the Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, and then went
Speaker 1: on the run for months. I think, yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was a Nazi by the way, Oh it was. He
Speaker 1: was on the run for a long time. He detail
Speaker 1: all the squirrel and nothing he did in the woods. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, he carried out a number of
Speaker 1: other bombings, including he carried out a bombing of an
Speaker 1: abortion clinic. He carried out the bombing of a lesbian bar. Um.
Speaker 1: We talked about this earlier this year on Yeah. We
Speaker 1: we did part of one of our mini series we
Speaker 1: talked about this guy. We had we had, we had
Speaker 1: a whole episode dedicated to him. I I do want
Speaker 1: to briefly talk about some of the stuff happening in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest as well, and how this ties in
Speaker 1: and how there is as opposed to some of the
Speaker 1: incidents that were like the incident in South Carolina. Stuff
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest, while happening previous to the North
Speaker 1: Carolina attack, does seem to be deliberate, UM and has
Speaker 1: there has been some interesting pieces of information that have
Speaker 1: come out in the past few days. So the electrical
Speaker 1: grid has been physically attacked at least six times in
Speaker 1: Oregon and western Washington since mid November. Attackers used firearms
Speaker 1: and at least some of the incidents in both states,
Speaker 1: and some power customers in Oregon and Washington experienced at
Speaker 1: least brief service disruptions as a result of the attacks.
Speaker 1: Just two days before the North Carolina attacks, the FBI
Speaker 1: and Organs Tighten Fusion Center issued a memo that warned
Speaker 1: utilities about this about both these recent attacks and how
Speaker 1: there could be more of them, UH, saying quote, power
Speaker 1: companies in organ Washington have reported physical attacks on substations
Speaker 1: using hand tools, arson, firearms, and metal chains, possibly in
Speaker 1: response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: UH continuing to say that in recent attacks, criminal actors
Speaker 1: by passed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting
Speaker 1: nearby fires, shooting equipment for my distance, or throwing objects
Speaker 1: over the fence and on too. The equipment and the aim,
Speaker 1: according to memo is quote violent anti government criminal attack,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a catch all term that these
Speaker 1: people use for a whole bunch of kind of white
Speaker 1: supremacists affiliated accelerationist violence. It's kind of a silly term
Speaker 1: because these people really aren't anti government. They just they
Speaker 1: just want they're anti this government because they think this
Speaker 1: government is too liberal. Um. But but yeah, so there
Speaker 1: was there was an attack on a substation in Clackumus
Speaker 1: County on Thanksgiving morning. The power company calls this a
Speaker 1: deliberate physical attack. Um. This is the one where two
Speaker 1: people cut through fences and use firearms to shoot up
Speaker 1: and disabled numerous pieces of equipment. A security specialist for
Speaker 1: the company wrote this kind of brief on it and
Speaker 1: and and has mentioned how that there are local people
Speaker 1: who are affiliated with you know, larger networks of extremist
Speaker 1: groups that have called for such attacks and have provided
Speaker 1: instructions on how to do these types of things, um
Speaker 1: and saying, quote, there's been a significant uptick in incidence
Speaker 1: of break ins related to copper and tool or materials theft,
Speaker 1: but now we are dealing with quickly escalating incidents of sabotage. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of that that's that's the brief
Speaker 1: from the security security specialist who works at this power
Speaker 1: company UM. Four days after that Thanksgiving morning attack, there
Speaker 1: was another incident at a Portland General Electric substation, also
Speaker 1: in the clack of this area. So these things happened
Speaker 1: pretty close to one another in the same county. Some
Speaker 1: of the same people were affected. A few details on
Speaker 1: this one have been released UM, but the PG and
Speaker 1: E team said that quote, our teams have assessed the
Speaker 1: damage and have begun to repair the impacted facilities. Knocking
Speaker 1: out the lights is it can be an end goal,
Speaker 1: right that everyone it's it's dark, and if everyone's inconvenience,
Speaker 1: and there's an idea that you know, making things worse
Speaker 1: will help fence sitters radicalized towards towards the right and
Speaker 1: become accelerations themselves. But that darkness it's not its own
Speaker 1: end goal for some of these people, you know, in
Speaker 1: the the Campbell of June cell in the Collins case,
Speaker 1: they specifically spelled out in some of their planning discussions
Speaker 1: that the darkness was stepped one once the lights were out,
Speaker 1: Once UM infrastructure was damaged, the police were distracted, communications
Speaker 1: were down, people couldn't use their cell phones. They would
Speaker 1: use that period of chaos to carry out a series
Speaker 1: of targeted assassinations. And that's not a new idea either. UM.
Speaker 1: I found a case from the nineties even UM, this
Speaker 1: case from the late nineties, the North American Militia. It
Speaker 1: was a splinter group from the Michigan Militia Wolverines Randy
Speaker 1: Graham and Ken Carter went down in this case. UM.
Speaker 1: They were reconning targets including power stations, TV stations, and
Speaker 1: military based federal buildings, and their plan was to knock
Speaker 1: out communications and power and use that period of chaos
Speaker 1: to kill several federal judges and politicians. So this is
Speaker 1: a recurring theme. You know that this case was in
Speaker 1: the nineties, and then we have that recent case, the
Speaker 1: Collins case. The Skuyes haven't even been tried yet, UM,
Speaker 1: and the stated intention is to use that period of
Speaker 1: chaos to do additional crimes of terrorism. And I mean
Speaker 1: there has been more incidents that definitely do seem to
Speaker 1: be intentional, Like beyond the ones in Oregon, there was
Speaker 1: also ones in western Washington UM that that included setting
Speaker 1: the control houses on fire force entry and sabotage of
Speaker 1: intricate electrical control systems causing short circuits by tossing chains
Speaker 1: over the overhead bus work and a ballistic attack with
Speaker 1: small caliber firearms, And so that's that's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going into uh of like like in terms of
Speaker 1: planning and preparation going into something that's happening. That's a
Speaker 1: perfect example. Yeah, And if you're, as a general rule,
Speaker 1: if you are encountering one of these stories and you're
Speaker 1: trying to determine should I put this in my head
Speaker 1: as something that is maybe part of something bigger or
Speaker 1: something that might be people fucking around? That's the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff to look for, is like how much effort
Speaker 1: went into it, how elaborate was it? Does it seem
Speaker 1: planning was involved? I would say. Another thing is like
Speaker 1: does it seem is it timed for something like Thanksgiving? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: it's not an accident that they picked Thanksgiving to attack
Speaker 1: a substation. Because if you're trying to do something that's
Speaker 1: going to have an impact doing it on a day
Speaker 1: like that where everybody's at home, people are and there's
Speaker 1: also a higher power draw in general, Like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why someone would want to do that,
Speaker 1: but it all points towards this is something that's part
Speaker 1: of an organized set of actions. As opposed to the
Speaker 1: normal thing of Americans attacking their own power infrastructure for
Speaker 1: no good reason. Yeah, which we love to do. Do
Speaker 1: you do you know? Do you know what else we
Speaker 1: we love to do? Robert consume goods and services. That's right.
Speaker 1: We love, we loves and our hero based Lasso King
Speaker 1: would say, that's part of the problem. Hey, we're back,
Speaker 1: all right, Garrison, take us take us home, which hopefully
Speaker 1: is not Fort Bragg No, yeah, yeah, okay, but this
Speaker 1: podcast is run by the usual Yeah, hopefully hopefully not
Speaker 1: so so. Yeah. The past year, we've seen federal authorities
Speaker 1: multiple times worn about these types of threats to critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: There was a local bulletin posted in late November after
Speaker 1: the attacks in Oregon and Washington, UH saying that the
Speaker 1: targets of potential violence includes public gatherings, faith based institutions,
Speaker 1: l g B, t Q plus communities, UM schools, racial
Speaker 1: and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, and US critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So it's it's definitely, it's definitely something that are the
Speaker 1: people are talking about more as incidents have have do
Speaker 1: do seem to be getting more common. Um, now I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna gonna use some of the research from
Speaker 1: a not an article, but I guess not quite a
Speaker 1: study like this. Uh, I don't know how to describe
Speaker 1: it in an analysis piece. I guess from George Washington
Speaker 1: University's program on Extremism entitled Mayhem a Murder and Misdirection
Speaker 1: Violent extremist attack plots against critical infrastructure in the United States.
Speaker 1: So since twenty nineteen we spremacist attacks and plots against
Speaker 1: critical infratructure. Uh, you do seem to have distinctly increased
Speaker 1: between two white spermacis plots targeting energy systems dramatically increased
Speaker 1: in their frequency. Thirteen individuals associated with the overall white
Speaker 1: spermacist movement were arrested and charged in federal court with
Speaker 1: planning attacks on the energy sector. Eleven of these attack
Speaker 1: planners were charged after the rise of eccelorationist ideology and
Speaker 1: doctor in during the past decade did likely fuel these
Speaker 1: increased attacks. Um within the white spermacist mill use that
Speaker 1: are targeting critical infratruc sure and and the energy sector
Speaker 1: in particular. So if if you look at the data
Speaker 1: from twenty two, if you look at ninety four cases
Speaker 1: of individuals who are alleged to have planned quote violent
Speaker 1: extremist attacks. UH. Fifty of those people identified as white supremacists,
Speaker 1: and thirty seven percent of those incidents involved some level
Speaker 1: of planning UH, specifically planning attacks on critical infrastructure. Now,
Speaker 1: six of those sixteen white supremacist plotters had discernible tangible
Speaker 1: connections to named groups and organizations like the base Attamwafen
Speaker 1: Division and the National Socialist Movement. And but in fourteen
Speaker 1: out of the sixteen people were known participants in a
Speaker 1: greater kind of online network that connects various like cells
Speaker 1: or even just aesthetic styles common among the neo Nazis
Speaker 1: accelerationist movement. So and one of the more kind of
Speaker 1: interesting data points is the number of white sermacist plots
Speaker 1: that are specifically focused on the energy sector, relating to
Speaker 1: nuclear reactors, materials, um with the waste sector, and of
Speaker 1: course power substations. UH. There's thirteen thirteen cases of individuals
Speaker 1: who reportedly planned to conduct attacks on a variety of
Speaker 1: energy infrastructure, from small assaults on local on local power
Speaker 1: lines to potentially devastating attacks on power grids or even
Speaker 1: nuclear facilities and UH and those represent eight seven percent
Speaker 1: of the white sermacist related cases in which critical infstructure
Speaker 1: was targeted. So most of that is specifically on power grids.
Speaker 1: Like that's that is, that is what these focus on.
Speaker 1: And the first case within this data point range of
Speaker 1: two UH dates back to seventeen when a former Florida
Speaker 1: National Guardsman and the founder of Adam Often Division was
Speaker 1: arrested in Florida and charged with um, you know, unlawful
Speaker 1: possession of FLOSIT advices and FLICA materials. Uh. They one
Speaker 1: of one of one of the guy's roommates, who was
Speaker 1: also a member of Adam Often told told jurors that
Speaker 1: this guy intended to target a number of different locations
Speaker 1: for explosive attacks using this material, including a Jewish synagogue,
Speaker 1: power lines, and a new and a nearby nuclear reactor site. Um.
Speaker 1: And this guy in his apartment had had a propaganda
Speaker 1: and and book materials on the functioning of nuclear reactors
Speaker 1: and other power supply stuff. So like you know, that's
Speaker 1: these types of things that people study on and then
Speaker 1: plan out to do. And what we're seeing more commonly
Speaker 1: now is of very intensive propaganda team putting together kind
Speaker 1: of manuals on how to do these types of things.
Speaker 1: Both both like both for like to inspire you to
Speaker 1: do it, but also like instruction manuals and like here's
Speaker 1: here's where you should shoot. Here's like here's how to
Speaker 1: actually do it, and it's it's there unfortunately designed quite well.
Speaker 1: And that's something that is newer, that is a direct
Speaker 1: product of the types of aesthetically driven UH propaganda that
Speaker 1: has flourished on sites like Telegram, and they're they're getting
Speaker 1: quite good at making propaganda. It's not just it's not
Speaker 1: just you know, random random books strewn upon your apartment anymore.
Speaker 1: It's very well made documents online. So the three, the
Speaker 1: three men who just pleaded guilty in February for their
Speaker 1: their conspiracy to attack power facilities. One of those men,
Speaker 1: Jackson Saywall. In the the original complaint, it says, you know,
Speaker 1: Um Cook had recruited his friends, say Well to join
Speaker 1: the cause. From the outset. Cook believed say walls graphic
Speaker 1: design skills could be an asset to the group's propaganda effort,
Speaker 1: so he was recruited to the cell because he was
Speaker 1: good at graphic design. Now I read these manifestos, I
Speaker 1: would not say the graphic design is good, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly better than sort of a cut and paste scene. Right,
Speaker 1: there's a clear digital design element here, um, and that's
Speaker 1: on purpose and they know that that's how they're going
Speaker 1: to get eyes on this stuff. I mean, Robert, we
Speaker 1: both read all those manifestos in the last couple of days.
Speaker 1: They are certainly a step up. They are what they
Speaker 1: what they make me think of is when I first
Speaker 1: when I first got into reporting on extremism, it was
Speaker 1: because I went through every issue of like ISISS magazine
Speaker 1: debat right after the BOTA clon attacks and it's number one,
Speaker 1: Like there was when that Adam Waffan guy killed his
Speaker 1: roommates and had he had converted to Islam and was
Speaker 1: like very much um into isis There was this like
Speaker 1: surprise from people who don't think a lot about this stuff.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these guys had a lot of
Speaker 1: admiration for the way that ICE has put together their
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign, which included a lot of very detailed guides
Speaker 1: for how to do things like carry out rent vehicles
Speaker 1: and carry out vehicular attacks. Right like this is um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're this is the way terrorism works. And
Speaker 1: these guys are taking a little bit of a different tack.
Speaker 1: But again, not that like as as Molly pointed out,
Speaker 1: there were a number of ISIS inspired attacks on power
Speaker 1: infrastructure just did get a ton of of of play.
Speaker 1: But like, none of this is like, all of this
Speaker 1: is is in line with the trends that we have
Speaker 1: seen globally in the way in which insurgent movements function.
Speaker 1: And I think you know this well produced easily spread
Speaker 1: propaganda and these online networks they created to spread this propaganda.
Speaker 1: I mean that we're not just you know, we have
Speaker 1: these cases of these organized cells that got caught, but
Speaker 1: it's not just organized cells that have the capacity to
Speaker 1: carry out these attacks. Because any idiot in the telegram
Speaker 1: group can open that manifesto with the detailed instructions for
Speaker 1: carrying out an identical attacked disseminates and becomes contagious. There's this.
Speaker 1: There's this. People who talk about a lot online now
Speaker 1: about stochastic terrorism, and some of us here might be
Speaker 1: a little bit to blame to that, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times they're they're getting it wrong. Um, because what's
Speaker 1: what what these Nazis are doing. This is inspirational terrorism,
Speaker 1: which has been a thing for as long as terrorism
Speaker 1: has existed. I mean, that's why they have their calendar
Speaker 1: of Saints, you know, yeah, exactly. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of debate about, like Whendy you stochastic terrorism, but kind
Speaker 1: of in my mind, when I tend to think it's
Speaker 1: appropriate is when the attempt is to kind of use
Speaker 1: the way algorithms on various sights on the Internet work
Speaker 1: to spread propaganda that's meant to cause that's meant to
Speaker 1: inspire attacks, because that is it's a type of inspirational terrorism.
Speaker 1: But it's it's it's clearly a new evolution of it
Speaker 1: because of its reliance on those networks. But this is
Speaker 1: again we're getting into the weeds. Is there anything else
Speaker 1: you wanted to kind of get into here, Garrison? I
Speaker 1: mean no, I kind of I kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: wrap up by talking about some of the terrogram stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think we we kind of we kind of
Speaker 1: hit on a lot of stuff that I that I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention. I mean, in twenty nineteen, two years
Speaker 1: after that first uh that that that first attack of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, two years later, uh Bew Maryman was was
Speaker 1: arrested for planning to blow up power grid substations. He
Speaker 1: was member of Adam offen um, and we already are
Speaker 1: we already talked about We already talked about the two
Speaker 1: other kind of main instance that are well known of
Speaker 1: from and then stuff that is that that just got
Speaker 1: um uh, there was there was court cases as recently
Speaker 1: February two. We also mentioned in terms of the their
Speaker 1: their plans to take out power stations to then carry
Speaker 1: out assassinations. So those are two other insidents that I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention, um, But yeah, I mean it's I
Speaker 1: think the the other kind of aesthetic similarity I think
Speaker 1: is that I think we actually are seeing some of
Speaker 1: the some of the recent telegram stuff also take cues
Speaker 1: from not only like isis and is not terrorism, but
Speaker 1: also some of the types of anarchist writing that have
Speaker 1: that have has gotten more popular since you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the left type stuff Like where I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: some of some of the aesthetic stylings feels very reminiscent
Speaker 1: of like early crime think um, some of it, some
Speaker 1: of it is is similar to things around um the
Speaker 1: types of like eco sabotage manuals that that were that
Speaker 1: were very popular in the nineties and two thousands. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, some of the techniques are very similar because
Speaker 1: both eco terrorists and UH excelration accelerationist nazis both find
Speaker 1: value and attacking things like powers and powers of power
Speaker 1: substations UM or you know, burning down five G towers.
Speaker 1: That's a big emphasis of this recent like almost three
Speaker 1: hundred page manifesto and instruction manuals. They focus a lot
Speaker 1: on how, you know, in early regular people felt inspired
Speaker 1: to burn down five G towers, people who are not
Speaker 1: otherwise extremists, and how how do we get people who
Speaker 1: are regular people to get to that point where they're
Speaker 1: willing to damage public infrastructure? And that's kind of a
Speaker 1: lot what a lot of what that three hundred page
Speaker 1: kind of manifesto slash manual tries to talk about mm
Speaker 1: hm an it's uh, if we want to end on
Speaker 1: on a hopeful note, I have at least sort of
Speaker 1: a small bright spot for us UM. It's in the
Speaker 1: original UM affidavit for the search warrant into Liam Collins,
Speaker 1: the head of the Camp Lejune cell Um so that
Speaker 1: a original affidavit for the search warrant um in his case.
Speaker 1: The FBI agent writing the affidavit says that they first
Speaker 1: started looking into Collins because he was docked in the
Speaker 1: Iron March leagues. So they were we were reading those
Speaker 1: dockses and they said, oh wow, a marine who's a Nazi.
Speaker 1: We should talk to him. So, you know, when doing
Speaker 1: this work in identifying these people from these leagues and
Speaker 1: sort of the slog of picking through, like maybe this
Speaker 1: guy's a fucking nobody, but we will identify them so
Speaker 1: their communities can keep an eye on them. That work matters.
Speaker 1: That work made it into Newsweek, and it made it
Speaker 1: to the FBI. It's a weird filter system, but eventually
Speaker 1: this guy got caught before he committed a massive nationwide
Speaker 1: active terror. So keep doxy Nazis and it works. In
Speaker 1: a similar incident, there was an officer of the Lafayette
Speaker 1: Police depart MINT that joined I believe this this exact
Speaker 1: same terrorist cell that was then he was he was
Speaker 1: he was docked by anti fascists and then he turned
Speaker 1: and snitched on his fellow Nazis. Um So the investigation
Speaker 1: opened because of the docks and they've got a powerful
Speaker 1: cooperating witness because of another docks. It makes them nervous
Speaker 1: if eyes are on them, they can't conduct covert operations.
Speaker 1: So keep docs in your local Nazis like it can
Speaker 1: it can literally be like in terms of these cells
Speaker 1: planning to do assassinations of people, it can actually save
Speaker 1: people's lives if these people are actually serious and are
Speaker 1: willing to carry out their plans that they are you know,
Speaker 1: actively training for actively preparing materials for um. This type
Speaker 1: of work is is some of the most solid anti
Speaker 1: fascist research that people of that people have done. It
Speaker 1: absolutely saved lives, I've no doubt about that, will continue
Speaker 1: to save lives. So docs Nazis, and you know, if
Speaker 1: if you're drunk out in the woods and one of
Speaker 1: your buddies says, hey, why don't we shoot a power substation,
Speaker 1: don't do it. You can just shoot can stop signs.
Speaker 1: It's the America stop signs, expired fire extinguishers. Those are
Speaker 1: fun to shoot. Let me make all of the people
Speaker 1: turn off this podcast in a bit of rage and
Speaker 1: then and then have a mortal crisis. So yeah, uh
Speaker 1: to the anti cit people who have built a radio
Speaker 1: out of sticks, I realized that podcasts don't come out
Speaker 1: through the radio. Tragic anyway, the episode so you think
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