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A far-right extremist allegedly plotted to blow up Amazon data centers
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoFar Right Extremist seems to be an accurate label. Using the screen name Dionysus, he posted on MyMilitia.com, a forum dedicated to organizing militia groups, about his plan to “conduct a little experiment” in 2021. “I’m not a dumbass suicide bomber,” Pendley wrote. “But even if I only have a handful of fellow patriots standing beside me, I will happily die a young man knowing that I didn’t allow the evils in this world to continue unjustly treating my fellow Americans so disrespectfully.” He also claims to have been part of the Jan 6 insurrection. On January 11, 2021, he told an associate on Facebook that he went to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, made it to the platform where he interacted with police officers but did not enter the building. He told another associate on Facebook that he had taken a piece of glass from a window at the building. ref: https://conandaily.com/2021/04/09/seth-aaron-pendley-biography-13-things-about-wichita-falls-texas-man/ https://conandaily.com/2021/04/09/seth-aaron-pendley-biograp...
- COGlory 6y agoHow was he part of the "insurrection" if he did nothing illegal?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoIt's possible the insurrection claims were just crap that he made up. It seems likely the FBI would have been dealing with him back in January, if he were part of the group trying to overthrow the election.
- mschuster91 6y agoThe FBI was focused on finding those who had achieved notoriety - e.g. the dude with the confederate flag, the guys with zip-ties, or those who vandalized / looted the building.
- krapp 6y agoFor the same reason a getaway driver is part of a bank robbery despite "not doing anything illegal."
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoAiding and abetting of a getaway driver is more involved than a bystander watching a tour group jump the velvet rope.
- krapp 6y agoPerhaps, but calling them a tour group is specious. Their social media posts, testimony and beating of a police officer to death clearly indicates otherwise. And while the suspect didn't admit to anything incriminating while in Washington, according to the article, it seems unlikely that someone who posts about their mass destruction plans on a right-wing militia forum would just coincidentally have been there sightseeing while an insurrection (or, charitably, an attempt at one) was underway.
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoThey stole electronics, but the coroner's decision* is still out on the cop. * https://twitter.com/AugensteinWTOP/status/1379866731666153472 https://twitter.com/AugensteinWTOP/status/137986673166615347...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- readflaggedcomm 6y agoI guess proof is unwanted here.
- makomk 6y agoThe whole reason a getaway driver exists is to help people conduct a bank robbery, whereas just protesting outside Congress is not only legal but constitutionally protected. By that logic, the elected Democrat officials who continued to attend BLM "protests" night after night knowing that every night, people at those specific "protests" were violently attacking cops using them as cover were much more criminal - yet the mainstream American press never applied this logic to them because the whole thing is just partisan bullshit.
- roenxi 6y agoYeah, I don't think the right wing can disown this one. Illegal methods are obviously unacceptable and this guy is a loser, but after the last election the right wing needs to be honest about the situation. One of their biggest political opponents is the big tech companies and they need to organise against them.
- madaxe_again 6y agoThe big tech companies aren’t opponents of the right wing - they are the right wing - they want low taxes, reduced governmental oversight, and are vast multi billion dollar for-profit corporations. They do oppose extremist far right content. Not the political movement, but rather the content which they cannot legally host without facing repercussions themselves.
- lamontcg 6y agoThis is the right wing losing control of the far right wing.
- mansion7 6y agoOdd that despite being right wing and wanting all those right wing things you mentioned, the vast majority of donations on a company-wide and down to the employee level go to Democrat/left-wing causes and politicians. That's not even counting the many many in-kind donations they regularly serve up to left-wing candidates and causes. It's also interesting that despite being right wing, it is rare to witness a higher-up or decision maker at any FAANG espouse conservative views on social media. Whereas it's not unusual for them to be calling for stuff so crazily left-wing it would even make AOC blush. And often in a trollish or provocative manner; they're not gonna deplatform and unperson themselves after all.
- beej71 6y agoNot to turn a blind eye to what would have been a tragic loss of life, but how resistant is Amazon to such an attack, data-wise? How much collateral economic damage can you do by taking down an AWS data center?
- klyrs 6y agoYet another alleged would-be bomber who seems to have been goaded by the feds, I'm not too concerned about the alleged would-be loss of life. I don't know the particulars, but I imagine that Amazon is insured, so they wouldn't suffer greatly from the loss of one data center. Lost storage would be painful to some, but if folks are backing up regularly it shouldn't be a huge hit. I doubt amazon does long-term storage at the same sites as their cloud servers, so data loss should be fairly minimal -- though, if a long-term storage facility got hit, we'd probably learn a lot about amazon's commitment to redundancy. Smaller websites would be at the biggest risk, I think, but the internet would largely route around the damage within a few hours.
- mcbutterbunz 6y agoI don’t know much about this data center but I imagine it’s pretty massive. It’s probably highly redundant with multiple pipes in and out on all ends. I highly doubt this guy could procure enough explosives to take out the entire data center. Granted, I’ve never blown one up so I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.
- cm2187 6y agoI would speculate that you only need to generate enough blasts inside to damage hard drive disk heads through the shock waves. Plus perhaps take out the fuel tank and the external power cables. And if you build your datacentre with straw like the OVH little pig...
- WatchDog 6y agoSeems like a pretty tall order for one bomber to be able to do any significant damage to a facility that size. My understanding is that these facilities run on a fairly skeleton crew, especially at night, with staff generally spending most of their time in offices, rather than on the data-center floor. May have intended to carry out his plan with no loss of life.
- Huwyt_Nashi034 6y agoHe's clearly mentally ill. Unfortunately, that won't stop a lot of bigots from exploiting this to further their agenda against the far right.
- Huwyt_Nashi034 6y agoWoke up on the wrong side of bed again, dang?
- supernova87a 6y agoI wonder, does such a person share a lot of characteristics of his mental state with someone who on the other side of the political spectrum, breaks into factory chicken farms to free birds, or who torches an entire dealership of SUVs to save the planet? Is there not something a little bit fascinating in realizing that regardless of the particular political belief driving them to do something, there must be something that goes haywire in the mind to think that "this is so right that I am justified in destroying property, people to get it done". Maybe when you get to that state (regardless of the particular issue at hand), you should ask as a final check "am I absolutely sure I'm not crazy"? (lol) Also makes you wonder if, for all the convictions you have about some issue, maybe you would equally be as passionate on the other side of it if you had simply been raised by different parents, been fed different points of view, etc. Maybe our belief that we are morally right is not as great a motivator of action as we think it should be?
- Quanttek 6y agoIt wouldn't be post about far-right extremist attacks without someone in the comments trying to "whataboutism" it about leftists.
- Ygg2 6y agoBecause leftist used revolutionary terror to achieve their goals as well. It's not whataboutism if they have a history of doing it.
- j4yav 6y agoWhataboutism doesnt mean that what was brought up is not true, just that it distracts from the original criticism. The classic example is “Soviet Union has problems? Well, look how the US is treating black people.”
- dempseye 6y agoIf someone is criticizing you in bad faith, and from a position of utter hypocrisy, it is fair enough to point that out. There is nothing to gain from battling an adversary like that on their terms.
- startup_boner 6y agoI sincerely hope this does not come across as provocative in the worst possible way, but what exactly defines this guy as Far-Right? I understand we're not given full context in this short article and that label is likely all too accurate, but it feels out of place as the rest of the writeup goes on to just describe him as a run-of-the-mill nutcase obsessed with the "big tech" boogeyman.
- spuz 6y agoMy guess is he was provoked by Amazon taking Parler off their servers.
- dempseye 6y agoIt's sad you feel as if you have to apologize preemptively for asking a question. It is a fair enough question, as there is a certain amount of bilateral support for bombing data centers. There are conceivable justifications for it from many points on the political spectrum. That said, he talks like a right winger, not like a radical environmentalist or a militant communist.
- roflc0ptic 6y ago... yeah, I don't know about any radical environmentalists or communists aiming for data centers. Radical environmentalists want to blow up other things.
- luckylion 6y agoI consider Kaczynski an environmentalist and he's an anarchist. Take a time machine and move him straight from 1978 to 2018, what would he target? My guess is data centers would be on the list.
- roflc0ptic 6y agoBut that’s total conjecture. You’re just saying “well, if I made someone up, they’d target data centers.” My point is that the non-made up radical environmentalists/communists aren’t targeting data centers. My source is that in a previous iteration of this life, I happened to know a lot of communists and radical environmentalists.
- hntroll666 6y agoThe FBI specializes in this kind of operation, providing encouragement, support, and money to unhappy young men who would most likely never get around to actually doing anything were it not for the FBI's involvement, always in such a way that it somehow doesn't quite legally qualify as entrapment, despite looking like entrapment to any normal person. The FBI are corrupt enforcers for the left now. A dozen agents will be dispatched instantly if there's a chance to bolster the myth that the US is super racist, like when a garage door pull fell down, but not a single one will be sent to question the person thought by tens of millions of Americans to have pulled illegitimate ballots out from under a table in the middle of the night during the election.
- aww_dang 6y agoThere is an issue with this, but I am not convinced it is as explicitly partisan as you suggest. I do agree that the definition of political extremist has broadened significantly after this recent election. Here's an example of similar activity with the "Occupy Wallstreet" people. The maladjusted Muslim youth angle is also well known. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-244905/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-fbi-... https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/ https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrori... https://mises.org/power-market/libertarian-terrorists https://mises.org/power-market/libertarian-terrorists >"Former CIA director John Brennan recently singled out libertarians as among the people the government should go after. This is not the first time libertarians have been smeared. In 2009, a federally funded fusion center identified people who supported my presidential campaign, my Campaign for Liberty, or certain Libertarian and Constitution Parties’ candidates as potentially violent extremists."
- cardanome 6y ago> The FBI are corrupt enforcers for the left now. If you are a literal militant Nazi, sure they are enforcers of everything left from you but so is basically anyone. If you mean actual political left or even any form of progressive politics, yeah good riddance. The FBI is sure known for being very kind towards the civil rights movement. (nope). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/fbi-black-activism-protests-history https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/26/fbi-bl... The job of the FBI is to protect the current order. They will target anyone threatening that whether they agree with their reasons or not. Now you do have a point regarding your critique on how the FBI runs things. I think their might be some perverse initiatives at play that lead the FBI towards building up treats that they can destroy as a way to justify their own existence and getting more funding. On the other hand there is no denying that right wing terrorism is a real issue in the US regardless of the meddling the FBI.
- idownvoted 6y agoGet ready for more of this. If Amazon hadn’t acquiesced to the left wing (eg. by taking down Parker) there would have been an equal likelihood that a left wing extremist would plot an attack. Even more so, if a would-be terrorist can see data centers as virtually zero-casualty targets. Not to mention state actors who will have an easier time „nudging“ domestic actors into „standing up for what’s right“ due to the low moral barrier.
- mcny 6y agoNot to trivialize any of the politics but to me the key takeaway is if my revenue relies on aws, I should seriously consider multi region. Given enough time, there is bound to be a disaster at some point. If all my data is in one data center, ... I don’t know enough about aws so I think I need to study this a little bit more.
- wayoutthere 6y agoMotivations aside, I’m pretty sure an AWS data center is too big to take out with a car bomb or even a large truck bomb. If it’s like any other major commercial data enter I’ve been to, there are redundant, multi-tier systems for network, power and HVAC along with multiple path entry of electrical and network connections. There are also likely multiple zones (physically firewalled from each other) for fire suppression, so even if he triggered the sprinklers (or halon) it would likely only take 1/10 or so of their capacity offline (and not even that if it’s halon). An attack like this is absolutely within their threat model too. Because it has been for pretty much every datacenter I’ve toured.
- cm2187 6y agoHe plotted the attack on Signal. Time to ban that dangerous app from every platform! /s
- aasasd 6y agoWaiting for someone being labeled a ‘far-centrist’, since I can easily see motivations from all sides of the compass.
- Grieving 6y agoOne of the worst problems of our political discourse (aside from the idea of a single political axis) is the idea that extremism results from distance from the center. There's nothing about this man's political perspective (that we know) suggesting he was in any way far-right. He is, if anything, a 'center-right' extremist. Same kind of idea goes for proud boys, boogaloos, etc. I think they like the 'far-right' designation because it lets them liken these groups to fascism, which is about as accurate as likening AOC to Stalin.
- jariel 6y agoPeople were told by other people in positions of legitimate authority that the election was literally stolen. Effectively meaning that the Republic has been usurped and democracy trampled. Imagine, wherever you live, if some 'bad guys' actually did that: stuff ballots, silence officials, push through a win. There are three reasons I can think of some kind of legit call to arms: 1) Your country is being invaded 2) Communists or Fascists are literally taking over the world. 3) Your government has been usurped in a coup etc.. <- this is essentially what the '2cnd amendment' is supposedly supposed to thwart. Given the number of people who live in the fake news bubble and truly believe the election was a fraud, I'm surprised there isn't more of this. Actually, it's unfathomable that there hasn't been some kind of armed attempt at 'something' when >100M people truly believe the election was not legit and they have guns. It's made me think that a lot of Trumpers who believe that the election was stolen, don't truly believe it, rather, they just 'want to believe it' - as a mental cover for their loss. "The election was rigged" more or less as a slogan, not actually a fact.
- chakhs 6y agoIsn't this what media usually calls a terrorist?
- dragonwriter 6y agoNo, the media (and law enforcement) does not usually refer to white American non-Muslim far-right extremists plotting acts of terrorism as “terrorists”.