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"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another

by mc32 4y ago

"Officials have stopped short of calling it an act of terrorism, presumably because we don’t know the motive of whoever perpetrated the act" There was another one elsewhere [Washington state [1]] and they found out the perps did it to facilitate knocking over some business of some sort. So, just because it quacks like a duck does not mean it either walks like a duck nor end ends up being a duck. There have also been attacks in Utah by so called environmentalists[2] in an attempt to blunt or "protest" the use of fossil fuels in producing electricity. But, you know, people like narratives which match their ideology a whole lot. [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matthew-greenwood-jeremy-crahan-arrested-washington-substation-vandalism/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matthew-greenwood-jeremy-crahan... [2]https://stopfossilfuels.org/electric-grid/shooting-transformers-disables-substations/ https://stopfossilfuels.org/electric-grid/shooting-transform...

panarky 4y ago
Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos and ignite the race war, I'd definitely teach my inexperienced acolytes to add a little petty theft to their sabotage to avoid a terrorism enhancement when they're caught probing the defenses and response times of utilities and law enforcement.
- kcatskcolbdi 4y ago
  Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    He's right about this much at least: > white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos I've seen such advocacy posted many times on 4chan. That doesn't prove much, but I think it validates that line of speculation.
    - mc32 4y ago
      But so do some people who fantasize about getting rid of fossil fuels --and they typically are polar opposites to the ones you are referring to... which goes to show extreme right and extreme left are like the head and tails of ouroboroses.
      - LarryMullins 4y ago
        Heck, it might even be both. Ecofascist acolytes of Ted K, they exist too. We won't really know until they're caught.
        barbazoo 4y ago
        What nonsense. One is a much more serious threat than the other.
        LarryMullins 4y ago
        I didn't equivocate anything..
    - secondcoming 4y ago
      TIL the Russian Army is inspired by 4chan
    - ilyt 4y ago
- kyrra 4y ago
  They were found because they carried their cellphones to each substations and the robbery. They were then confirmed because they used their own car and it was matched to video surveillance. They were pretty bad at what they were doing.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    But better than a person throwing a rock at a power line. If their goal was to cut power for the area that substation serves then they were successful. Getting caught later means they aren't perfect
  - neuronexmachina 4y ago
    Yep. I think it's safe to assume that the half-dozen earlier attacks in the area were by a different group, since the group behind the earlier attacks was presumably smart enough not to carry their cellphones with them.
- warner25 4y ago
  Especially with the Washington attack happening so soon after the one in North Carolina, the most notable thing to me was that both attacks occurred close to a couple of our most important Army bases, in counties where many troops live with their families off-base. Fort Bragg and Fort Lewis (JBLM) are both home to a corps headquarters, special operations units, and other rapid-response forces. This was rarely mentioned in the news coverage that I saw. But as a career military officer, some of the most thought-provoking "red team" stuff that I've read involved attacking us in our communities at home where we are soft targets, mostly reliant on civilian law enforcement for protection.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    While I don’t disagree I don’t see the point of taking out the power to the community around an army base. If they took out the power on the base to disrupt operations then maybe but from my time at Ft Bragg all that would’ve caused is an inconvenience even if we were in the middle of an alert. …now that I think about it I’m surprised they never cut the power on us when they did one of the alert readiness tests.
    - warner25 4y ago
      When power to the community is cut, it's massively disruptive to operations because our normal response to give troops time off (or employ them in a humanitarian response) to take care of families. Day-to-day garrison operations and small-scale training events are seen as less important than taking care of families.
- atchoo 4y ago
  > I'd definitely teach my inexperienced acolytes to add a little petty theft to their sabotage to avoid a terrorism enhancement The far right literature e.g. The Turner Diaries, describes terror cells funding themselves through theft so theft/sabotage should be expected together with such groups. "The Order" - a real life group modelled on The Turner Diaries robbed banks and armoured cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_g...
- mikrotikker 4y ago
  How about OSS Sabotage Manual that was declassified. Then you think about all the infrastructure attacks and it looks similar to how the manual describes to do sabotage. KGB sleeper cells still doing their thing? Or American communists dreaming they are fighting facism when in fact they are inviting it in.
  - canucklady 4y ago
    There are communists who believe in accelerationism as much as there are white supremacists who believe in it. Basically "destabilize the current status quo to provoke an outright war, and then we win that war and take over".
    - mikrotikker 4y ago
      Yea its scary because communists normally pave the way for the fascists. No matter who wins we all lose.
- yucky 4y ago
  If US government and it's institutions are rooted in white supremacy as so many claim, then why would white supremacists be anti-government? Seems like they'd be on the same team, no?
  - mrtesthah 4y ago
    Most white supremacists are not in intrinsically anti-government. They are more than happy to support it by becoming police officers, soldiers, and prison guards. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
    - yucky 4y ago
      Ah so it's like Schrödingers white supremacists?
      - mrtesthah 4y ago
        Not really, I don't see the confusion here. Maybe you could explain what it is you're having trouble understanding?
        yucky 4y ago
        I thought I already did. If white supremacists are so anti-government then it doesn't make sense to pretend the government is run by white supremacists. It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white.
        mrtesthah 4y ago
        Who is pretending that "the government is run by white supremacists"? If you're referring to my statement, I only said that many law enforcement agencies contain white supremacists, which includes anyone with a white supremacist viewpoint. They don't even need to identify as one openly or even in action. How many white supremacists are and are not anti-government is immaterial to the point. The way you're using the definition "white supremacist" implicitly assumes that "white supremacy" as an ideology is inherently anti-government. We know that's never been the case, because all white supremacist states around the world have had strictly authoritarian governments. There's no way to enforce the supremacy of one group of people over another without coercive force. Either violence or authoritarian government are required for a white supremacist state. As for whether US itself is a white supremacist state, on one hand you could say that it has allocated a massive amount of resources in systematically rounding up black men (1 in 3 will be arrested in their lifetimes) without addressing the factors used to justify that, and many states systematically disenfranchise their vote. And historically it was economically reliant on chattel slavery. Many southern states are effectively authoritarian governments at the state level due to district gerrymandering and black disenfranchisement, now no longer stoppable by the Voting Rights Act after a conservative supreme court decision a few years ago. OTOH, federally, is democratically accountable to the people, making it a coalition of whites and non-whites. So you could still see white supremacist reactionaries taking anti-government standpoints for as long as this governing coalition includes non-white people. >It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white. Do you think it is somehow "anti-white" to point out ways in which white supremacy harms and oppresses non-white people when it is used at the level of state and federal governments?
BLanen 4y ago
He's literally saying what you want him to say and still you're triggered because it doesn't mention "BOTH SIDES" or "NO SIDES" enough? What even is the point of your post?
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  I don't think mc32 was 'triggered' by Grady's article, but rather by other online commentary that does speculate about who it might have been.
walrus01 4y ago
For what it's worth, the guns found with the suspects from the WA state attacks look like the typical trash/stolen firearms you'd see in a meth lab, and the suspects have lengthy criminal records for burglary, theft, petty drug offenses etc.
Helithumper 4y ago
In your second link, the article specifically states "McRae probably wasn’t acting as an ecosaboteur." I don't know how you read that and came to the conclusion that "attacks by so called environmentalists" when the article comes to the opposite conclusion.
FatActor 4y ago
> But, you know, people like narratives which match their ideology a whole lot. We can see that.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
Reminds me of this guy https://archive.ph/hrZar https://archive.ph/hrZar "In 1995, Damron was an electrical engineering student at North Dakota State University when he cut through 19 underground phone cables to disable an alarm at Site on Sound in Fargo. He then stole $80,000 in equipment from the car-stereo business. FBI agents captured him in 1996 in an Iowa hotel room after a two-year manhunt" https://apnews.com/article/587580cb8aa145afbf59e535b5214234 https://apnews.com/article/587580cb8aa145afbf59e535b5214234 Over 24,000 people without phone service so he could rob a stereo store
neuronexmachina 4y ago
Prior to Greenwood & Crahan's attack on the substation in WA on Dec 25, in the weeks prior there were also >=6 other substation attacks in WA and OR. As far as I can tell, nobody's been caught in any of the earlier attacks, and they don't seem to have been tied to any burglaries: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-grid-attacks-in-pacific-northwest-are-unsolved/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-... For reference, Greenwood & Crahan's indictment: https://www.justice.gov/media/1266956/dl?inline https://www.justice.gov/media/1266956/dl?inline
shagmin 4y ago
I live not too far from the area. There was a lot of pressure to call it terrorism early on because this just happened to coincide with a drag show happening in the effected area that Proud Boy members and locals tried to prevent from happening via threats, and a month prior they were harassing people at another drag show in another nearby city. So whether these same people attacked the substations to prevent the drag show from happening is just speculation, they were absolutely terrorizing some people in some way and so far it's the only lead I know of.
boeingUH60 4y ago
I really don’t understand this thread…many times on HN, you’ll hear things like Occam’s Razor (follow the simplest explanation), cite official sources, etc. Here, we have an official report from the prosecutor stating that people attacked substations in furtherance of theft but a lot of people are trying to pin it as part of a larger conspiracy against the government. Like we should tell conspiracy theorists, the burden is on you to cite the evidence confirming your alleged conspiracy. In absence of that evidence, is it not better to go with the word of the DA, whose job is literally to investigate and gather facts about cases like this?
- akiselev 4y ago
  Conspiracy to commit theft vs conspiracy to overthrow the government? Which one requires fewer assumptions? What are the assumptions anyway? That crazy people can buy guns in America?
akira2501 4y ago
There were also three men who attacked a power station and were actually were committing an act of terrorism.[1] Those three got the idea from the government itself.[2] Which, given the nature of our supply chains, are understandably aware of the vulnerability. Some people see all narratives as an opportunity to whip up fear, when given the facts, they could more charitably be seen as an opportunity to whip up awareness. Regardless of your ideology, it might be prudent. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspiring-provide-material-support-plot-attack-power-grids-united https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspi... [2]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudy...
whydid 4y ago
Attacking critical infrastructure in order to perform a robbery is the plot of several of the Die Hard movies. In those films, the group of antagonists performing the attack are generally called "terrorists"
mrtesthah 4y ago
FBI warns of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest power grid spike https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/19/surge-in-oregon-washington-substation-attacks-as-fbi-warns-neo-nazi-plots/ https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/19/surge-in-oregon-washi... (Shrug) Then maybe you should ask the FBI why they'd issue that warning.

by mc32 4y ago

panarky 4y ago

Regarding the sabotage in Washington State, it doesn't make a lot of sense to attack four substations simultaneously just to steal from the cash register of a small business. If I fancied myself to be an antigovernment militia leader who had read all the white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos and ignite the race war, I'd definitely teach my inexperienced acolytes to add a little petty theft to their sabotage to avoid a terrorism enhancement when they're caught probing the defenses and response times of utilities and law enforcement.

kcatskcolbdi 4y ago
Imagine writing this unhinged mental fanfiction for every news article you read. Headline: Man Steals Car "Well, if I fancied myself a racewar enthusiast of course I would _say_ it was for money but it would obviously be in support of creating chaos and undermining the government institutions to allow for our brothers to rise against".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  He's right about this much at least: > white supremacist literature from the last 40 years that repeatedly describes attacking critical infrastructure like pipelines, telecoms and electricity pylons and substations to create chaos I've seen such advocacy posted many times on 4chan. That doesn't prove much, but I think it validates that line of speculation.
  - mc32 4y ago
    But so do some people who fantasize about getting rid of fossil fuels --and they typically are polar opposites to the ones you are referring to... which goes to show extreme right and extreme left are like the head and tails of ouroboroses.
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      Heck, it might even be both. Ecofascist acolytes of Ted K, they exist too. We won't really know until they're caught.
      - barbazoo 4y ago
        What nonsense. One is a much more serious threat than the other.
        LarryMullins 4y ago
        I didn't equivocate anything..
  - secondcoming 4y ago
    TIL the Russian Army is inspired by 4chan
  - ilyt 4y ago
kyrra 4y ago
They were found because they carried their cellphones to each substations and the robbery. They were then confirmed because they used their own car and it was matched to video surveillance. They were pretty bad at what they were doing.
- themitigating 4y ago
  But better than a person throwing a rock at a power line. If their goal was to cut power for the area that substation serves then they were successful. Getting caught later means they aren't perfect
- neuronexmachina 4y ago
  Yep. I think it's safe to assume that the half-dozen earlier attacks in the area were by a different group, since the group behind the earlier attacks was presumably smart enough not to carry their cellphones with them.
warner25 4y ago
Especially with the Washington attack happening so soon after the one in North Carolina, the most notable thing to me was that both attacks occurred close to a couple of our most important Army bases, in counties where many troops live with their families off-base. Fort Bragg and Fort Lewis (JBLM) are both home to a corps headquarters, special operations units, and other rapid-response forces. This was rarely mentioned in the news coverage that I saw. But as a career military officer, some of the most thought-provoking "red team" stuff that I've read involved attacking us in our communities at home where we are soft targets, mostly reliant on civilian law enforcement for protection.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  While I don’t disagree I don’t see the point of taking out the power to the community around an army base. If they took out the power on the base to disrupt operations then maybe but from my time at Ft Bragg all that would’ve caused is an inconvenience even if we were in the middle of an alert. …now that I think about it I’m surprised they never cut the power on us when they did one of the alert readiness tests.
  - warner25 4y ago
    When power to the community is cut, it's massively disruptive to operations because our normal response to give troops time off (or employ them in a humanitarian response) to take care of families. Day-to-day garrison operations and small-scale training events are seen as less important than taking care of families.
atchoo 4y ago
> I'd definitely teach my inexperienced acolytes to add a little petty theft to their sabotage to avoid a terrorism enhancement The far right literature e.g. The Turner Diaries, describes terror cells funding themselves through theft so theft/sabotage should be expected together with such groups. "The Order" - a real life group modelled on The Turner Diaries robbed banks and armoured cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_(white_supremacist_g...
mikrotikker 4y ago
How about OSS Sabotage Manual that was declassified. Then you think about all the infrastructure attacks and it looks similar to how the manual describes to do sabotage. KGB sleeper cells still doing their thing? Or American communists dreaming they are fighting facism when in fact they are inviting it in.
- canucklady 4y ago
  There are communists who believe in accelerationism as much as there are white supremacists who believe in it. Basically "destabilize the current status quo to provoke an outright war, and then we win that war and take over".
  - mikrotikker 4y ago
    Yea its scary because communists normally pave the way for the fascists. No matter who wins we all lose.
yucky 4y ago
If US government and it's institutions are rooted in white supremacy as so many claim, then why would white supremacists be anti-government? Seems like they'd be on the same team, no?
- mrtesthah 4y ago
  Most white supremacists are not in intrinsically anti-government. They are more than happy to support it by becoming police officers, soldiers, and prison guards. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-i...
  - yucky 4y ago
    Ah so it's like Schrödingers white supremacists?
    - mrtesthah 4y ago
      Not really, I don't see the confusion here. Maybe you could explain what it is you're having trouble understanding?
      - yucky 4y ago
        I thought I already did. If white supremacists are so anti-government then it doesn't make sense to pretend the government is run by white supremacists. It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white.
        mrtesthah 4y ago
        Who is pretending that "the government is run by white supremacists"? If you're referring to my statement, I only said that many law enforcement agencies contain white supremacists, which includes anyone with a white supremacist viewpoint. They don't even need to identify as one openly or even in action. How many white supremacists are and are not anti-government is immaterial to the point. The way you're using the definition "white supremacist" implicitly assumes that "white supremacy" as an ideology is inherently anti-government. We know that's never been the case, because all white supremacist states around the world have had strictly authoritarian governments. There's no way to enforce the supremacy of one group of people over another without coercive force. Either violence or authoritarian government are required for a white supremacist state. As for whether US itself is a white supremacist state, on one hand you could say that it has allocated a massive amount of resources in systematically rounding up black men (1 in 3 will be arrested in their lifetimes) without addressing the factors used to justify that, and many states systematically disenfranchise their vote. And historically it was economically reliant on chattel slavery. Many southern states are effectively authoritarian governments at the state level due to district gerrymandering and black disenfranchisement, now no longer stoppable by the Voting Rights Act after a conservative supreme court decision a few years ago. OTOH, federally, is democratically accountable to the people, making it a coalition of whites and non-whites. So you could still see white supremacist reactionaries taking anti-government standpoints for as long as this governing coalition includes non-white people. >It turns out that the people who make those sorts of claims are really just anti-white. Do you think it is somehow "anti-white" to point out ways in which white supremacy harms and oppresses non-white people when it is used at the level of state and federal governments?

BLanen 4y ago

He's literally saying what you want him to say and still you're triggered because it doesn't mention "BOTH SIDES" or "NO SIDES" enough? What even is the point of your post?

LarryMullins 4y ago
I don't think mc32 was 'triggered' by Grady's article, but rather by other online commentary that does speculate about who it might have been.

walrus01 4y ago

For what it's worth, the guns found with the suspects from the WA state attacks look like the typical trash/stolen firearms you'd see in a meth lab, and the suspects have lengthy criminal records for burglary, theft, petty drug offenses etc.

Helithumper 4y ago

In your second link, the article specifically states "McRae probably wasn’t acting as an ecosaboteur." I don't know how you read that and came to the conclusion that "attacks by so called environmentalists" when the article comes to the opposite conclusion.

FatActor 4y ago

> But, you know, people like narratives which match their ideology a whole lot. We can see that.

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago

Reminds me of this guy https://archive.ph/hrZar https://archive.ph/hrZar "In 1995, Damron was an electrical engineering student at North Dakota State University when he cut through 19 underground phone cables to disable an alarm at Site on Sound in Fargo. He then stole $80,000 in equipment from the car-stereo business. FBI agents captured him in 1996 in an Iowa hotel room after a two-year manhunt" https://apnews.com/article/587580cb8aa145afbf59e535b5214234 https://apnews.com/article/587580cb8aa145afbf59e535b5214234 Over 24,000 people without phone service so he could rob a stereo store

neuronexmachina 4y ago

Prior to Greenwood & Crahan's attack on the substation in WA on Dec 25, in the weeks prior there were also >=6 other substation attacks in WA and OR. As far as I can tell, nobody's been caught in any of the earlier attacks, and they don't seem to have been tied to any burglaries: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-grid-attacks-in-pacific-northwest-are-unsolved/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/08/string-of-electrical-... For reference, Greenwood & Crahan's indictment: https://www.justice.gov/media/1266956/dl?inline https://www.justice.gov/media/1266956/dl?inline

shagmin 4y ago

I live not too far from the area. There was a lot of pressure to call it terrorism early on because this just happened to coincide with a drag show happening in the effected area that Proud Boy members and locals tried to prevent from happening via threats, and a month prior they were harassing people at another drag show in another nearby city. So whether these same people attacked the substations to prevent the drag show from happening is just speculation, they were absolutely terrorizing some people in some way and so far it's the only lead I know of.

boeingUH60 4y ago

I really don’t understand this thread…many times on HN, you’ll hear things like Occam’s Razor (follow the simplest explanation), cite official sources, etc. Here, we have an official report from the prosecutor stating that people attacked substations in furtherance of theft but a lot of people are trying to pin it as part of a larger conspiracy against the government. Like we should tell conspiracy theorists, the burden is on you to cite the evidence confirming your alleged conspiracy. In absence of that evidence, is it not better to go with the word of the DA, whose job is literally to investigate and gather facts about cases like this?

akiselev 4y ago
Conspiracy to commit theft vs conspiracy to overthrow the government? Which one requires fewer assumptions? What are the assumptions anyway? That crazy people can buy guns in America?

akira2501 4y ago

There were also three men who attacked a power station and were actually were committing an act of terrorism.[1] Those three got the idea from the government itself.[2] Which, given the nature of our supply chains, are understandably aware of the vulnerability. Some people see all narratives as an opportunity to whip up fear, when given the facts, they could more charitably be seen as an opportunity to whip up awareness. Regardless of your ideology, it might be prudent. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspiring-provide-material-support-plot-attack-power-grids-united https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-men-plead-guilty-conspi... [2]: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudyUpdate-040914.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/04/f15/LPTStudy...

whydid 4y ago

Attacking critical infrastructure in order to perform a robbery is the plot of several of the Die Hard movies. In those films, the group of antagonists performing the attack are generally called "terrorists"

mrtesthah 4y ago

FBI warns of neo-Nazi plots as attacks on Northwest power grid spike https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/19/surge-in-oregon-washington-substation-attacks-as-fbi-warns-neo-nazi-plots/ https://www.opb.org/article/2023/01/19/surge-in-oregon-washi... (Shrug) Then maybe you should ask the FBI why they'd issue that warning.