FBI Joins Investigation Into North Carolina Power Outage Caused By 'Intentional' Attacks on Substations - Slashdot

2022-12-07 15:36:14 By : Mr. yi li

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"The sheriff would not say whether the criminal activity was domestic terrorism but noted "no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they're the ones who [did] it."

"The sheriff would not say whether the criminal activity was domestic terrorism but noted "no group has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they're the ones who [did] it."

Not sure how long it's been since this sheriff fell off the back of the turnip truck, but I kinda doubt some international terrorist organization is going to claim an attack on Moore county in North Carolina.

That'd be some weird-ass ISIS bragging rights.

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.

I'd more say it's a problem of motive. The hell does even "friends" have to gain from something like this? Kickbacks split 10 ways from a service station repair?

Sadly, this smells more like a proof of concept attack. If anyone had doubts that you could take out almost half a million customers with very small targeted attacks using common tools, that doubt is gone now.

It was thought to be a proof of concept there too I thought.

Here we go, it was an attack in CA on power substation in 2014 [npr.org].

I thought this sounded familiar.

They took out a number of transformers with rifle fire.

Yeah. I referred to it in October in that story [slashdot.org] about the French internet sabotage. There has been a lot of that sort of thing going around.

The motive was stopping a drag queen show from happening. https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.

Everyone knows each other in these southern towns. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the sheriff knew the suspects. Hell they probably go out for beers after work.

Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.

Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.

It's also worth mentioning that this drag event they were protesting was for adults. When it comes to the anti-LGBTQ+ folks, "think of the children" is just a shiny veneer they put on their agenda to make it palatable to the masses (and also to be able to conveniently accuse their opposition of being "groomers"), but their ultimate goal is to restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ adults.

So bringing your kids to a pageant is the purview of the theocratic state but church is the purview of parents?

Why would it not be the discretion of the parents to take their kids to a drag show?

Because you disagree? I'm pretty sure that gets filed under "too fucking bad" due to the same reasoning that some atheist twat wouldn't like parents taking their kids to church.

If we're all about parents getting to raise their children in the manner which they see as being the "right way" why is someone else's way "wrong" if it doesn't affect you or your children at all?

Imagine living in a world where going to see someone dressed as another gender is "programming them" for abuse.... But all the cases of abuse and molestation from a variety of churches just isn't a problem.

Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If you REALLY want to know what church teaches people, go to a restaurant right after services end on Sunday! 1) That not working on the Sabbath thing doesn't apply to others huh? 2) Church members are usually the loudest, most dema

And these aren't people just trying to dress up and entertain children like Mickey or Minnie...they're trying to show that boys can be girls and normalize sexual roles and lifestyles outside of the norm.

... made me doubt the veracity of this...

any of the number of children's drag events I've seen video's of

... so I went and did a search, and I picked some videos with descriptions saying how awful and pornographic these shows were. I chose the videos obviously posted (and probably cher

"A certain faction"? More than one faction, I think. I have my own strong opinions about which factions are worse, and yes there ARE better and worse factions... but there sure as hell isn't just one or even just two.

But none of this is about the rights of parents of whatever stripe. It's about the rights of the children, who are their own human beings and deserve to fully grow into their independence. And who are capable of sorting through a whole hell of a lot more than adults give them credit for, especially if you help them out a bit.

Your kid seeing a drag show isn't going to turn them gay. Somebody blathering the "good news" at your kid isn't going to turn them into a Jesus freak. NOTHING is going to influence your kid like that unless they get a LOT of it CONSTANTLY, AND been sheltered to the point where they never hear it challenged. The vulnerable kids are the ones who've never been asked to choose between real alternatives, never heard one adult contradict something another adult has told them, never been exposed to anything but indoctrination, never been given any critical thinking tools, never been taught to recognize when somebody's trying to persuade them, never really been allowed to question anything important, and have no resistance.

And even then they often get over it. You can brainwash a kid if you try hard enough, but it's a full time job and it's not results are not guaranteed.

The thing people really worry about is not kids getting other people's weird shit "shoved down their throats". It's that being exposed to the idea that there is weird shit out there might get their kids thinking about whether their OWN indoctrination falls into that category.

Everything at this point is a wild ass guess. No one has stated they did it or why, nor has anyone come up with any evidence.

It *could* be some 'anti-woke' rednecking.

It *could* be some organization testing reaction and recovery from a substation attack.

It *could* be some concerned person that can't get anyone to plan for an attack and manufactured one on small scale to prove a point.

It literally could be anything at all, any random guess is at this juncture equally valid or equally wild guessing.

It's also equally probable that some high school kids got drunk and decided to use the substation as target practice because they heard that equipment has flammable shit inside and could really blow up in an impressive way if shot with a rifle. And then when they got the shower of sparks and electrical arcing they wanted, they decided to do it again for the lulz.

Nobody ever went broke betting on redneck rube kids doing stupid shit.

I can't believe articles like this are actually being printed in mainstream media. Facts are thrown out the window and wild speculation is being printed in their place.

Did the washington post interview someone familiar with the unknown and alleged attacker's thinking, too?

It is a big jump to go from, "power outage across several towns because a transformer was shot" to conspiracy theories like "Right wing terrorists did this to shut down a drag queen show". That is just hysterical sensationalism with a political bend.

Drag Queen shows happen all the time all over the place, this isn't the only one that's occurred and isn't the only one that's had pushback. Speculating on the motives might have had merit had this been a more targeted attack - but this affected tens of thousands of people, not just Drag Queen Story Hour, and at present we don't even know if this was *intentional* let alone targeted at said show. There's no suspect, there's no motive.

It is ridiculous to see things like this being printed in the media - you want to talk about this nation getting more divided, you only need to look at stories like this pushing politically motivated speculation as fact - as if all the facts are already known. Even worse is that this unfounded speculation is being taken at face value by people who should damn well know better.

If in 3 months someone is apprehended and we find out they had entirely different motives, or they claim it was accidental - what then? These articles are all printed already, I'm sure the retraction will get 3 seconds of air time, if that, and the vast majority of people will just go along with the domestic right wing terrorist cells story. This is not how you accurately report news. This is how you push propaganda and get advertising clicks - something I might expect from a podunk no name yellow rags, but *Washington Post*?

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends. I'd more say it's a problem of motive. ...

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.

The sheriff knows exactly who caused it. The problem is they're all friends.

I'd more say it's a problem of motive. ...

It's NC, so I'm throwing "drunk hillbillies" into the hat. Probably heard the equipment humming and thought it was "aliens" ... :-)

(If it had been FL, I would have just guessed, "It was Saturday.")

I'd more say it's a problem of motive. ...

I'd more say it's a problem of motive. ...

Obviously, the substations were, as Uncle Jimbo on South Park would say, "Comin' right for us" [youtube.com] and they fired in self-defense.

Don't you think a pair of bolt cutters and some very thick insulating gloves on the pole outside the facility would be easier and less dramatic?

One building loses power due to vandalism, and someone just calls the power company. An entire county loses power due to vandalism and someone calls the FBI.

"Dude, did you see the way that thing exploded with showers of sparks and shit! That was awesome! Let's do it again over at the other one of these things by the river! Oh, and let's stop for more beers on the way!"

They can have terrorists locally born and bred. If it was the anti-drag-people doing it (which I'm not saying it was, because I don't know), then that is an INTENTIONAL ACT OF TERRORISM, right there. And those people do have an organization. Which would make it a terrorist organization.

I know you have trouble imagining any terrorists who don't fit your stereotypes, but terrorists are gloriously diverse.

It's a couple of drunk hicks. The end.

... I kinda doubt some international terrorist organization is going to claim an attack on Moore county in North Carolina. That'd be some weird-ass ISIS bragging rights.

... I kinda doubt some international terrorist organization is going to claim an attack on Moore county in North Carolina.

That'd be some weird-ass ISIS bragging rights.

I went to a highschool with a water tower. A few times a year somebody would shoot a hole in the water tower and we'd all be off school for a couple days while they drained the tank and welded up the hole. My last year there the school installed a buried tank to stop it, but one of the pipes was above ground and kids would just shoot that instead.

So I'd guess somebody wanted a day off school or work. Probably not ISIS.

We're getting into the world of Hollywood script writing here, but I suppose it's plausible that fucking up two substations that feed power to some facility that they actually want to rob shit from might be a thing - knock out all possible power feeds and then fuck up the on-site generator which is probably easier to access than whatever it is that is being protected.

I have no reason to think this is what actually happened. But I could see some hillbilly dumbasses coming up with it, in aid of some other he

Now that morons have discovered they can cause a city wide blackout over a drag queen show, wait until the 2024 election when blackouts hit areas that vote heavily democrat. The Fuck your feelings crowd sure feels threatened by some people who dress differently.

poling places must stay open and curfews can not be used to keep people form voteing.

Now that voting is done electronically how does that work without electricity?

Yeah polling places are overflowing with generators.

And even if they didn't you can guarantee there would be a fallback mechanism, or at least some mechanism to get votes counted.

Reminds me of when Maersk shared a virus with global logistics companies by accident. The fallout was incredible to watch. Companies like DHL were like: "Oh well I guess we won't be getting any new mail in or delivering it". "Wait what, why are we still getting new parcels?" "What do you mean the port of Rotterdam just picked up pen and paper and are still processing incoming ships!!!!

Now that voting is done electronically how does that work without electricity?

Now that voting is done electronically how does that work without electricity?

Not sure how it works anywhere else, but here in Florida we use paper ballots that could presumably be scanned later, after the power returns. Of course, you still have to trust that no black magic fuckery is going on once things do enter the digital realm, but there's still an actual paper trail at least.

Now that voting is done electronically . . .

I have always and still vote using paper ballots. Only the scanning and counting is now electronic. So if electricity is lost, voting will still go on, but the counting will be slow.

Or they can use the same procedures they use for transferring the paper ballots to the county's election processing center exactly the same way they already do, and count the votes there. Presumably at such a central facility they would have backup generation in case some shit does go sideways in November in the northern hemisphere - not exactly out of question - and the county elections management and Secretary of State don't want to look like fucking clowns on the national news for not being prepared for

The backup paper ballots that they have, by law, available by request.

Then, the ballots are driven somewhere else that has power and fed through counting machines there, with careful chain-of-custody rules being followed during the transfer. You know, exactly how it's done today.

You think there was never a power outage at a voting precinct since the introduction of electronic voting equipment? You think nobody ever thought about this until right now?

The Fuck your feelings crowd sure feels threatened by some people who dress differently.

The Fuck your feelings crowd sure feels threatened by some people who dress differently.

Because it's gonna give your kids teh gay!. *eye roll*

A drag show has about as much chance of making your kid gay as a gun show does of making your kid get shot. Oh wait, they sell guns at gun shows, don't they? Oops, bad analogy then.

I'm pretty sure the parents who are overly concerned about their kids turning out gay aren't bringing them to drag shows in the first place (and a lot of shows are 18+ to be admitted anyway), so the supposed fear is that knowing a drag show is transpiring in your town might somehow infect your kids or some such nonsense.

Whereas some crazy nut actually could buy a gun at a gun show and then... yeah.

Go ahead. Democrats vote early and take advantage of vote-by-mail.

The rubes that try it would just be fucking over the Republicans that wait until election day because vote-by-mail is OMG ELECTION FRAUD!!!1!!one11!

Except for when they win, then they're super double-plus good with vote-by-mail.

The suspicion was that the act of domestic terrorism (I'm calling it what it is) is related to protests over a drag show. [googleusercontent.com]

Knocking own your own power to "own the libs" is certainly a new one. Not a lot of bright bulbs in that part of NC, for more than one reason.

There seems not to be any evidence pointing to that.

Although the people making the Facebook posts - and the media talking about those posts - were successful in immediately associating the attack with drag queens.

There seems not to be any evidence pointing to that.

There seems not to be any evidence pointing to that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]

Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.

Total coincidence that it happens just before the show and it's a coordinated attack.

I doubt the drag show was the only thing happening in South Carolina on a Saturday night. People at the show seeing the power go out and concluding it must be an attack on the show, is not evidence.

Besides, these kind of substation attacks have been trialled over the past few years in the US. Different states. Whatever is animating these groups, it's not this particular event. They probably aren't even local to North Carolina. It's just as likely to be a foreign operation as it is antifa or the redhats.

Power was knocked out before the show and they had to cancel it. Not during the show.

People get upset about drag shows, gays, and pretty much anything LGBTQ all the time in this country. I'm not sure why in this case that all of a sudden means "we know they attacked the power stations". I mean if these people who did this were the locals that were upset about the drag show why on earth would they shut off their own power for multiple days? Especially during Winter.

It still could have been them I guess, I just havent heard about us having anything on them beyond sheer circumstance and conjec

I think the FSB theory is even less credible than the "random drunks" theory. If you're Putin, you don't really want to make your statement in Moore County, North Carolina, and you're sure not going to destabilize the US by shutting down Moore County. And Putin loves sending messages. If he'd ordered it, it would have been intentionally obvious, and then he would immediately have issued an equally obvious bullshit denial.

As for the MAGA/Jesus types hitting the grid, I'm not saying they did, because there ar

in an mass power outage we may Kyle Rittenhouse to defend property. and the owners of Car Source lied like the used car sales men there are in court.

It was only a matter of time before this happened. No, none of this infrastructure is "hardened," WTF are people smoking? Everything would need buried underground with substations in bunkers.

This is definitely a warmup session. Though it would be nice (?) if these incels moved on to substations instead of schools, I don't predict a rosy future in this regard as the number of disaffected males continue to accumulate in this country.

I think this activity will increase, especially given the impact that this ep

And I can't understand how science fiction and Russia are getting this right, and before most others. And my guess is China has noticed, and they're all getting it right before western democracies are forced to take measures due to climate change (because the current external threat does not seem to be enough to induce change, but climate eventually will through public opinion towards renewables and micro-generation).

Russia may very well win the war out of a lack of backup infrastructure that can withstand targetted electrical grid attacks. I am, unfortunately, somewhat confident about this. While you can move people and smaller infrastructure, you can only keep a fight going if your country doesn't become unlivable and undefendable out of lack of basic conditions. Electricity now drives most basic living conditions such as, but not limited to, heating, health, food, communication but also the economy. Take electricity away, eventually Russia will be able to swat out the Ukrainians willing to fight. And if not swat them out, they will bend their will through public opinion that the war cannot be fought. If you can't feed your children, you will eventually have to accept rule of this aggressor state.

There's this new Amazon show called The Peripheral, and they casually dropped a new armaggedon scenario that not only, but centrally, involves a US blackout triggering it. It did sound silly at first glance, but it clicked just minutes after they may be getting it right, as soon as I connected the dots on current Russian offensive actions - killing the electrical grid infrastructure. It is so simple, so effective, and cheap, now imagine it becomes even cheaper through the use of our own common internet which every grid pretty much relies upon these days. Europe isn't prepared for this for sure, and I fear we western Europeans may have to find this the hard way, and without much time to prepare for it now.

Even with micro-generation, we still need a centralized grid to power things like hospitals, factories, electric public transportation, streetlights, and roadside EV charging stations. (And even homes, since it's not practical to have sufficient battery backup to survive a few weeks' worth of dark, snowy weather.)

Micro-generation isn't the full answer -- the answer is dealing with terrorism of that type. That requires more than putting whoever did this in prison. It requires shutting down the media outle

Micro-generation isn't the full answer -- the answer is dealing with terrorism of that type.

Micro-generation isn't the full answer -- the answer is dealing with terrorism of that type.

The answer is to build robust systems with appropriate security so that it's not trivial to make these attacks remotely, for starters. That's cheaper than any other option. By all means, do some other things, but start doing that immediately.

I wasn't trying to imply it was a revolutionary new idea. What is so surprising is how it is still so overlooked. And unfortunately I have a theory - people say that Europe has stagnated "militarilly" due to long peace and protection from the US and the few nuke triad states we have locally. But more impressively is how we have stagnated energetically. We have leaned on cheap and pipe-accessible oil and gas from all around us, under the impression Russia wouldn't ever care, but also that the mediterranean a

I'm surprised that I haven't been hearing suggestions that this was an disgruntled employee. I'm under the impression that there is evidence that this was someone who understood exactly what to hit and where. The anti-drag show story seems to be a stretch. If this were some sort of terrorism, then they would have probably gone farther north and hit during an extreme cold spell or blizzard. A foreign attack would be more likely to try to shut things down through hacking into the systems online.

I see one report saying that this was only two substations. I suspect the timing allowed for the perpetrator to drive from one to the other between the attacks, which would allow for this to have been done by one person.

About time the high priest took a day off...oh, wait --it's just "priest"

Don't ban deer rifles. I'd bet this was tannerite set off by a high powered deer rifle. https://www.dailymotion.com/vi... [dailymotion.com] Have to be far enough away not to get hit by scrapnel, but close enough to detonate it (2000 fps).

There was a very similar attack on a power station [yahoo.com] in California back in 2013. It failed to bring down the power station though.

One wonders if the North Carolina attack is related, or just the modus operandi is the only similarity.

"We don't have a clue why Moore County."

Practice. You'd better prepare for something bigger to happen soon.

Since M16's are already heavily-regulated Class 3 firearms that cost about $30k and take 1-2 years to process a tax stamp for it shouldn't be hard to track him down very quickly! Right?

Or are you another opponent of the 2nd Amendment who knows absolutely nothing about the thing you want to ban?

You got âim! Pointing out M-16 is a military weapon not likely to be in the hands of a civilian, and that they were more likely to use a .30 or higher caliber rifle, since ARs arenâ(TM)t usually powerful enough to penetrate the equipment theyâ(TM)re looking for without a whole lot of shots.

So that point, obviously shows how the gun debate is over because the poster here couldnâ(TM)t be bothered to know about rifles beyond the danger associated.

So instead of dealing with the substance of his "argument" (drunk rural firearms enthusiasts shooting at random shit with complete disregard for safety or property rights), you instead decided to split hairs about the firearm type and completely ignore the very plausible scenario of drunk rubes shooting at shit they should not be shooting at.

That's a very convincing argumentative strategy you are employing! /sarcasm

If it saves a single child's life, then the entirety of the 2A should be removed.

If it saves a single child's life, then the entirety of the 2A should be removed.

Let's apply that to the first amendment too.

Ever wonder what's worse now...a drunk Trump fan, or a sober Biden fan?

Ever wonder what's worse now...a drunk Trump fan, or a sober Biden fan?

some one takeing an gate off it's posts seems more then some kids just takeing pot shots.

It was done in response to stopping a drag queen show. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]

The sheriff said the motive in the case was still unknown. Asked if there was any connection to a 7 p.m. LGBTQ+ drag show in the city of Southern Pines on Saturday, Fields said, "It is possible, yes."

I see someone has purchased their jump-to-conclusions mat.

Hopefully, the transformers have safety devices that cause them to shut down gracefully in case of low coolant or high temp?

Gracefully? It'll shut down if it's temperature is too high, but that's not graceful.

I never would have thought taking pot shots at a substation would disable the whole grid.

You're so close to seeing the problem with the "just shootin' stuff" theory.

I never would have thought taking pot shots at a substation would disable the whole grid

From the summary: With no suspects or motive announced, the FBI is joining the investigation into power outages in a North Carolina county believed to have been caused by "intentional" and "targeted" attacks on substations that left around 40,000 customers in the dark Saturday night

Why the fuck half the people here are speculating this is some drunk rednecks thing is leaving me completely baffle

more reason nobody needs assault gun

more reason nobody needs assault gun

Just about any rifle would accomplish the same task, no matter its action or magazine capacity.

Funny, we had no school shootings and a much safer country in the 1950's and early 60's when there were no gun bans.

NYC has reasonable gun laws (own a gun and go to Riker's for a year before you even see a judge),

NYC has reasonable gun laws (own a gun and go to Riker's for a year before you even see a judge),

Hey, three constitutional rights for the price of one--a trifecta of abuse, all in one comment. Not only is a blanket ban on ownership "reasonable" in your view, but fuck due process and speedy trial while we're at it.

In that simple sentence, you have answered the question of why so many of us are utterly unwilling to (further) compromise with people like you. You don't want "common sense" or "reasonable restrictions" you want tyranny.

So wait a little bit and we'll find out

So wait a little bit and we'll find out

Now, now, enough with the crazy talk!

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