david robertsDec 6, 2022
The scariest part of this whole episode is that it's going to reveal how vulnerable our electrical infrastructure is to attack & how comparatively easy it is to cause enormous disruption & economic loss. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/us/north-carolina-power-outage-moore-county.html?smid=tw-share
North Carolina Outages: When Power Could Be Restored and Latest on Investigation

Two electric substations were damaged by gunfire on Saturday, leaving tens of thousands of customers in the dark for days. The cost of the damage is probably in the millions, one official said.

Show threaddavid robertsDec 6, 2022
Also? I would suggest that if climate protesters attacked electrical infrastructure & left 10s of 1000s without power -- rather than a wingnut militia mad about drag queens -- this case would be getting much more attention & law enforcement resources.
https://twitter.com/malatesting/status/1600249911756263424
🦣matt🏴 on Twitter

“@chrislhayes well, i mean, the night of the attack we had J6 participant emily rainey (pictured below) posting that she knew why. sheriff ronnie fields (pictured below) looked into it and said there was nothing to see there.”

Twitter
Show threaddavid robertsDec 6, 2022
In fact, I would suggest that if this had turned out to be a climate protest, it would dominate the news for weeks. We would hear of nothing else. Dem leaders would be called on to denounce it. Whole new punitive laws would be passed. Center lefties would convulse in horror.
Show threaddavid roberts
But instead, it was done by reactionaries angry about drag queens. Local law enforcement & the national GOP implicitly (& sometimes explicitly) support the ideology & tactics of these reactionaries, so the whole thing is NBD.
Dec 6, 2022 at 10:44pmWeb
Show threaddavid robertsDec 9, 2022
Like I said, it's going to get real sketchy once people realize how easy it is to do big damage to electricity infrastructure. https://twitter.com/WFLA/status/1600864717182058498
WFLA NEWS on Twitter

“SUBSTATIONS TARGETED: Report shows ‘intrusions’ at Duke Energy power stations in Tampa Bay, elsewhere in Florida https://t.co/nlHzq6Z5yc”

Twitter
Show threadEn Buen Ora 🆗Dec 9, 2022
@drvolts one of the things that people had to try & explain after 9/11 was why there was so *little* terrorism, given that in pretty much any society the amount of easy & open targets are endless
Show threadRobert MDec 9, 2022
@drvolts Critical infrastructure should never be put on a public network (the Internet). They should be on private networks (physically separate - not VPNs).
Show threadGarrett WollmanDec 10, 2022
@rob11563 That does not do anything to keep some yahoo from shooting out the insulators in a substation. (Radio has the same issue, and some stations actually surrounded their antenna bases with walls or baffles to attenuate projectiles -- but there are far more electrical substations and transmission lines than radio transmitters.)
Show threadRobert MDec 10, 2022
@wollman True. I should have read the article. I did glance at the tweet and just assumed the "intrusions" were into their computer systems.
Show threadTim PalmerDec 9, 2022
@drvolts
On the general topic of damaged power grids, but not US, holy shit can you imagine being a line electrician in Kherson? Are the Ukrainians inventing new ways to repair destroyed electrical infrastructure?
Show threadvyDec 10, 2022
@drvolts https://rmi.org/insight/brittle-power/
Brittle Power

Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security, prepared for the Pentagon in 1981, was the first and remains the definitive unclassified treatise on the vulnerability of energy critical infrastructure. It also synthesizes from engineering and biology how to redesign energy systems to be resilient, so that major failures, now inevitable, become impossible.

RMI
Show threadGreengordonDec 10, 2022

@drvolts

I’m reading How to Blow Up a Pipeline now. The author wonders why the heck climate activists have been so hands-off when it some to such activities, He points out that activists from other eras did so, and it helped the broader movement (e.g. Suffragism) appear more reasonable - so governments would implement their demands to prevent further sabotage.

I’ll post a review when done and am very curious to hear what folks like you and @MichaelEMann think about it. Dr Mann is dead-set against that type of activism, citing studies that it harms the overall goals.

Show threadPeter PrincipleDec 6, 2022
@drvolts The late Weimar stench is getting pretty strong...
Show threadWord of Mouth Dec 6, 2022
@drvolts
Yeah... But they prayed about it so it's fine.
Show threadJustin FitzsimmonsDec 6, 2022
@drvolts Who has claimed responsibility for the attack?
Show threadJ Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈Dec 6, 2022
@drvolts do we know that though? all I have seen so far is that cryptic fb post.
Show thread✨Cosmic Social Worker✨Dec 7, 2022
@drvolts Rachel Maddow did a segment last night on an almost identical attack in CA on April 15, 2013 - the same day as the Boston Marathon bombing. It wasn’t related to the bombing, and they never found out who did it