
Metcalf Sniper Attack - rococode
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
======
digi59404
I was on duty as security for a.. semi secret substation designated as
critical infrastructure that night. In the Bay Area, we just had to divert
power a little bit. It basically didn’t affect the grid at all.

Everyone was all a little more worried as to if this was isolated, if we were
next, etc etc.

Transformers that are small are often on hand and easy to swap out. But some
of the bigger ones have months long lead times. The facility we were at had
transformers that had a 6 month lead time from Germany to replace them and
they had to be sent via boat as they wouldn’t fit in planes.

The average person isn’t going to know that about transformers. Which leads
more credence to the fact it’s an inside job.

~~~
Torkel
To me this whole thread reads like an ad for solar + local storage. There
should be tremendous resilience advantages compared to grid power. I’m
surprised security/defence authorities aren’t pushing for that?

~~~
Galanwe
I don't understand your point.

If it's the "instant delivery" you propose to replace by local storage, what
is the link with solar? You could as well store energy received from the grid.

Solar is particularly inefficient, both because of the volume it requires per
unit of energy produced, and because storing energy incurs a huge loss (also,
since this post discusses security risks, I guess storing large amounts of
energy at home is definitely not the safest of options)

~~~
hutzlibu
"Solar is particularly inefficient, both because of the volume it requires per
unit of energy produced, and because storing energy incurs a huge loss "

When your goal is to be at least temporarily energy autark (in case of a power
loss for some days) it does not really matter, how much energy was needed to
produce the panels. What matters is, that you have that powersource in that
moment.

And it surely works very efficient, especially in california.

Even in rainy middle europe, I am able to go to a remote place with my tent,
laptop, power bank and small solar panels - and can enjoy distraction free
working time - without access to the grid.

~~~
luckylion
> What matters is, that you have that powersource in that moment.

And if that moment is during the night, you don't have it. If power outage is
a part of your threat model, you want something that you can reliably switch
to in a very short time and that will reliably provide the power you need for
as long as you need to get the primary power supply back up.

~~~
Xylakant
I could entirely scrape by without power at night for some time. Would it be
inconvenient? Absolutely. Threatening? No. The little infrastructure I’d
really need to run over night includes probably my fridge and my freezer and
those could be powered by a battery backup for that time. There’s ready made
modules for available for that (camping equipment level ready).

Stove, oven, kettle not being available would be seriously annoying, but not
threatening either. Intermittent power would be a massive improvement over no
power at all.

~~~
luckylion
Right, but you're not running a data center or factory.

Individually, unless you're in very harsh climates, the safety margin for
normal operations is huge. But that's not the case for complex systems. You
can't simply shut down a data center for a week without turning it from a data
center into some expensive building that currently provides zero value.

Society relies on reliability. By extension, so do you, because without
reliability in factories, there won't be solar modules, batteries and all the
fancy gadgets being produced. Individually, you can easily survive a few days
without power, or without food for that matter. But on a society level, that's
a very different story.

------
Beldin
I don't understand why this is called a terror attack. From the article it
seems managers got spooked, sure. But it doesn't read as if the general
population was.

Granted, it's possible the attack failed to achieve its goal and that's why
the population is not terrorised. But even then: an actual terrorist could've
easily kept track of news on damages caused and how close to great effect they
had come. That would surely incentive them to try again. But I'm not aware of
that happening.

So what is the terror angle here?

~~~
save_ferris
The terror angle is that someone tried to disrupt a major component of the
electrical grid. It’s hard to imagine a motive for such an attack that doesn’t
involve trying to cause major panic to a community. That’s definitely
qualifiable as terrorism.

Just because they didn’t attempt again (that we know of) doesn’t mean that
they weren’t terrorists to begin with. Also noted in the article,
investigators later believed it to be an inside job. This goes into wild
speculation, but if the attackers worked at DHS, they may have known how close
an investigation came to revealing them and opted not to try again. We’ll
probably never know why though.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Terrorism is any use of violence or intimidation for the purpose of furthering
a political goal. The political motive is a necessary element of terrorism.
While you could presume terrorism as being the most likely explanation, it’s
not the only one, as state sponsored acts tend not to be classified as
terrorism (depending on the perceived legitimacy of the state in question).

Of course is a politically loaded word, so people will redefine it to suit
whatever their political agenda is. But that’s it’s original definition at
least.

~~~
BoorishBears
This is such a unnecessary nitpick since yourself seem to understand by
calling it terrorism, people are explicitly declaring their belief that it was
to political ends.

It's like people calling a bush fire arson, then you giving the definition of
arson and saying "arson refers to the deliberate act of setting a fire"...

That's kind of the whole point of implicating it was arson, to further narrow
the cause/motivation of an incident.

Also the nitpick isn't internally consistent, if you want to be literal and
say terrorism _any_ use of violence for the purpose of furthering a political
goal, how is a _state sponsored attack_ not a terrorist attack? Are
geopolitics excluded from your definition then?

>State sponsered acts tend to not be classified as terrorism

Says who???

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_state-
sponsored_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_state-
sponsored_terrorism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-
sponsored_ter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-
sponsored_terrorism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-
sponso...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state-
sponsored_terrorism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-
sponsored_terro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-
sponsored_terrorism)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_and_state-
sponsored_te...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_and_state-
sponsored_terrorism)

[https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-
terrorism/](https://www.state.gov/state-sponsors-of-terrorism/)

~~~
AmericanChopper
It’s not an unnecessary nitpick at all. The way the word is used today, it
actually doesn’t have a meaning that you could write down. State sponsored
acts of violence against another state has traditionally been described as
war. The thing that blurs that particular line today is the blurriness between
between agents of the state and private agents resourced by the state (as well
as controversy around which states are legitimate states, and which
governments are legitimate governments).

The reality of the situation today is that ‘terrorism’ doesn’t actually
describe a definable act. Whether something is terrorism or not depends
entirely on the political perspective of the person describing it. Destroying
property, committing arson and tearing down statues as part of a political
protest would be quintessential terrorism according to the actual definition
of the word. But to describe it that way in our current political climate
would be remarkably controversial. Whenever somebody calls something
terrorism, all they’re doing is offering a political opinion. Which seems like
a particularly relevant point to acknowledge in a discussion about what
terrorism actually is.

~~~
BoorishBears
One person's freedom fighter is another person's rebel; One person's soldier
is another person's foreign invader... that's not a new concept? Didn't stop
us from calling things wars, groups rebels or soldiers, and a whole host of
other words for hostilities that all depend on your point of view.

-

If you put something like a firecracker in a random mailbox and watch it blow
up, it will scare people, but a limited number of people would consider that
terrorism

If you go and put firecrackers in random mailboxes all around a city for a
week, it will be called terrorism because there's an expectation there's some
political or ideological objective someone is trying to meet with that fear.

No one knows for sure why you're doing it, maybe it's not terrorism, but it
will be called terrorism because that's a logical conclusion. _At some point
in level of violence, or complexity, or damaged caused, people start to seek
meaning past fear for fear 's sake. This is why you see them use the word
terrorism _

If anything your hangup seems to be exactly that, people seeking meaning by
calling it terrorism without some concrete objective being known to them, but
it's common sense.

This was a sophisticated attack, a team of gunmen with scouted positions,
communications lines cut, only very specific components being hit. What non-
political motive can you come up with that out ranks some kind of geopolitical
motive, or anti-government tilt? Even reasoning like "to wake up the
government to the possibility" is political

~~~
AmericanChopper
This pretty much reads as a rephrasing of your previous comment.

~~~
BoorishBears
Well, I extended upon my point in a consistent manner instead of weeble
wobbling from one thing to the next while not really saying much, but that's
an intended differentiation.

If you read it as a rephrasing that's ok too. Sometimes it's not a bad idea to
rephrase a concept when someone has trouble understanding it.

------
petee
Multiple gunmen shot at the transformers for _19 minutes_...what about that
sounds professional to anyone?

That's not a quick attack, accurate shooting, nor the proper ammo to do real
damage. Terrorists can't get a .50? The only impressive part is cutting the
phone lines.

Anyone with basic knowledge of a substation could inflict more damage faster
than that.

If I were to take a random guess, at best it was a cartel prepping to rob
someone, and Telco operations aren't exactly new for them

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
Why is it called an act of domestic terrorism? Was it ideologically motivated?

~~~
tyingq
Good question since they didn't catch anyone. It looks pretty remote, so
perhaps not surprising the culprit wasn't seen.

~~~
ojbyrne
It's in a suburb of San Jose. I don't think it can be classified as "remote."

~~~
tyingq
Well, it doesn't look urban or suburban to me. But, hey, you're the expert.

[https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x808e2f6cead39bb3:0x...](https://www.google.com/local/place/fid/0x808e2f6cead39bb3:0x6340de8983062e5f/photosphere?iu=//geo1.ggpht.com/cbk?panoid%3DG1s611AqxP3l3vWKst0ldA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dlu.gallery.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D160%26h%3D106%26yaw%3D61.646606%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100&ik=CAISFkcxczYxMUFxeFAzbDN2V0tzdDBsZEE%3D)

~~~
mlyle
It's right along the freeway. A couple hundred thousand commuters from south
SJ suburbs pass it every day. It's in a little band of open space between
South San Jose and those suburbs.

[https://goo.gl/maps/2TfHJKYXBExg4SqH7](https://goo.gl/maps/2TfHJKYXBExg4SqH7)

~~~
mikeyouse
Yep - might look a little remote from the streetview, but it's the parcel just
North of Coyote Ranch in the bottom right of this map:

[https://i.imgur.com/8eU58wG.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/8eU58wG.jpg)

There are tens of thousands of people living within 5 miles of it.

------
areoform
The reason why the Intelligence Community freaked out is because this is
exactly the kind of small-scale test they'd do to test a possible attack
pattern. [https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/12/27/military-style-raid-
on-...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/12/27/military-style-raid-on-
california-power-station-spooks-u-s/)

The people spooked here _are_ spooks. And that should be telling for those of
us on the outside. It's an attack scenario no one had planned for.

I would highly recommend this article by Michael Lewis (and his book) that
explores related systemic risk,
[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-
energy...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/department-of-energy-risks-
michael-lewis)

> The safety of the electrical grid sat at or near the top of the list of
> concerns of everyone I spoke with inside the D.O.E. Life in America has
> become, increasingly, reliant on it. “Food and water has become food and
> water and electricity,” as one D.O.E. career staffer put it. Back in 2013
> there had been an incident in California that got everyone’s attention. Late
> one night, just southeast of San Jose, at Pacific Gas and Electric’s Metcalf
> substation, a well-informed sniper, using a .30-caliber rifle, had taken out
> 17 transformers. Someone had also cut the cables that enabled communication
> to and from the substation. _“They knew exactly what lines to cut,” said
> Tarak Shah, who studied the incident for the D.O.E. “They knew exactly where
> to shoot. They knew exactly which manhole covers were relevant—where the
> communication lines were. These were feeder stations to Apple and Google.”_
> There had been enough backup power in the area that no one noticed the
> outage, and the incident came and went quickly from the news. But, Shah
> said, “for us it was a wake-up call.” In 2016 the D.O.E. counted half a
> million cyber-intrusions into various parts of the U.S. electrical grid.
> “It’s one thing to put your head in the sand for climate change—it’s like
> mañana,” says Ali Zaidi, who served in the White House as Obama’s senior
> adviser on energy policy. _“This is here and now. We actually don’t have a
> transformer reserve. They’re like these million-dollar things. Seventeen
> transformers getting shot up in California is not like, Oh, we’ll just fix
> the problem. Our electric-grid assets are growingly vulnerable.”_

> In his briefings on the electrical grid MacWilliams made a specific point
> and a more general one. The specific point was that we don’t actually have a
> national grid. Our electricity is supplied by a patchwork of not terribly
> innovative or imaginatively managed regional utilities. The federal
> government offers the only hope of a coordinated, intelligent response to
> threats to the system: there is no private-sector mechanism. To that end the
> D.O.E. had begun to gather the executives of the utility companies, to
> educate them about the threats they face. “They all sort of said, ‘But is
> this really real?’ ” said MacWilliams. “You get them security clearance for
> a day and tell them about the attacks and all of a sudden you see their eyes
> go really wide.”

 _Edit_

 _Personal Interpretation:_ Someone hired highly trained mercenaries (?) to
operate on US soil to test destroying critical infrastructure that led
directly to Apple + Google. Large, stationary, expensive infrastructure that
is lacking in redundancy.

They knew exactly what targets to hit. It follows that they knew that there
was backup capacity in the system. This was a test run. And bullets are cheap.

What if instead of one team for one location, it had been three teams for
three locations? Or, four? Five? Six? Could they have successfully crippled
the nation? And plunged the stock market?

~~~
csilverman
I'm neither a national security expert nor a terrorist, but if I wanted to
pull off an attack like this, I'd be concerned that a test run—especially of
this sophistication, which would likely get a lot of attention in certain
quarters—would result in measures that'll make future attacks more difficult.

Nobody's going to make the grid impregnable overnight, and—depressingly—it may
well be that security is so pervasively bad that the attackers don't believe
any immediate attempts to fix the situation can stop them. I'd think, though,
that additional security at even a few more sensitive spots could change the
situation enough to make whatever was learned by the test run less useful. An
attack like this would only serve to tip one's hand and underscore the threat
(my personal suspicion of why this was done).

It seems a little like testing a valuable 0-day by defacing one government
website; okay, that worked, but now everybody's going to start thinking about
fixing that vulnerability.

~~~
areoform
The time span for a deployed "patch" IRL is between years and never. What
matters to these unnamed, unknown operators is practise and training. It is a
pattern repeated for most covert ops.

Semi-software example, Stuxnet (and I'm sure different deployment methods)
were tested in Israel pre-deployment -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxne...](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html)

For Neptune Spear, the Bin Laden raid, they created different layouts and
practiced every part of it, [https://special-ops.org/operation-neptune-spear-
killing-osam...](https://special-ops.org/operation-neptune-spear-killing-
osama-bin-laden/)

Adm. McRaven's interview is highly recommended to understand their psychology
[https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/05/02/bergen-
mcrave...](https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/05/02/bergen-mcraven-bin-
laden-training-helicopter-origwx-js.cnn)

The value gained by practicing on US soil to execute such a mission likely
outweighs tipping their hand.

~~~
yourapostasy
_> The value gained by practicing on US soil to execute such a mission likely
outweighs tipping their hand._

There is tremendous operational value in carrying out the logistics and
process of such a test. The lessons learned can be applied not just to the
electrical grid, but many other reserves-sensitive infrastructure.

Long rant ahead that comes as no surprise to Taleb and principal-agent problem
space cognoscenti which most HN readers are, so freely ignore.

The US lacks reserves of nearly every kind except in the crudest forms like
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As already noted elsewhere, the leadership-
think that in the US permeates both private and public sector leadership to
treat redundancy as deadweight losses still outweighs _any and all_ national
security considerations. This is absolutely rampant everywhere, and not a
national secret.

It is so severe that even companies like 3M who actually plan ahead and do
what they're supposed to do (set up emergency production lines, materiel,
procedures, and staffing that are mothballed until needed, urge customers to
keep a working reserve on hand suitable for continuity planning) get
unjustifiably crucified [1]. Because...tada!...leadership in hospitals ditch
working reserves who then turn around and blame 3M when the shit hits the fan
for their lack of continuity planning. Then these same leaders who utterly
failed their continuity planning lean in on government.
And...tada!...leadership in government let working reserves exhaust from SARS
who then turn around and blame 3M for their lack of continuity planning.

Of course this happens because the incentives are misaligned; leadership are
not an evil cat cabal, they're just min-maxing to incentives they've been
handed like everyone else. There is no tail risk governance of life- and
national-security-critical infrastructure to maintain continuity.

There is no clawback for intentionally ignoring pointed out tail risk, nor is
there an emphasis upon leadership in the same organization across a long
period of time to expose and correct misalignments. Tail risk decisions are
not tracked and evaluated in most organizations. Raising the organizational
risk profile way after the leader has left for another role, and disconnecting
the organization's ability to systemically learn from those expensive and
infrequent tail risk mistakes.

Even worse, the US business culture and political culture itself severely
punishes those who do prudently and competently assess tail risk. How the US
arranged reserves is about right for nearly a century ago, but that means a
successful attack on reserves-sensitive infrastructure will take us roughly
back to that tech tree until we resupply.

Precision coordinated infrastructure attacks through black-hat, memetic and
specops combined force of arms can be far more effective than many stealth
bomber runs, with the additional invaluable bonus of plausible deniability,
and possibly economically eclipsing the US if it causes enough damage. It's a
really effective asymmetric attack mode option.

The US has long had people who thought about all this already, and encoded
their thought experiments into various policy guides, with some updates from
lessons learned like during SARS (and now COVID-19). Our policy leadership are
choosing not to follow their advice because it involves unsavory spending
decisions with negative political ramifications. COVID-19 has not sufficiently
raised awareness about this, so it will likely take a Carrington-scale event
to have these guides dusted off to see the light of day of implementation.

Individually as a normal citizen, at least prepare for natural disasters as
guided by FEMA, financially prepare as much as you feel prudent (if you see
the rampant de-reserving in infrastructure going on, just what do you think is
happening in the less-regulated parts of finance?), and just hope three
standard deviations doesn't hit our asses in our lifetimes.

[1] [https://marker.medium.com/how-3m-gambled-its-reputation-
on-t...](https://marker.medium.com/how-3m-gambled-its-reputation-on-
the-n95-mask-e266a2fd8933)

~~~
cma
I thought the strategic PPE reserves were exhausted from H1N1, not SARS. The
Democratic House tried to replenish, but it was prevented by the Republican
Senate, so there wasn't uniform lack of care or treating it as deadweight.

~~~
yourapostasy
Correct, they were physically depleted to far below minimum levels after H1N1
(and other crises), but SARS was their last warning before COVID-19. General
political leadership across parties and jurisdictions [1] routinely treat it
as a deadweight loss by allowing severe atrophy, short-changing the requested
budgets; most recently in 2011 a -$121M shortfall [2].

Read into that what you will, but my hot take on it is if there is another
pandemic, or an NBC attack, unless you are part of the 0.1% of government,
you're on your own preparedness supplies.

I don't see the SNS placing the long-term supplies under inert gases and in
extremely dry storage conditions (though much of it is secret, so I'm hoping
they're doing this and just not telling anyone), the primary cause of various
rubber components expiring. They are definitely not integrated into vendor
supply chains, nor practicing shipping on a regular basis to rotate stock and
evaluate large-scale field trials of preserved PPE to establish long-term
operational practices that no one in the world has performed, injecting into
re-supply orders and tracking the results with the healthcare institutions.

Once PPE preservation is worked out reasonably well, then the costs of
maintaining the stockpile switch to marginal replacement costs. Then they can
switch to funding research into reusable PPE, and ultra-long storage (on the
order of 100 years). The national security angle is to weaponize the
increasingly-long storage durations themselves, while at the same time
benefiting the environment (less disposables): the ever-increasing lifespan
covering an ever-increasing percentage of the population for an ever-
increasing incident timespan are wielded as a deterrence factor; if we quickly
react and return to semi-normal relatively quickly based upon such a robust
supply chain, the effectiveness of such attacks are neutralized to that
extent.

[1] [https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/30/federal-
pande...](https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/mar/30/federal-pandemic-
money-fell-years-trumps-budgets-d/)

[2] [https://www.businessinsider.com/strategic-national-
stockpile...](https://www.businessinsider.com/strategic-national-stockpile-
location-items-inside-history-size-2020-4)

------
valuearb
2015: “While we have not yet identified the shooter, there's some indication
it was an insider," said Caitlin Durkovich, assistant secretary for
infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security.

~~~
csilverman
I always wondered about this. First thing that crossed my mind at the time was
that it was (1) idiots who thought it would be fun to cause high-profile
trouble, or (2) terrorists, but it sounded a bit sophisticated for #1 and as
far as I know, no one ever claimed credit for it.

After reading one of the references
([https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-
gri...](https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-grid/)), and
learning that they think it might have been an insider, a third possibility
occurs to me: what if it was someone—maybe a PG&E employee—who knew first-hand
how unprotected this infrastructure was, and wasn't being taken seriously?
Especially given the Homeland Security report a year earlier about how easy
this kind of attack would be.

Conspiracy-theory stuff, maybe, but:

> _The assault...became a harsh wake-up call for energy providers, who have
> since become obsessed with the physical security of their remote power
> stations._

> _PG &E alone has pledged to spend $100 million to improve security at its
> facilities...Transformers are often custom designed, sometimes costing $3
> million each—and replacements are slow. Plus, physical attacks on energy
> distribution machines are much more effective at taking out the power grid
> than a computer hack. And it's incredibly easy to pull off, several energy
> utility firms told CNNMoney._

> _Experts attending GridSecCon, held by the North American Electric
> Reliability Corporation this week, are now discussing the need to enclose
> electronics in 1 /2-inch thick armor plating that can stop high-powered
> rifle rounds. Power utilities have started loading remote substations with
> infrared cameras, gunshot audio sensors and even seismic recorders that
> catch vibrations._

~~~
skylanh
Well, if we're doing actionable conspiracy theories then:

\- it caused $15 million in damage, and $100 million in updated security ->
contractor needing work

\- it was a "domestic terrorism" event -> what legislation or policies were on
the table at this time?

Those would be my starting points.

~~~
csilverman
Someone else mentioned job security/contracts as a possible motivation. It
makes sense.

I'm less sure about the terrorist angle. The point of a terrorist act is to
advance or discourage a specific political agenda; that only works if you're
clear about who you are and why you did it, though. These guys never did that
(although maybe scaring PG&E into securing their facilities roughly fits the
definition of goal-oriented violence, even if it wasn't motivated by
politics).

------
regularfry
Nobody seems to be paying much attention to the fibre cut. What if that was
the point, not the substation getting shot up? What do we know about the
effects on the network around that point?

------
tgsovlerkhgsel
What I'm surprised about is the bullet casings and markers left at the site -
wouldn't professionals remove those?

~~~
mkl
From the time line, they left in a hurry, just before law enforcement arrived.
It's also not easy to collect 100 scattered bullet casings in the dark.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Let me rephrase that: Wouldn't professionals plan to remove them, and thus
have an attachment on the gun that collects them in a bag?

------
natcombs
That video does not appear to show anything for four minutes. Did I miss
something?

Edit: Now I have a feeling that I got trolled and that's the point of the
video

~~~
unkeptbarista
The action is easy to miss after nearly two minutes of nothing happening. If
you fast forward you might not see it at all.

1:54 What I believe is the signal flash near the fencing. Lower left of the
video.

2:06 You will see sparks from a bullet striking the fencing. A bit higher up
than the signal flash, and on the extreme left of the video.

3:01 Toward the middle right of the video, a bullet striking the fencing.

Update: NPR article with timing of events seen in video. They say first flash
is also bullet related and not the signal flash I thought it might be.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2014/02/05/272015606...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
way/2014/02/05/272015606/sniper-attack-on-calif-power-station-raises-
terrorism-fears)

~~~
urda
Thanks so much for this.

------
natch
The only significant facility I can think of in this area is the IBM Almaden
Research Lab. It and another IBM office are very specifically in that area,
which is an odd connection. Can't say whether their electrical service is
provided by that substation, but they are geographically very close.

[https://goo.gl/maps/i7NWjxfomyXvZCBY9](https://goo.gl/maps/i7NWjxfomyXvZCBY9)

------
sukilot
Does it count as "terrorism" if nearly no one noticed it happened, and no me
claimed credit or made demands?

And why try to kill a power plant with guns instead of bombs? And why go to
all the effort and only shoot 100 bullets? Seems like a bizarrely stupid plan
executed by talented people, a strange combination.

Also, calling it the largest attack on the grid is strange, when it was quite
trivial compared to Enron.

------
jonathankoren
That’s not the only weird sabotage that has happened in San Jose. Back in
2009, someone intentionally cut some fiber optic cables. They’ve never been
found.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/09/san-jose-police-
sabot...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/04/09/san-jose-police-sabotage-
caused-phone-outage-in-santa-clara-santa-cruz-counties/)

~~~
tyingq
Probably someone hoping for copper to scrap.

------
nathanvanfleet
I kind of wonder if this was an inside job since it seems like their plan may
have been to shut down power but it completely failed? Maybe it was people who
worked there who just wanted to destroy some transformers and knew it wouldn't
disrupt power. Certainly not impossible. But if they were insiders you think
they would have done something that was actually going to get more noticed.

~~~
sio8ohPi
It wouldn't assume it failed. It caused $15M worth of damage for PG&E. It
could easily have been a couple of disgruntled employees who wanted to hurt
their employer.

------
arnaudsm
On a similar register, multiple French power plants were scouted by
unidentified drones in the past 5 years. Transformers are an fragile point of
failure of an entire country infrastructure. I hope security has improved
since then.

------
dgudkov
I'm curious how well data centers are protected from such a coordinated attack
that involves an insider? Can a determined, educated group of terrorists
disable multiple data centers (e.g. of Amazon) at once? What data center
redundancy do the cloud providers have - can they withstand losing 2 data
centers at once? How about 5?

I'm sure they have good protection against technical accidents. But in the
times when everybody moves their apps and systems into the cloud I'm not
equally confident the cloud providers are equally well protected against a
sophisticated, coordinated attack.

------
coredog64
G. Gordon Liddy wrote about this in the 80’s. The story includes more than
just transformers, but it identifies the impact of the issue and the means of
attack.

[https://vocal.media/theSwamp/this-fictional-memo-to-the-
pres...](https://vocal.media/theSwamp/this-fictional-memo-to-the-president-
from-1989-predicted-terrorism-in-the-us)

------
01100011
Wouldn't it be better to just disperse a cloud of graphite like the US did in
the first gulf war? Transformers seem physically rather tough, unless you can
shoot an insulator(are they still ceramic or are they silicone nowadays?).

~~~
EForEndeavour
I had no idea this "graphite bomb" was a thing. From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite_bomb):

The bomb works by spreading a dense cloud of extremely fine, chemically
treated carbon filaments over air-insulated high voltage installations like
transformers and power lines, causing short-circuits and subsequent disruption
of the electricity supply.

~~~
01100011
Yeah and any moron could build one. We really need to beef up our grid and
stockpile critical components.

------
aaron695
"Additionally, following the attack, investigators found small piles of rocks
near to where the shots had been fired, the type of formations that can be
used to scout firing positions."

I think that sums it up.

Why do we think it's more than one person?

[edit] The FBI states this attack is not terrorism, Wiki seems to _miss_ this

~~~
sio8ohPi
Investigators will have a pretty good idea of where the shooters were based on
where the spent casings piled up. Three piles of casings would mean three
shooters, etc.

~~~
aaron695
Can you quote that?

Was it three? Are there any location maps of the spent casings? The one map I
found only had one location.

I can't find anything to back more than one.

It's a important fact because it's rare you have two insiders doing something
like this.

~~~
sio8ohPi
I don't have inside details on the investigation; three is just an example. It
shouldn't be difficult to id different firing positions from spent casings, so
if investigators believe it was multiple shooters I assume traces on the
ground reflect that.

~~~
aaron695
No investigators actually say it was more than one.

Some leave it open. But that's what they do every shooting.

One drunk possible ex-employee sums up the evidence.

I like one quote of how they were a bad shot and kept missing the exact
target. Some circular logic going on there. Maybe they were shooting somewhat
randomly.

------
ashtonkem
Meta: I thought the new rule was no more Wikipedia posts without context?

~~~
easton
From a cursory search, it looks like they aren't banned, but the algorithm
makes them fall faster. It stinks, they are often good reads (although maybe
the discussion isn't always that deep).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23117614)

------
urda
I remember this, still wild re-reading the entire record of events.

------
SV_BubbleTime
>Sniper attack

>7.62x39

One of these things is not like the other.

~~~
liability
The supposed inherent inaccuracy of AK pattern rifles is a fud meme, primarily
perpetuated by the type who also think M-16s are made by Mattel and other
goofy boomer legends that were popularized before the internet made it easy to
fact-check. However it's also a popular misconception that sniping is
necessarily a matter of long range shooting. JFK was shot from under a hundred
meters and that's commonly agreed to be the work of a 'sniper'.

~~~
SV_BubbleTime
It’s the sights on the AK platform. They’re awful and they always have been.
Not getting into vodka-specials or bent barrels, poorly pressed trunnions or
eccentric cut chambers, none of which are uncommon. They have a reputations
not because of FUDDs but because 95% of them ARE bad.

