Why the US power grid is a target for attacks

Yesterday, the FBI arrested two individuals for allegedly conspiring to attack the power grids that supply Baltimore, MD, in what officials described as an attempt to “completely destroy [the] whole city.”

FBI agents said the two suspects – one of whom founded the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group – took steps to shoot at five different Baltimore electrical substations in a plan that was “racially or ethnically motivated.” More than 60% of Baltimore residents are Black.

🤔⚡ Why target power stations?

Some quick background: the US electrical grid is broken down into three independent regions – western states, Texas, and eastern states plus the Midwest – each of which is decentralized and controlled by a mixture of public and private entities.

Experts say America’s power infrastructure is an attractive target to saboteurs for several reasons:

1. The grid is designed so that smaller blackouts can be contained – but if several sections go down at once, the blackouts can cascade like dominoes, affecting millions of Americans.
2. Most of the 55,000 electrical substations scattered across the country are located in remote areas, and aren’t usually staffed.
3. Detailed information about America’s electricity infrastructure and how it operates is available to anyone on the internet.
4. It typically takes 18 to 24 months to replace critical power equipment like large transformers.

📸 Big picture: Attacks on power grids are like if a particular rapper/actor from Chicago did some work to find himself – aka becoming more Common. Yesterday’s arrests came weeks after a series of attacks on local power grids in Tacoma, WA, and North Carolina left a combined ~60,000 homes and businesses without power for days. And more broadly, attacks and suspicious activity at US power stations reached a decade-long high last year, with 118 reported incidents per a TIME review of federal data.