Around the world, infrastructure has become a national security issue. The attack on four electrical transformers in Washington state, in the northwestern United States, on Sunday raised fears of a potential targeted campaign by far-right groups, after warnings to that effect issued earlier by the federal authorities.
The degradation of these infrastructures in Pierce County, a southern suburb of Seattle, left more than 14,000 homes without power on Christmas Day, local police reported. An investigation was opened, but no suspect had been apprehended on Sunday, detailed the police in a press release, ensuring that they were not able to know for the moment whether or not it was a coordinated attack. The police, however, said they are aware of similar events elsewhere in Washington State, as well as in Oregon (northwest), and North Carolina (southeast).
Warning from federal authorities
The federal police had also warned in early December of threats against the electrical network of the company Tacoma Public Utilities, owner of two of the sabotaged infrastructures, according to a press release.
Militants from violent extremist groups “have developed credible and targeted plans to attack electrical infrastructure since at least 2020,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a report last January, quoted by US media.
In early December, some 45,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness in Moore County, North Carolina after a gun attack on two electrical transformers. An attack that came a year after the indictment in the same state of five men, alleged members of white supremacist and neo-Nazi discussion groups, accused of planning attacks on electricity infrastructure. They sought to cause “general chaos”, “for the purpose of creating a state centered on white ethnicity”, according to the indictment.
While in Ohio (north), three men linked to the neo-Nazi movement pleaded guilty in February to using guns and explosives to damage several power plants in various locations.