Soft targets: FBI warned utilities that white supremacists were targeting energy infrastructure

PBS affiliater KUOW and Oregon Public Broadcasting report that the FBI warned utilities that far-right groups and individuals were planning to attack electricity substations.

"The individuals of concern believe that an attack on electrical infrastructure will contribute to their ideological goal of causing societal collapse and a subsequent race war in the United States," according to an FBI memo obtained by KUOW and OPB. …

In some cases, the attacks appear to follow manuals disseminated online by neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists.

For years, law enforcement and academics have warned about plots on the nation's electrical grid from "accelerationist" groups that advocate, however implausibly, that taking down the grid will hasten the demise of the federal government and start a race war.

A Nov. 22 alert from FBI headquarters and the agency's Newark field office warned of an increase of "threats to electrical infrastructure" from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists ("RMVE"). Those would include white supremacists and other so-called accelerationists attempting to sow chaos.