Several experts and former officials told TIME they believed that attack was committed by someone who knew what they were doing. Law enforcement officials, who have offered up to $75,000 for anyone who can provide information that would lead to the arrest of those responsible, have said that the perpetrators took aim at the substations with firearms with the intention to cause widespread outages. A month later, despite an ongoing FBI investigation continues, no one has been arrested for acts of sabotage that left more than 45,000 people without power amid frigid temperatures. 3 attack on two power stations in Moore County, N.C. The case that most concerns authorities is the Dec. Yet many others remain mysterious to law enforcement and federal regulators. In each of the last three years, law enforcement has foiled plots by right-wing extremists designed to sow chaos by attacking America’s electrical infrastructure. Violent conspiracies focused on targeting and destroying energy infrastructure have become one of the top themes on extremist social-media platforms and messaging apps. But the surge has alarmed federal officials and security analysts, who warned last year of “credible, specific plans” by violent domestic groups to attack the power grid. And in the most high-profile incident, intruders breached the gates and opened fire on two Duke Energy substations in Moore County, N.C., in early December, damaging equipment in what local authorities called a “targeted” attack that cut off the power for more than 45,000 people. ![]() In one attack on Thanksgiving, two intruders cut through the fencing around a substation in Clackamas County, Ore., and “used firearms to shoot up and disable numerous pieces of equipment and cause significant damage,” according to an incident report. The tally includes at least half a dozen at Duke Energy facilities in Florida and at least six others on electrical substations in the Pacific Northwest in November and December.
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