Tag Archives: domestic extremists

Energy Department official warns the electric grid is being targeted by domestic and foreign adversaries

Revelations 18:10 “In fear of her torment, they will stand at a distance and cry out: “Woe, woe to the great city, the mighty city of Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Power grid under threat from foreign adversaries, domestic extremists, warn experts
  • Energy infrastructure experts testified that the U.S. power grid is facing escalating cybersecurity risks and emerging threats from foreign adversaries and domestic extremists.
  • The latest annual threat assessment out of the U.S. Intelligence community identified Chinese cyber operations against the U.S. homeland as a major national security threat and warns that Beijing is “almost certainly capable of launching cyber attacks that could disrupt critical infrastructure services” nationwide, including the power grid.
  • Meanwhile, domestic extremists have been charged in recent months with plotting to attack energy facilities and power grids across the country, as part of an apparent effort to promote white supremacist ideologies.
  • Bruce Walker, former assistant secretary for the Energy Department’s Office of Electricity, told the House Energy & Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations on Tuesday that “the most important evolving threat to the electric grid is associated with cybersecurity and physical security” while calling for further collaboration between the public and private sectors.
  • “We must approach this problem differently,” Walker said. “We must transition to an all-of-society approach that, among other things, appropriately uses federal capabilities to protect the grid.”

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FBI believes U.S. faces equal threats from domestic extremists and Islamic State -official

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement and security agencies believe domestic extremists, notably white supremacists, pose a violent threat in the United States similar to that of Islamic State militants, top U.S. security officials told Congress on Wednesday.

Concern about racially motivated domestic extremists had prompted the FBI to elevate the threat to a level equal with that posed by the Islamist militants, said Timothy Langan, the assistant director who heads the counterintelligence division.

Langan told a House Intelligence subcommittee the Federal Bureau of Investigation had detected a significant increase in the threat of violence from domestic extremists over the last 18 months.

He said the bureau was conducting around 2,700 investigations related to domestic violent extremism, and there had been 18 lethal attacks targeting U.S. religious institutions in which 70 people had died in recent years.

The FBI has engaged with tech companies regarding their role in fueling extremism, has successfully disrupted planned acts of violence and will continue to “try to close the gap” on its inability to legally decode encryptions on mobile phones.

John Cohen, acting undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis in the Department of Homeland Security, told the subcommittee that racial superiority and “hatred of immigrants” were major threat concerns.

He said his department believes the biggest domestic threat is posed by lone offenders and small groups indoctrinated in extremist ideology. The threat is fueled by a blend of extremist beliefs and personal grievances, he said.

Cohen noted that domestic extremists conduct so much discussion openly on social media that covert collection of intelligence on the threats they pose may often not be necessary to spot the threats.

Some Republican members of the House subcommittee suggested U.S. spy agencies should not be collecting information on U.S. political activity unless there is a connection to foreign actors.

(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Howard Goller)