An eco-accelerationist Telegram channel published a guide to sabotage in a post on February 23, 2024. The guide, whose anonymous author claims to be a former "cable worker," is divided into three sections covering different aspects of sabotage. Tips and explanations are provided on how to sabotage communications and transportation, and how it is hypothetically possible to disrupt the economy on a large scale. The guide stresses the vulnerability of the U.S. infrastructure and its major lack of security measures.
YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO THE MEMRI DOMESTIC TERRORISM THREAT MONITOR (DTTM) TO READ THE FULL REPORT. GOVERNMENT AND MEDIA CAN REQUEST A COPY BY WRITING TO DTTMSUBS@MEMRI.ORG WITH THE REPORT TITLE IN THE SUBJECT LINE. PLEASE INCLUDE FULL ORGANIZATIONAL DETAILS AND AN OFFICIAL EMAIL ADDRESS IN YOUR REQUEST. NOTE: WE ARE ABLE TO PROVIDE A COPY ONLY TO MEMBERS OF GOVERNMENT, LAW ENFORCEMENT, MEDIA, AND ACADEMIA, AND TO SUBSCRIBERS; IF YOU DO NOT MEET THESE CRITERIA PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST.
"Fiber Optic Is The Easiest To Sabotage"
The author who claims to be a former cable worker describes various methods of sabotage in the guide. He begins: "Former cable worker here. I used to be the guy who hung telephone lines and fiber optic from telephone poles, burned them in the ground, installed power supplies and substations, you name it."
According to him, it is fairly simple to bring down the communications apparatus of a metropolis.
"All it would take to completely fuck the communications in an entire city is a normal flathead screwdriver, a pair of wire cutters, and a small flathead screwdriver Maybe add a pair of bolt cutters to get rid of padlocks.
"It'll take them at least a day to figure out what the problem is and where it is… Then they have to order the right fiber (different sizes are used), cut to the right length, and hire a subcontractor to do an emergency job to install the new fiber, which is typically an all day job.
"Once they're done, a splicer comes in to splice the new fiber into the network. At the very least, if you damage a fiber line, you're looking at two or three days where that line and everyone "downstream of it has no service, plus tens of thousands of dollars in expense replacing it. Breaking the fiber near the "can" that it goes into (a laser repeater, basically) is easy to fix, they just undo an expansion loop, stretch out the fiber, cut off the damaged section, and splice it. One day of work, max. Always break fiber in the middle of a run."
"People Have Absolutely No Idea How Vulnerable Our Communications Infrastructure Is"
The second section of the guide explains knocking out radio transmission. It states:
"Half a dozen guys can, in a single day, completely fuck over comms in a major city and cause millions of dollars worth of damage and lost revenue with basic all over tow tools and spend nothing more than the gas they use driving around.”
"People have absolutely no idea how vulnerable our communications infrastructure is. And you know the government's plan for defending said hope nobody realizes how vulnerable It is. No seriously. That's the extent of their plan to prevent massive sabotage hope people are too stupid to realize how easy it is."
"Wanna Shut Down The Airport? Call In A Bomb Threat… They'll Ground The Planes For Hours"
The third section of the guide sets out a potential scenario for destroying the U.S. economy via sabotage:
"You could very easily fuck up the local economy to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in a single day. Do it to a city like New York and you're getting into the billions. And while you're shutting down communications, why not shut down transportation too? Use a burner phone and call in 1 bomb threats for major bridges, highway overpasses, etc. They shut down the roads, cops scramble to search for bombs, traffic jams from people being detoured from major roads cause hours of gridlock (especially if you call in the threats at rush hour), etc. and the gridlock makes it harder it harder for police and firefighters to get where they need to go especially once comms start art getting ting fucked up.
"Wanna shut down the airport? Call in a bomb threat there too, they'll ground the planes for hours. Fire an improvised mortar onto the farmachunway [sic], you don't need live rounds, just smoke bombs or even duds filled with sand. They have to treat every single one like a live bomb and the airport is completely shut down. no planes in, no planes out, until the bomb squad handles every single mortar round laying on the tarmac. And if the bomb squad is stuck in gridlock because they were acress lown [sic] investigating a bomb threat at an overpass and nobody can get hold of them because phone and radio service is fucked up, you just shut down the airport for the rest of the day.
"Half a dozen guys, tops, could fuck over an entire city to the tune of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, without hurting a single person or causing any permanent damage.
The full text of this post is available to DTTM subscribers.
If you are a subscriber, log in here to read this report.
For information on the required credentials to access this material, visit the DTTM subscription page
