Intentional criminal acts are being reported in North Carolina, as utilities describe a wide and “complicated” recovery ahead.

Utility company Duke Energy said nearly 38,000 customers were without power in Moore County, while the Randolph Electric Membership Corporation reported outages affected nearly 3,000 customers in the county’s southern area, WRAL-TV reported. Both Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields and Brooks report that the potential cause of the outages could be vandalism. Brooks said he could not further describe the nature of the possible crime.

This will be important to track not least of all because of how it will fit into the hacking threat narrative I sometimes opine about here.

If the vandalism is all physical as recently warned by DHS (e.g. shooting substations at night, cutting underground cables and wires), it will shadow similar reports elsewhere in the country some years ago.

Nearly five years after a sniper fired more than 100 rounds at the PG&E Metcalf power substation in San Jose, the California Public Utilities Commission has issued its suggestions on how to improve security for all of the state’s power facilities.

Some may remember the details.

In the early morning of April 13, 2013, a sniper targeting PG&E’s Metcalf Transmission Substation south of San Jose, fired 100 rounds of high-caliber ammunition, which resulted in approximately $15.4 million in damage.

The outcome of that attack was utilities were supposed to focus for the past decade on fast recovery from terrorist attacks, which is why someone should be asking NC officials in 2022 how they can be talking about long timelines instead.

Another warning came just earlier this year in February when an interstate domestic terror conspiracy (white nationalist) group was caught trying to incite race war in a plot to shoot at power stations.

See also: The History of Russian Involvement in America’s Race Wars.

America in past incorrectly concluded major attacks on infrastructure were domestic only, as I’ve written about before.

From at least the very beginning of WWI in 1914, if not earlier, [long before American involvement] Germany was running clandestine terrorist operations throughout the U.S.; They organized information gathering as well as very violent terrorist activities…

It thus begs uncomfortable questions about foreign military intelligence, even if only indirectly involved through observing and taking notes.

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Update December 5 (next day): without mentioning any of the CPUC, DHS or DOJ reports above, it has been confirmed now by the utility that infrastructure again was damaged by gunfire.

As I warned back in April, we now are exactly where anyone could have predicted.

Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find.

Problematic content and formerly barred accounts have increased sharply in the short time since Elon Musk took over, researchers said.

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day.

Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.

And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.

These findings — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms — provide the most comprehensive picture to date of how conversations on Twitter have changed since Mr. Musk [removed safety and security].

Exactly what I said would happen.

Twitter has become a direct threat to global security, but especially toxic to American national security.

The shift in speech is just the tip of a set of changes on the service under Mr. Musk. Accounts that Twitter used to regularly remove — such as those that identify as part of the Islamic State, which were banned after the U.S. government classified ISIS as a terror group — have come roaring back. Accounts associated with QAnon, a vast far-right conspiracy theory, have paid for and received verified status on Twitter, giving them a sheen of legitimacy. These changes are alarming, researchers said, adding that they had never seen such a sharp increase in hate speech, problematic content and formerly banned accounts in such a short period on a mainstream social media platform.

Tesla has the worst engineering in car history, given that it rejects basic quality and safety. It’s predictably killing people. Why would anyone expect different from Twitter now?

It’s willful harm from technology produced by a CEO who allegedly boasts to his staff that he believes everything (e.g. hate crime) is legal in America.

“Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” said Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. “They have reacted accordingly.”

Elon Musk is often caught promoting racism (Tesla called Black staff thin skinned for objecting to racism, right before it said it is proud to fight to defend itself). So it seems only natural he would turn Twitter into a seething anti-American honeypot.

The next sentence is absolutely critical to highlight and understand clearly.

…Tuesday, he ended enforcement of a policy against Covid misinformation.

Elon Musk’s money comes directly from disinformation. His theory of profit is well documented as fakery and lies, so trust nothing he says.

But Mr. Musk has denied claims that hate speech has increased on Twitter under his watch.

Truth denial? Science denial? Is there a more perfect example? In 2013 Musk told cheering and jeering boys that Tesla would deliver the safest car on the road, which of course has been proven every year since to be totally false.

Now Musk says he will not filter misinformation about safety… including his own intentional disinformation.

Last month, he tweeted a downward-trending graph that he said showed that “hate speech impressions” had dropped by a third since he took over. He did not provide underlying numbers or details of how he was measuring hate speech.

Of course he didn’t have evidence or any basic prediction capability. Musk can’t deliver anything but smoke.

Contrast his graph last month with this month:

Mr. Musk … agreed with a tweet that said hate speech spiked last week because of Ye’s antisemitic posts.

Agreed with a spike in antisemitism? It’s not being reported as him personally being opposed to hate speech, just that it will spike and he’s feeling unaccountable for deaths caused by saying the opposite. A hate speech analyst from the ADL puts it clearly:

“His actions to date show that he is not committed to a transparent process where he incorporates the best practices we have learned from civil society groups. Instead he has emboldened racists, homophobes and antisemites.”

Musk welcomed a known antisemite to the platform and then agreed the antisemite was being antisemitic.

As I’ve also warned before, Musk uses many tactics and even phrases from Adolf Hitler, such as declaring a false emergency (“bleak financial picture”) to terminate anyone disloyal to his constant charades.

For those who don’t like taking about well documented history, Lance Armstrong used similar scare tactics to keep his charades going.

Step one of quality decline.

“Going private” is what Lance Armstrong was known best for after being exposed — abusing secrecy to cheat.

Musk delisted the company’s stock to hide financials and reduce regulatory scrutiny.

Step two of quality decline.

Musk held loyalty tests where anyone he sniffed as independent minded was terminated. Nearly half the company had no job after Musk performed the most basic test, intentionally unrelated to success of the company (because success now is just measured in lying and avoiding accountability).

Terminations were so rushed and poorly engineered, Twitter immediately started begging staff it fired to come back.

Even more to the point of disinformation, Musk allegedly sent email to staff telling them they no longer had a job due to lack of quality.

Keep in mind the teams measuring quality (a difficult profession requiring expertise) were gone already, there was no standard of quality, and the email itself was such low quality it likely violated multiple laws.

A lower quality of leadership does not exist.

Step three of quality decline.

Musk rushed through his idea that authority should be the inverse of poverty. He literally declared that by charging $7.99 a month (and then dialing up the cost just like the fraud of Tesla) he would turn fraud into giant profits (boasted that he could charge fees faster than criminals could pay them).

If you walked into any bank anti fraud department and pitched $7.99 as your idea for an integrity test, they’d laugh you all the way to jail.

We thus saw an accelerated version of everything wrong with Tesla as increased cost meant to deliver quality immediately crashed (e.g. “self driving” is a lie that of course gets increasingly expensive despite getting worse over time).

Integrity was turned intentionally by Twitter’s clown in charge into a predictable dumpster fire.

Total havoc caused by Musk under a “be dumb” directive to his sycophant staff meant high-profile brands and personalities faced a deluge of targeted disinformation. Surprisingly Twitter didn’t just ride the mistake right to people’s grave, as Tesla does all the time. Perhaps social media is inherently more regulated than transportation.

Step four of quality decline.

Musk promised moderation of content while promising zero moderation. He said he sees regulation as reasonable while saying he believes in no regulation. When advertisers departed, cutting a lack of moderation, Musk viciously attacked them for being anti-freedom.

This works just like an angry man with a pot of soup yelling at his customers they hate freedom if they refuse to get sick from his obvious lack of hygiene.

Musk is in no better position to lead Twitter to deliver any kind of moderation than he is to stop the rapid increase of deaths from Tesla fires.

His whole “be dumb” mantra is predicated on extreme short sighted privilege (catch me if you can), a total rejection of the long term aims of moderation.

There is no question the quality of Twitter is crashing and burning.

Human safety is their lowest priority because they have taken multiple steps to remove themselves from any accountability.

There is simply no way that Musk intends to comply with anything, especially not the Digital Services Act. It’s like saying Hitler never intended to comply with borders. A European law that social platforms must reduce online harm is 180 degrees from every reason Musk raised money to turn Twitter into a deadly sewer.

It was well known that an increase of hate speech was coming long before Musk made himself CEO. This means his comments about rushing into mass terminations, deregulation and “dumb” ideas was meant to unleash the harms already predicted. He basically saw a hurricane coming and bought the mayorship to fire all the emergency rescue staff and destroy the levy system — because he believes in profitability from flooding.

The EU should be banning Twitter in a manner like they would advise their citizens not to travel to apartheid South Africa.

The Anti-Defamation League, which files regular reports of antisemitic tweets to Twitter and keeps track of which posts are removed, said the company had gone from taking action on 60 percent of the tweets it reported to only 30 percent. “We have advised Musk that Twitter should not just keep the policies it has had in place for years, it should dedicate resources to those policies,” said Yael Eisenstat, a vice president at the Anti-Defamation League, who met with Mr. Musk last month. She said he did not appear interested in taking the advice of civil rights groups and other organizations.

National security and terrorism analysts from watch groups point out Twitter is enabling the worst criminals.

In the first 12 days after Mr. Musk assumed control, 450 accounts associated with ISIS were created, up 69 percent from the previous 12 days, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studies online platforms.

And last but not least, security professionals are saying the obvious too about a decline in global safety. Twitter lights are on but nobody’s home:

When Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, found accounts associated with Russian and Chinese state-backed influence campaigns on its platforms last month, it tried to alert Twitter, said two members of Meta’s security team, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The two companies often communicated on these issues, since foreign influence campaigns typically linked fake accounts on Facebook to Twitter. But this time was different. The emails to their counterparts at Twitter bounced or went unanswered, the Meta employees said, in a sign that those workers may have been fired.

Elon Musk fired anyone who cares about integrity and quality, or he forced them to quit.

Again, this all is similar to the Tesla story. Engineering is tossed out the window as the company is organized to profit from propaganda, minimal effort and willful negligence.

I told you back in April this would happen, but really I warned everyone way back in 2016.

If you read the tragic suicide news about American service in the military, you may sense a tone of responsibility.

“One suicide is too many and MARMC leadership is taking a proactive approach to support the team, improve mental fitness, and manage the stress of its sailors,” Rieger said. “We remain fully engaged with our sailors and their families to ensure their health and well-being, and to ensure a climate of trust that encourages sailors to ask for help.”

Even more to the point than detection, the news cites widespread prevention actions taken by management.

A Navy spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that Arestivo, who is not typically on staff, was brought in along with other experts as part of a suicide prevention stand-down at MARMC between Nov. 14 and 16. The stand-down included presentations from different mental health organizations — including the command’s own suicide prevention coordinator — which all of the center’s assigned 3,000 sailors and civilian staff were required to receive, the spokesperson said.

All sailors are required to be in training, as everyone is tasked to help prevent suicide. You might even say it’s part of the job to keep sailors alive.

The complete opposite story is unfolding at Krogers, a giant grocery corporation. Its management clearly has engaged in bullying that leads to suicide with documented steps taken to destroy the lives of it’s own staff; abuse inherent to its management culture even when it means death.

It’s even more opposite from the military response because Kroger argues that it’s completely legal to kill its staff through constant targeted harassment.

Their defense is science-denial (related: management bullied staff who wore masks during COVID-19). They claim courts will affirm for them that nobody can predict causes of harm, which obviously is a completely bogus test.

It would be like saying Kroger doesn’t know whether shooting staff on a bridge at midnight would kill someone (they could drown instead) therefore Kroger can’t be charged with a VERY predictable injury let alone death.

Again, we’re basically dealing with ruthless denial of science. Yet Kroger management want people to still also believe they know how to run a company based on… science. Is your food “spoiled” or even “dangerous”? Who can predict that soup might make you sick or die? Not Kroger but also Kroger.

Furthermore, the actual case precedent Kroger lawyers want to bank on is inhumane. Ohio courts ignorantly ruled in 1987 men are not to be charged if a woman they rape and give a loaded gun kills herself.

Seriously. Kroger is set to formally argue that management literally violently raping its own staff still would not make it liable in suicide.

Read the news and you can see it’s really that bad.

Kroger managers are accused of waging a “campaign of terror” that included sabotaging his work, harassing him sexually, following Seyfried after work and sending him menacing and obscene texts.

Menacing text methods are a special concern here, as Kroger may be trying to legalize robotic/automated systems for elimination of its own staff via known psychological warfare methods (like those I’ve discussed in presentations about AI dangers and Russian military intelligence methods).

If you read Kroger details right, management basically engaged in a psychological terror campaign that has a very predictable outcome.

Thus “social” machines designed to drive humans to death are a logical next step for such management waging war with its own staff. It perhaps even already runs machines that rank staff suicide as a “win” based on one metric alone: lower company spend.

Ironically, Kroger runs its entire profit on proven ability to forsee risk (and flaunts such things to investors), while it lawyers up to argue it has zero ability to forsee risk (suicide).

Really what people should be thinking is that if Kroger couldn’t predict suicide in this case, they are unfit for management of ANY risk — a corporation that poses predictable danger to society.

Here’s their absurd defense plan, centered on the chilling Ohio principle that a man should not be held accountable for suicide by the young girl he just raped and then left alone with a loaded gun:

An Ohio appeals court upheld the dismissal of the case 1987. It ruled Morales wasn’t liable for the girl’s death because the plaintiff didn’t argue or prove Morales knew she was suicidal or put his gun in her hand. […] In court documents, Kroger’s legal team argues Seyfried’s suicide was not foreseeable, citing Fischer v. Morales at length. They do not discuss their clients’ alleged conduct in detail. “The Kroger defendants could not have reasonably foreseen Seyfried’s suicide,” Kroger attorneys wrote. “The Kroger defendants cannot be held responsible.”

It’s basically legalized rape to say a suicide after rape isn’t “foreseeable” or “manifested”. There was no suicide risk before the harms done, therefore the harms done aren’t liable for a resulting suicide?

Nonsense.

A new study published by The BMJ found that workers who have been exposed to sexual harassment—”undesirable advances or offensive references to what is generally associated with sexual relations” in their workplace—are at greater risk of suicide and attempting suicide.

I’m reminded of WWI soldiers being executed for low morale because the British refused to believe trauma was a direct result of traumatic stress.

And I’m reminded of a high rate of suicide when the British government treated gay men as criminals. WWII hero Alan Turing’s suicide not only could have been easily predicted, it was because of a specific set of targeted incidents. Kroger sounds eerily similar.

Back to the opening example from the military, it’s night and day when you think about a proper response to suicide risk indicators versus Kroger failing to protect its staff from attacks.

And it’s even more shocking when you consider the military is in the business of killing people using machines… yet apparently so is Kroger.