A man from Russia, living a Bay Area home with three young children, has been arrested by police for building bombs and attacking energy distribution systems.

A software engineer in San Jose has been charged with blowing up two electric transformers in the San Francisco Bay Area, which knocked out power for thousands of residents in December and January. Peter Karasev, 36, was arrested last week and charged with arson, destroying an electrical line, detonating an explosive device, and possessing bomb making materials. Local police found so many explosive devices and materials in his house that they had to call in help from other agencies, including the FBI, DEA, and National Guard.

Police says they have no evidence of motive, yet the suspect’s wife said he wants to cause chaos by attacking infrastructure.

His resume says he has a 2013 PhD in computer engineering from Georgia Tech. He joined Zoox just eight months ago as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, after working for Toyota as a Senior Software Engineer in Perception (autonomous cars).

It obviously begs the question what kind of chaos he was plotting for Zoox or other autonomous vehicles — perhaps treating them as loitering munitions.

This brings to mind also the German military after 1914 inflicting bombings across America by recruiting “destroying agents”.

Inclosed [sic] is the circular of November 22, 1914, for information and execution upon United States territory. We draw your attention to the possibility of recruiting destroying agents…

On July 22, 1916 German agents exploded a bomb in a San Francisco parade that killed 10 and wounded 40 people. Unfortunately the corrupt President Wilson abused the investigation to persecute his political opponents with false pretense, which allowed Germany to escape scrutiny.