There is a growing concern among intelligence officials that electrical substations could be targeted on Election Day in battleground states to discourage voters from turning up at the polls and to sow distrust in election results that could intensify political hostility in the electoral process.

Using declassified data, Y-City News has completed a first-of-its-kind analysis of previously reported substation attacks that show there may be more to the incidents than public officials have been willing to disclose; whether these were government exercises or legitimate attacks on our critical infrastructure, the harsh reality is that America is vastly unprepared for such potential offensives.

Using polling data and published electrical infrastructure reports, and with limited resources, our outlet was able to identify at-risk electrical substations that could cause havoc on Election Day if targeted by lone-wolf domestic terrorists or nation-state actors alike. While it’s uncertain the full extent such limited but surgical attacks could yield on Tuesday’s turnout or political party sway in battleground counties, the resulting blackouts would seed distrust in the most important process of our democracy, our selection of the next president.

On Saturday, December 3, 2022, two electrical substations in Moore County, North Carolina were attacked, leaving up to 40,000 residential and business customers without power. The incident made national news, some speculated that it was an attempt to prevent a drag show from taking place nearby that evening, but ultimately, law enforcement never apprehended a suspect or locked down a motive.

The attack, according to officials, was carried out using ‘a high-powered rifle.’ At least one of the electrical substations showed signs of forced physical entry with its access gate having been damaged. Some electrical customers, like the Moore County Regional Hospital, were able to switch to backup generators, but an 87-year-old woman died after her oxygen machine, which she needed due to chronic lung disease, stopped working when her home lost power.

Now nearly two years later, the investigation, which includes local, state and federal authorities, seems to have gone cold, search warrants have been unsealed and prosecutors appear no closer to bringing the perpetrators to justice. Speculations range from right-wing extremists to foreign terrorists to a red team exercise by members of the local military.

Moore County sits up against Fort Liberty, one of the world’s largest military installations, home to the Army’s Special Operations Command, which includes the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Declassified satellite imagery of the region would give the impression that all available frames, except those of the base itself in just a few cases, have been released, however, a more thorough look at the frames reveals an even more perplexing reality; it is Moore County and the general region of the electrical outage that have been struck from declassification for an unknown reason – it is a rare occurrence to be identified, used only in the most sensitive of cases.

Another oddity from the missing coverage is that KH-9 Spy Satellites captured photos in stereo pairs, but in the instance presented above from 1978 involving the missing F001 frame, all four A-series photographs have also been withheld from declassification. There are two plausible explanations, one being that its pairs were held back to prevent topographic analysis, such as the measuring of the height of captured objects on the ground, which has not been the case in imagery released of the Contiguous United States; the second is that the pair photographs were of color-infrared.

The latter is more likely as such imagery has been known to be withheld for various reasons, due to national security concerns. Color-infrared imagery outside North America has not been declassified; frames over sensitive sites, especially over the Contiguous United States, were not released and are missing from their capture groups. One such example of this is a missing frame over the mountains of Colorado and another is multiple frames east of Columbus, Ohio; in both instances, they were withheld to protect highly classified government projects.

Whatever is in Moore County, North Carolina, it’s very plausible that a government exercise or more sophisticated attack was underway. Just northwest of the West End Substation sits Auman Lake, directly adjacent to it is a telecommunications tower that once was part of AT&T’s Long Lines Network, part of the nation’s military communication system – it did not connect to Fork Liberty but was on it own dedicated dual-redundant line.

The following month, in January 2023, a substation was damaged in Randolph County, North Carolina, just north of Moore County, a suspect and motive were never revealed in that case either; though many have speculated the two incidents were likely related.

During the First Cold War with the Soviets, foreign electric substations would mysteriously disengage or end up damaged, and while the United States played no such role in those unfortunate situations, our intelligence apparatuses took full advantage, using various sophisticated means to monitor the response at military bases and covert underground facilities, including for evidence of backup generators kicking in to augment the loss of grid fed electrical power.

Before his death, retired General George Keegan tried to warn the nation about the unprecedented buildup by the Soviets of underground construction projects which were designed for everything from food and supply storage to ensuring the survival of its leaders and children in a nuclear war. The disclosure, however, could not be allowed to be fully entertained as it would ultimately lead to concerns over a ‘bunker gap,’ which the United States could not permit as it would lead to questions about our own such construction projects or lack thereof. While never disclosed, America, as it always has before, superseded such Soviet projects, including the development of many highly advanced technologies placed in deep underground bunkers, designed to ensure an overwhelming American victory and survival if nuclear war was to break out.

“We examined thirty-nine of the largest cities and found that every apartment house built after 1955 had a massive nuclear bomb shelter in the basement,” Gen. Keegan told a reporter on the topic. “Secondly, we found large tunnels interconnecting every one of these buildings. And in these tunnels, we found water, electric power conduits, and a vast storage of medical supplies: hospital-type facilities.”

The General would go on to detail the use of satellite imagery to detect such structures, some buried deeply underground, all across the Soviet Union, in all, the cost figures were staggering, they were doing everything they could to prepare to survive an attack, including a nuclear war, and they were putting a significant amount of their nation’s resources into the endeavor.

Roughly a decade earlier, in 2013, another substation attack had occurred, and while it also gained national attention, it was shadowed by the transpiring events the day before, the Boston Marathon Bombing.

The substation attack occurred in California, across the country, but was deemed highly suspicious, the casings lacked fingerprints and fiber-optic telecommunication cables were cut before the attack commenced. Furthermore, it would come out the following year that in 2011, Russian authorities warned the FBI about one of the two perpetrators, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but due to a misspelling of his last name and other perplexing reasons, he slipped through law enforcement’s fingers.

Once again, using a database of declassified spy satellite imagery, it was discovered, though extremely obscured, that the location of the substation remained classified in at least a few instances and was not released along with other frames in its sequence, though in a majority of overflight captures, the photographs were released. Just north of that electric substation is Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that immediate area also features other never-reported classified government projects.

While with publicly available data, it’s not clear if the attack had anything to do with the Boston Bombing, its nearness in time is at the very least suspicious. Regardless, this attack and that of others in states such as Oregon, Washington, South Carolina and Florida present an unnerving reality, our electrical grid is much more susceptible to attack than we often recognize.

In its own reports, the government acknowledges that the most dangerous attacks on our critical infrastructure would be carried out by individual foreign sleeper cells or terrorists acting alone, depriving the vast surveillance net employed in the United States of actionable intelligence in a timely enough manner to be intercepted. Repeatedly, suggestions are made that electrical substations be housed inside buildings behind material resistant to the ballistics of high-caliber weapons, but thus far, the cost of implementing such improvements has outweighed concerns.

Outside the yearly address to Congress by the President of the United States, referred to as the State of the Union, the general presidential election in November once every four years is often the time in which America and its democracy are most vulnerable, this year is no exception.

It is said that the country is more divisive today than at any point since the Civil War. With two assassination attempts already on former President Donald Trump, an attack on critical infracture that could cause citizens to question the legitimacy of Tuesday’s election may be just the spark needed to send America into civil unrest. Less than a dozen key counties will likely decide if Vice President Kamala Harris takes over in January or if former President Donald Trump will secure a second term.

When a hail storm came through Zanesville and knocked out power across town on May 3, 2022, Election Day, including at some precinct voting locations, some citizens decided not to cast their ballots. While the Muskingum County Board of Elections quickly sprung into action, organizing the delivery of backup generators to affected sites and with ballots cast via paper, some still, in the confusion, chose to forgo participation.

That primary election contest included a tight race between Republicans Melissa Bell and Anthony Adornetto, who were each vying to become the Republican nominee for county commissioner; when all the votes were counted, just a little over 100 ballots cast determined the winner of that contest. While the results were accepted, many openly wondered and discussed if the storm may have secured Bell the votes she needed to win that election.

It would not take much to imagine the number of voters who might be impacted and thus in the confusion choose not to participate should just a few substations in critical battleground states be targeted on Election Day. That exact scenario is very much a concern of everyone from the candidates themselves to those tasked with safeguarding American elections. Both candidates have encouraged their supporters to vote early to mitigate such worries but the election will likely be decided by younger male voters, who have yet to cast their ballots in sizable numbers and are historically more likely to do so in person.

Such an attack would likely statically help Vice President Harris, and with allegations by former President Trump as to alleged irregularities with the election results of 2020, it’s plausible such allegations would again resurface. In Georgia, for example, Trump lost to Biden by just a few thousand votes.

With two assassination attempts already on his life, compounded by threats of interference by Iran, such an attack on critical electric substations may be all that would be necessary, be that by a domestic instigator or a foreign actor, to sow doubt as to the validity of Tuesday’s election.

While Y-City News is choosing not to release the details of our analysis on potentially vulnerable substations in battleground states, and in particular battleground counties, in the interest of national security and election integrity, the concern is very much a present threat and our outlet is not the only one sounding the alarm. It is projected that less than a dozen counties in the nation will be the deciding factor as to which party takes the presidency.

Hidden away from public view, American intelligence agencies stand ready to protect and defend the nation against such attacks, any foreign country attempting to intervene by denying an American citizen the right to vote will be met with strong and unwavering resistance; the United States will have various appropriate responses readied and available to ensure a timely and overwhelming intervention to such actions against the democratic process that constitute a threat against America.

Y-City News continues to investigate. Do you have additional information about anything mentioned in our article, other information you think our news organization should know about or want to bring our attention to a matter that needs investigating? We would like to hear from you. Contact us at (740) 562-6252, email us at contact@ycitynews.com or mail us at PO Box 686, Zanesville, Ohio 43701. All sources are kept strictly confidential.