When I first saw this headline pop up, I wondered if there had finally been an arrest made in the attack on the power grid in North Carolina. But it turns out that we still don’t have any suspects in that one. The newest report actually involves an attack that didn’t happen, thankfully. The FBI intercepted traffic between two people who were allegedly in the late planning stages of taking out the power grid in Baltimore, Maryland by shooting up multiple electrical substations. And in a shocking change from the usual bluster we hear coming from liberal activists, they appear to have caught an actual neo-Nazi and one of his accomplices. Brandon Russell was taken into custody along with Sarah Clendaniel. Russel is the founder of a notorious neo-Nazi group and has already been in plenty of trouble with the law.

The FBI captured two people, one a nationally known neo-Nazi leader, before they could launch an attack on Baltimore’s power grid, officials said Monday.

The suspects, Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel, were taken into custody last week, one in Maryland and the other in Florida, officials said.

Federal authorities described the alleged plot as “racially motivated.”

Russell is a founder of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group bent on “ushering in the collapse of civilization,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Liberals tend to call anyone with a different opinion a “neo-Nazi,” but Russell and Clendaniel appear to be the real deal. In their communications, they plotted to shoot up electrical substations and “completely destroy this whole city.” The planned attacks are being described as racially motivated, which seems fair enough. Russell’s group makes no secret of their hatred for Black people and Baltimore’s population is more than 60% African-American.

While it’s great that law enforcement was able to nip this plot in the bud, it’s still a very disturbing development. After the attacks in North Carolina, I asked whether all of the publicity they were generating would give other anarchists some ideas. Russell described attacks on power transformers as “the greatest thing somebody can do.” He must have gotten the idea somewhere, and it’s not hard to guess how this unfolded.

The problem is that we appear to have no shortage of anarchists running around these days. The feds probably had their eyes on Brandon Russel already and were monitoring his communications because of his history. But how many others are out there in the weeds, making their plans on Slack or the dark web and going undetected? The FBI managed to track down and arrest the two bozos who shot up the substations in Washington, but they might not be so lucky next time.

We are quickly reaching the point where we will have to significantly “harden” the electrical substations around the country. And that would cost a lot of money and it won’t happen overnight. The transformers will require heavy shielding to make them resistant to rifle rounds and most substations will likely need security personnel at all times, or at least better security cameras. There are literally tens of thousands of substations scattered around the county, so the targets are plentiful and you can imagine what all of this will cost.

The good news is that we’ll only have to do it once. And all future construction of substations should include these precautions. Unfortunately, that’s just the world we live in today.