Extinction.

Many scholars have pointed to January 6th as the catalyst for renewed attention on insider threats and domestic violent extremism as national security priorities.6 Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have since recognized the evolving threat landscape since 9/11 and national and nuclear security priorities have slowly shifted from its long-time focus on international jihadists and foreign radicalization, towards domestic terrorists. In the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the issue of “insider threats” was at the forefront of U.S. counterterrorism efforts, but failed to evolve in the post-9/11 environment.7 In the weeks following the siege, a new picture of the threat landscape emerged as the Department of Justice and FBI launched a nationwide effort to investigate the participants of January 6th. The investigation revealed that most participants were adherents of extremist ideology, many of whom were radicalized online and mobilized to take part in the insurrection. Some also adhered to a DVE ideology of concern for nuclear security, accelerationism, which is described in more detail later in this paper.

What is concerning, however, is the original failure of the FBI to anticipate the Capitol attack in the first place. Before the end of the 2020 presidential race, a team of intelligence analysts tried to game out the worst potential outcomes of a disputed election. But they never thought of the one that transpired: a violent mob mobilizing to overturn the election in support of Donald Trump.8 Adam Goldman and Alan Feur write that the FBI was “[a]pparently blinded by a narrow focus on ‘lone wolf’ offenders and a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right,” thus, officials at the bureau did not anticipate or adequately prepare for the attack.9 This confirmation bias also failed to account for actors such as militia groups or white supremacists, who took a leading role in the Capitol siege.

In May 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas identified the greatest domestic threat facing the United States as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists,” specifically, white supremacists.10 White supremacist extremists pose the primary threat among all domestic violent extremists. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provided data showing that white supremacists were responsible for 51 out of 169 domestic terrorist attacks and plots from 2010 through 2021, the highest number among domestic terrorist ideologies.11 In October 2022, the FBI and DHS issued a report titled “Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism,” which put forth the most significant threat facing the U.S. as being posed by “lone offenders and small groups of individuals who commit acts of violence motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances.”12 The report also contended that of these actors, “domestic violent extremists represent one of the most persistent threats to the United States today.”13

The January 6th Capitol riot compelled the Biden Administration to prioritize the issue of domestic extremism. FBI Director Chris Wray condemned the January insurrection as “domestic terrorism” and described in stark terms the threat domestic violent extremists posed to the United States.14 While not every individual involved in the attack was part of a militia or right-wing group, many shared common beliefs.

DVE, Accelerationism, and Critical Nuclear Infrastructure

Domestic violent extremism (DVE) is an all-encompassing category that includes a variety of ideologies, including anti-government extremists, anarchists, anti-abortion extremists, white supremacists, involuntary celibates, ecoterrorists, and a smattering of other assorted extremists from across the political spectrum.15 While DVE represents a range of threats, the interest in nuclear terrorism by accelerationist white nationalist groups represents a particular security concern for the nuclear policy community.

CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

One commonly shared feature of DVE adherents is the focus on attacking critical infrastructure – including nuclear power plants. Attacks on U.S. energy infrastructure are increasing.16 Recent incidents on infrastructure include six “intrusion events” at Florida substations in September 2022; six attacks on substations in the US Northwest in November and December of 2022; four substations vandalized in Washington State cutting power to 14,000 on Christmas Day, 2022; and a December 2022 North Carolina “targeted attack that left thousands without power.”17 Attackers often seek to attack regional power substations in order to cause economic distress and civil unrest. Leftist, anti-statist, accelerationist groups have also emerged on Telegram, to espouse their views that the U.S. electrical grid must be systematically attacked and dismantled. Telegram has attempted to remove much of the content but has been ineffective at regulating its content to filter extremist messaging.18 As laid out in detail in the Case Studies section below, white supremacists Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel were arrested in February 2023, on federal charges of plotting to shoot up a ring of subpower stations in Baltimore. The intent was to “destroy” Baltimore, a majority Black city.19 Greg Harman writes that the “arrest reflects a sustained mobilization of homegrown neo-Nazi networks, whose members are seeking to disrupt the nation’s power supply in hopes of ushering in economic collapse and race war.”20

DVE and insider threats thus represent a particular area of concern for nuclear security, as evidenced by the Institute of Nuclear Management’s (INMM) exploration of the intersection of homegrown violent extremism and the security of nuclear facilities at its 63rd Annual Meeting. Indeed, prior to targeting the Baltimore grid, Brandon Russell had expressed interest in taking out a Florida nuclear plant.21 Russell’s case is not an outlier. Other domestic violent extremist actors have illustrated the vulnerabilities in how security practitioners identify threats to nuclear security across the ideological spectrum – from other far-right actors like Matthew Gebert and Ashli Babbitt in recent years, to the jihadist radicalization of Sharif Mobley following the 9/11 attacks. The Case Studies section of this paper presents more detail on each of these cases.

ACCELERATIONISM

Accelerationist ideology, which holds that the modern, Western democratic state is so mired in corruption and ineptitude that true patriots should instigate a violent insurrection, ultimately allowing a new, white-dominated order to emerge, presents additional concerns for the nuclear security community as some groups advocate for the use of nuclear weapons to achieve the new order.22 Accelerationist dogma is often adopted by adherents who subscribe to an ‘alternative history,’ one that usually serves as a foil to the increasing racial diversity of American society. Accelerationists have created a historical narrative that utilizes stock footage, still images, and classical literature to assemble a romanticized image of an American past that valued whiteness, marriage, family values, and religiosity to claim that these values are in decline and to recruit membership from involuntary celibates (incels) and young, white men who wish to return to a manufactured past.23

One accelerationist group that caught the attention of the nuclear community is the Atomwaffen Division (AWD). AWD was organized as a series of terror cells advocating for the use of nuclear weapons to yield the collapse of civilization. Unlike some other white power activists, accelerationists believe modernity “has reached such a level of degeneracy and corruption that it cannot be rescued through mass movements or other political means.24” Many of the most violent manifestations of domestic violent extremism in the U.S. are encouraged by “mobilizing concepts.9”Mobilizing concepts are different from traditional ideological frameworks, which are rooted in more clearly articulated beliefs or theories about how political or economic systems should work (anarchism, communism, fascism, etc.). An understanding of these neo-fascist accelerationist groups as a fluid network with broader goals of social destruction, rather than individual units with distinct ideological perspectives helps understand the continued relevance of AWD and its mission even after its dormancy in 2017.25 The effectiveness of these mobilizing concepts and the fluid nature of the ideological network can be seen in how AWD has inspired similar neo-fascist accelerationist groups such as The Base, which unlike AWD, has tried to veil its desire to spark a “nuclear civil war” behind claims that it is focused on maintaining a “survivalism and self-defense network” in an effort to recruit broader membership.26