How Russian Sabotage And Social Media Fueled An American Panic

We made it through the Bluenami without a national catastrophe, thank God. But had there been one, there would have been dozens of social media-savvy preppers ready for it. For weeks, and especially in recent days, media apps showed off bare shelves where toilet paper and bottles of water used to be. What caused the urgent preparation for a sustained power outage? As best as I can tell, it was the revelation of real, evidence-based, ongoing vulnerabilities colliding with insane, hysterical fearmongering from online personalities. And then the panic spread through social media.

On November 1, Tucker Carlson claimed that “under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran.” That preposterous claim was the closest trigger for a flurry of scrambling to hunker down for Armageddon. But Carlson’s claims are a fiction. U.S. Central Command has largely held a defensive posture around the Strait of Hormuz, working to keep oil flowing and occasionally responding to IRGC attacks against shipping. If President Trump gave Admiral Brad Cooper the green light to conduct a more comprehensive attack against the regime, there is a spectrum of targets that the United States could hit with conventional (non-nuclear) weapons. Employing a weapon with a nuclear yield would break what is called the nuclear taboo: the universally held view that employing a nuclear weapon in warfare, especially when doing so is militarily indefensible, would set a grave precedent with potentially calamitous effects. The primary purpose of American nuclear weapons today is to provide the ultimate protection of the Republic by credibly deterring adversaries from attacking U.S. vital interests. In sum, if the United States ever felt it was necessary to break the nuclear taboo, it would do so in defense of U.S. vital interests, not to attack an already wounded — probably fatally wounded — Iranian regime without so much as an air force or navy.

But Carlson’s fearmongering doesn’t fully explain the prepper behavior. Western democracies, including the United States, face ongoing cyberattacks. Some reporting has covered this, and social media algorithms seem to have exploited it. But vulnerability to cheap attacks, whether cyber or drone, is nothing new. What is new is the intensity of publicly reported attacks, especially in Europe.

Russia has amplified its hybrid warfare campaign to terrorize societies across the democratic West, seeking to kill any and all support for Ukraine. Russia has most recently taken to targeting food supply chains as a form of economic warfare. This week, supermarkets across Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, and Sweden were all hacked, pushing freezer temperatures over 122 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the same modus operandi deployed in October against French supermarkets, where over 700 stores experienced equipment malfunctions and food loss estimated at tens of millions of euros.

These cyberattacks are not exclusively confined to Europe. In late August, at least six U.S. military commissaries, where military personnel buy their food, sustained refrigeration malfunctions. Facilities affected include Fort Huachuca in Arizona, F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, Travis Air Force Base in California, and Fort Irwin in California. All of these instances bear the fingerprints of Russian hybrid warfare.

This week, after the election, the U.S. government issued a fresh advisory recommending that the U.S. industrial refrigeration sector harden itself against cyberattacks. But again, there is no new, urgent recommendation for private American citizens to prepare for a known, imminent threat. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has long advised citizens to be smart and prepare for the possibility of losing power for several days. After all, natural disasters can strike as suddenly as a hacker in Moscow. Similarly, the European Union has advised citizens to maintain 72 hours of emergency supplies on hand, and 33 countries across six continents have issued similar warnings.

Here at home, the Pentagon launched FORTRESS, requiring military bases to be able to operate and sustain themselves independently for at least 90 days. This is good, wise, overdue direction. It is not a reason to become a prepper, and certainly not a reason to panic. By all means, keep calm and prepare for a few days of power loss. And demand that your elected leaders defend the country and stand up to our adversaries who want to harm us. But don’t panic, and that means remaining very skeptical of viral online phenomena.

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Rebeccah L. Heinrichs is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the director of its Keystone Defense Initiative. She specializes in U.S. national defense policy with a focus on strategic deterrence.