A Baltimore County woman has pleaded guilty Tuesday for conspiring to attack and destroy Baltimore region’s power grid last year.
Sarah Beth Clendaniel, from Catonsville, pleaded guilty to conspiring to damage or destroy electrical facilities and to being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to the Maryland Department of Justice.
She is now facing a maximum of 20 years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 15 years on the felony charge, followed up to a lifetime of supervised release for the conspiracy charge.
Most substations are defended by a chain link fence with maybe some barbed wire at the top. There are plenty of tools that could disable them, both firearms and otherwise. I can’t speak to how many you’d need to take out to collapse the national grid, but I can tell you that region wide problems can be caused with an attack on one or two. Our infrastructure is ridiculously vulnerable.