Tesla “Terrorism” Intel Reports Stoke Contagion
Government reports on Tesla attacks say nothing yet suggest a lot
Tesla terrorism has dominated news lately, with Trump and company tossing around the “terrorist” label as casually as if 9/11 happened last month. Though law enforcement authorities like the FBI and Homeland Security are reluctant to echo the White House’s rhetoric, according to numerous internal threat assessments I’ve been given, they do raise a specter of civil breakdown that could lead to a domestic crackdown.
The warnings, prepared to inform police and corporate law enforcement “partners,” were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by transparency nonprofit Property of the People. Several assessments were prepared by intelligence “fusion centers” created in response to 9/11 at the state level to enhance intelligence sharing.
Individually, the reports say little that isn’t already in the news or on social media; but taken as a whole, they depict a government hysteria about the attacks on Tesla, described less like petty crime than some kind of violent insurgency. The entire alerting process, in fact, feels like a government-fueled contagion, a set of reports that create the vague impression of an assault on the American way of life.
What is most glaring about the reports in the immediate sense is that President Trump’s March 21 declaration that violence against Tesla is “terrorism” isn’t being echoed by law enforcement or the national intelligence community. Not yet.
A Joint Intelligence Bulletin produced by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security on March 21 (“Individuals Target Tesla Vehicles and Dealerships Nationwide With Arson, Gunfire and Vandalism”) reveals a sweeping effort by both agencies to “investigate,” “deter” and “disrupt” what it calls “nationwide incidents targeting Tesla electric vehicles” and equipment. But it never once mentions the word ‘terrorism’ to describe the spate of attacks on Tesla vehicles that started in January. (This despite the report being produced by the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division.) Instead, the assessment uses a different word: “vandalism.”
While Joint Intelligence Bulletins often involve the National Counterterrorism Center, an element of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), this one conspicuously does not. Presumably the U.S. government considers this a routine criminal matter rather than an intelligence one.
The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center also declines to use the “T” word, similarly forgoing use of the word in favor of “vandalism,” which appears throughout the document.
The bulletin also focuses on “calls to boycott Tesla and protest Elon Musk” as if they’re threats being broadcast bin Laden-style from the mountains of Afghanistan. “Arson, shootings, vandalism, doxing, and threats against Tesla have recently increased nationwide,” the report blares.
The only report that does liken Tesla attacks to terrorism (once, anyway) is an assessment jointly produced by the Southern Nevada Counter Terrorism Center (SNCTC) in Las Vegas and the Nevada Threat Analysis Center (NTAC).
“NTAC and SNCTC encourage their partners to practice continued vigilance and reporting of potential indicators of terrorist pre-operational surveillance and planning activities at any commercial establishment, transportation venue, or public gathering place,” the report says.
“Terrorist pre-operational surveillance” sounds ominous and certainly suggests that some see these as no different than ISIS or al Qaeda attacks, but no examples are provided of any particular preparations or clandestine funding of the sort that Elon Musk and even Attorney General Pam Bondi have alleged.
Law enforcement is evidently grasping at some kind of conspiracy; that is, in the model of the 9/11 War on Terrorism, where phrases like “pre-operational surveillance” reside.
What happened to constitutionally protected speech, speech that these agencies are so fond of saying they don’t monitor? The answer is that such speech becomes terrorist threats with just a turn of the phrase, hence the importance of watching the language closely.
Label it crime, it says one thing. Label it terrorism, and not only does it say another, but the message feeds the 9/11-era doctrine that the authorities must do something to preempt the next attack. That is a mentality that feeds unwarranted government surveillance and “pre-crime” arrests, certainly something Trump and his Attorney General Bondi are suggesting, but one that state and local authorities show little propensity towards enforcing (for now).
Typical of all of these domestic threat reports is a certain quality of hedging that makes them useless. The Nevada report says that the acts of vandalism “may have been influenced by actions taken by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in his role as Head of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).”
No way, really?
This type of non-committal language ensures not only that the analyst writing the report is never wrong, but also reveals how these organizations want to avoid the politics and sensitivities surrounding what they are reporting on. I for one would like to know how many of these incidents have occurred nationwide and where they are concentrated, and if the data suggests so, that they are indeed political acts.
An incident report produced by an Upland, California police officer on March 15 describes responding to a Tesla dealership’s report of a disturbance involving “harassing” customers.
“Tesla wanted prosecution for anyone refusing to leave their property, so officers made contact with several protests in the parking lot and advised them of trespassing laws,” the report says. The result, however, was anticlimactic.
“The group complied and remained on the sidewalk … for the remainder of the demonstration,” the report says, adding “The crowd was largely peaceful” and that no arrests were made.
Despite the uneventfulness, police officers staged nearby still saw fit to surveil the protesters with drones, the report reflects.
“Law enforcement has a messaging problem: they want to portray anti-Musk sentiment as terroristic, but they simultaneously know just how popular and mainstream anti-Musk sentiment actually is,” Property of the People’s executive director Ryan Shapiro said of the documents.
Federal law enforcement though, also has a messaging problem. The Nevada report, by warning of things like “Anti-Capitalist Sentiment” and the purported threat of “Copycat Behavior,” not only uses the language of terrorism but also that of civil war and even insurrection, certainly a dangerous falsehood to plant in the minds of local cops.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Empty comment section like untrodden snow 🏂
I hope that someone will explain to the hot-heads that fire bombing Teslas and threatening the poor slobs who bought a green vehicle before we all realized Elon was criminally insane, is not helping. Please stop it. On the other hand, it does help Team Trump to justify using violence to crack down on peaceful protest. I'm sure they're itching to do so so let's not give them any reason.