Getting a better look at the sheer size and windowless-ness of that facility, I suspect it was more likely the primary target than the courthouse.
The size of that VBIED was clearly designed to knock out that building entirely. It was no small bomb.
However, anti-terrorist architecture has come a long way since Oklahoma City. If it's critical network infrastructure, there may be some kind of re-enforced outer walls to protect it. Not to mention, the distance from the building is probably what saved it.
I still suspect that whoever attacked the facility missed. They wanted to destroy that building... but they didn't want to kill people.
Normally state actors like China, Iran, or North Korea wouldn't need to blow up a telecom center, they could do plenty of damage without physically attacking it. This may be a genuine unaffiliated terrorist. Unless done by a conventional military force, state actors don't tend to take that much effort into keeping civilians out of harm's way. That kind of thing seems like someone who wants to hurt a system, but not people, as a moral act. That would make it much more likely to be a terrorist than a state actor who would be much more pragmatic and uncaring.
All that being said, I'm pretty confident we can cross "Islamist" off the list at this point.
Hahahaha yeah something about the woman politely asking people to evacuate downtown didn't exactly scream "Muslim" to me. They'd be driving a van labeled "free candy".
Getting some strong NSA vibes from that building. But I do know a little bit about centers like these. Those floors just house equipment and not people, they don't really benefit from windows and it's likely not nefarious or covert. Who knows.
Well, the NSA actually leases entire floors of some of the core telecom hubs in the nation. AT&T actually leases it to them and doesn't ask any questions, though the NSA did have to submit floor plans and a general explanation of what they would do to all that data. IIRC there's one in Southern California at an AT&T building which just busily tries to copy all incoming data into the US so that it can be searched through what used to be PRISM.
I'm sure the NSA has a similar set up at a few other locations, possibly this one as well.
It doesn't necessarily mean it was an attack on the NSA though. The NSA would have a monitoring station at a critical point of network infrastructure for the same reason the DOD keeps active anti-aircraft weapons at our 3 major oil refineries. You don't want bad things to happen to those places, so you have to protect them.
The Nashville location was apparently a switching hub. It's possible that other outages are knock-on effects to an over-burdened telecom network.
Atlanta-Nashville is a good spot for an inter-regional link. It's definitely possible.
Getting a better look at the sheer size and windowless-ness of that facility, I suspect it was more likely the primary target than the courthouse.
The size of that VBIED was clearly designed to knock out that building entirely. It was no small bomb.
However, anti-terrorist architecture has come a long way since Oklahoma City. If it's critical network infrastructure, there may be some kind of re-enforced outer walls to protect it. Not to mention, the distance from the building is probably what saved it.
I still suspect that whoever attacked the facility missed. They wanted to destroy that building... but they didn't want to kill people.
Normally state actors like China, Iran, or North Korea wouldn't need to blow up a telecom center, they could do plenty of damage without physically attacking it. This may be a genuine unaffiliated terrorist. Unless done by a conventional military force, state actors don't tend to take that much effort into keeping civilians out of harm's way. That kind of thing seems like someone who wants to hurt a system, but not people, as a moral act. That would make it much more likely to be a terrorist than a state actor who would be much more pragmatic and uncaring.
All that being said, I'm pretty confident we can cross "Islamist" off the list at this point.
Hahahaha yeah something about the woman politely asking people to evacuate downtown didn't exactly scream "Muslim" to me. They'd be driving a van labeled "free candy".
Getting some strong NSA vibes from that building. But I do know a little bit about centers like these. Those floors just house equipment and not people, they don't really benefit from windows and it's likely not nefarious or covert. Who knows.
Well, the NSA actually leases entire floors of some of the core telecom hubs in the nation. AT&T actually leases it to them and doesn't ask any questions, though the NSA did have to submit floor plans and a general explanation of what they would do to all that data. IIRC there's one in Southern California at an AT&T building which just busily tries to copy all incoming data into the US so that it can be searched through what used to be PRISM.
I'm sure the NSA has a similar set up at a few other locations, possibly this one as well.
It doesn't necessarily mean it was an attack on the NSA though. The NSA would have a monitoring station at a critical point of network infrastructure for the same reason the DOD keeps active anti-aircraft weapons at our 3 major oil refineries. You don't want bad things to happen to those places, so you have to protect them.