Was the Baltimore "Bridge Collapse" an ATTACK on U.S. Infrastructure?
Following the unprecedented demise of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, many are left wondering...
There’s something noticeably missing from the skyline of Baltimore, Maryland.
A mainstay for residents and commuters since March 23, 1977, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was more than just a spanning structure. Eponymous for the writer of the National Anthem, the 1.6-mile “Key Bridge” represented something different to everyone.
For some, it was merely a means to an end. A necessary stretch for work, leisure, and everyday Life. But for many natives and long-time Baltimore locals, its permanence exceeded the perfunctory, captured with picturesque nostalgia throughout the decades.
Boaters, anglers, tourists, lovers and fighters - you could undoubtedly see its signature trusses sweeping above the Patapsco River in more than a few photos and videos.
And now it’s gone.
While the official story is an unfortunate accident, a rare and untimely collision with a monstrous cargo ship named Dali, not all are quick to accept this narrative.
As further details emerge (and some sink to obscurity), many people are left wondering. How did this happen? How could this happen? And perhaps, more than anything, what actually happened?
1:27 A.M., March 26, 2024
Most of the nation woke to the news to learn that the large Baltimore bridge had collapsed sometime during the late night/early morning. People were shocked. People were in disbelief.
Their collective sights set on the bewildering footage as the Singapore-registered container ship crashed into a giant pylon, sending the main portion of the structure folding like a lawn chair, spilling hazardous containers, and killing six workers.
In only hours, the authorities came before cameras. Without any formal investigation, they assured us there was no “credible information” that the collision was a terrorist attack, and President Biden reiterated this message, stating that there was no indication of “any intentional act here.”
But others beg to differ.
People across the internet, laypersons, specialists, and self-proclaimed ‘experts,’ have been scrutinizing the various videos and angles of the Baltimore bridge collision and collapse, and they’re coming to some interesting theories.
In one case, upon being sped up to 8x normal speed, footage appears to show the ship making a last-minute turn almost directly into the main support pylon:
Of course, as many have pointed out, video-speed adjustments can make even completely innocuous car accidents look intentional. This apparent deliberate turn into the bridge may just as well be the result of desperate and failed efforts to right the ship at a critical juncture.
But What About the Bombs?
Beyond the belief that this ship was somehow, for some reason, steered into arguably the most important support structure along the span, there is also the contention that explosives were used to bring the bridge down. Theorists argue that there was no way the bridge could have fallen so quickly and uniformly, even suggesting that the cargo ship itself was a decoy to distract from the detonation happening quickly above…
Critics of this assertion claim that it’s simply ridiculous. After all, this was a massive architectural structure carefully stabilized by critical load-bearing piers and cables. When the power cables snapped, sparks occurred.
Those familiar with disaster events and the fog of information that often surrounds them, find the ‘dynamite’ claim to be classic misdirection. If something… fishy did happen with the Key Bridge collision, the dynamite theory could be planted to discredit other more viable conjectures. This is sometimes called poisoning the well.
And it’s easy to get lost in the murk of that well, or the River itself, as we try to make sense of this bewildering event…
Noise, Signal, and a Heroic Mayday?
One of the most difficult aspects of scrutinizing and analyzing the events that occurred on March 26th - and those that precipitated them - is the sheer volume of information. There is a lot to parse, a lot to perceive and judge, and frankly, most people don’t have the time, patience, or expertise to do it.
This is the main reason people tend to “trust the experts.”
The COVID Era exemplified this. It was a period where we were told by and large to outsource our thinking to specialists because, after all, they get paid the big bucks for a reason.
The both subtle and overt insistence that you can’t reach logical conclusions because you’re not an ‘expert’ is powerful. But what many people learned and continue to learn from that experience, was that suspending your critical thinking is rarely a good thing.
Ignoring your internal governor and mindlessly adhering to authority can get you to behave against your own best interests. It can get you to think irrationally, justifying emotional actions ex post facto. It can get you to totally fold and collapse, like a once-powerful bridge hit at the perfect spot…
While the vast majority of us are not structural engineers, fluid dynamics professors, or seasoned mariners, we have eyes to see and ears to listen. In some cases, it’s better to be a generalist than a specialist, zooming out from the granular details to see the 40,000-ft view.
The maelstrom of minutiae around this Baltimore bridge event is enough to dizzy even the most consummate of professionals.
The questions abound:
What caused the power disruptions?
How, why, and when was the anchor dropped?
What caused the black smoke billowing out?
Why weren’t there protective ‘dolphins’ around the pylons?
Where were the tugboats when needed most?
Why was the ship cleared to go with its recent issues?
And why didn’t the ship just drift - why did it seemingly turn right into the pylon?
And these are just a small portion of the questions engendered by this crazy event…
Whatever was happening onboard the Dali in those final minutes, it was seemingly chaos. There was apparently nothing they could do, sending out a mayday before first responders jumped to action.
Question is, how did it ever get to this point? What the HELL happened? And why does the whole thing reek of a cover-up?
As experts and laypersons alike mull over the disaster, many have quickly moved on. Fed by a continuous 24/7 barrage of news and stimuli, the general public is apt to do so. They made their social media condolences, ‘checked in’ safe from the crisis, and are now onto the next thing.
But not so fast.
What if all of the anomalies, discrepancies, and oddities related to this event have a plausible explanation? What if many of them were purposely caused, manipulated, to provide cover for the true nature of the crash and collapse?
What if this accident was no accident at all?
An Attack in Plain Sight?
Enter: Lara Logan.
For those unfamiliar with Lara, she’s the recipient of three Emmy awards and a former chief correspondent for CBS News. She’s been in some of the toughest war-torn situations in the world, dived into some of the dirtiest, darkest stories, and has come out with more than her fair share of scars, emotionally and physically.
Simply put, she’s battle-tested, with an established network of sources inside, outside, and all around.
And following the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore, here is part of what she said:
"Multiple intel sources: The Baltimore bridge collapse was an “absolutely brilliant strategic attack” on US critical infrastructure – most likely cyber – & our intel agencies know it. In information warfare terms, they just divided the US along the Mason-Dixon line, exactly like the Civil War.
The second busiest strategic roadway in the nation for hazardous material is now down for 4-5 years – which is how long they say it will take to recover. Bridge was built specifically to move hazardous material – fuel, diesel, propane gas, nitrogen, highly flammable materials, chemicals, and oversized cargo that cannot fit in the tunnels – that supply chain now crippled.
Make no mistake: this was an extraordinary attack in terms of planning, timing & execution.
The two critical components on that bridge are the two load-bearing pylons on each end, closest to the shore. They are bigger, thicker and deeper than anything else. These are the anchor points and they knew that hitting either one of them would be a fatal wound to the integrity of the bridge…
They chose a full moon so they would have maximum tidal shift – rise and fall. Brisk flow in that river on a normal day & have had a lot of rain recently so water was already moving along at a good pace.
Hit it with enough kinetic energy to knock the load-bearing pylon out from under the highway – which fatally weakens the span and then 50 percent of the bridge fell into the water…
All these factors when you look at it – this is how you teach people how to do this type of attack and there are so few people left in the system who know this. We have a Junior varsity team on the field.
For every $100 that goes into the city, $12 comes from shipping. Believe this will cripple the city of Baltimore at a time when they do not have the resources to recover.”
Say what you will of Lara’s assertion that this attack was perpetrated by some sort of cyber interference. And say what you will of her supposed intel sources, which could be feeding her disinformation (as has happened before).
What’s hard to dismiss is her estimation of the far-reaching impacts of the event. Even if exaggerated, there is no denying the serious economic effects.
They’re already happening…
So, while the cyber attack theory is yet just a theory, what’s not speculative is the damage wrought. Clearly, the economy is taking a hit and will continue to feel the burden. This is more than some bridge, more than just a matter of rerouting transports and reconfiguring timetables.
If it was some kind of terrorist attack - or infrastructure attack, more precisely - the perpetrators sure got their bang for the buck…
Is Such a Thing Even Possible?
While the thought of hacking into a massive vessel and controlling or disrupting its systems, potentially steering it to disaster, may sound like something out of a Tom Clancy novel, it’s actually not outside the realm of possibility.
If anything, it’s squarely within it.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t a remote hack attack at all. Perhaps, somebody got paid off on the 22-member Indian crew to sabotage the systems. Maybe even the local pilots bringing the Dali through the port were somehow corrupted?
But if that’s the case, why the mayday? Why the apparent efforts to correct the ship? And what about all the confusion and ambiguity surrounding the power outages and computer failings, happening just recently?
What about the Dali’s previous history of problems, with at least one major accident? Is this mostly due to corporate greed, cut corners, and general financial desperation in a poor economy?
Interestingly, the ship did pass its most recent inspections:
“The Dali passed a June 2023 inspection in Chile. A faulty pressure gauge for the fuel heaters was identified but fixed before the vessel left the port, according to authorities. The Dali was then inspected in September by the U.S. Coast Guard in New York, and no problems were found. Before it left Baltimore, the ship underwent routine engine maintenance, according to the Coast Guard.”
Of course, many are quick to point out that the electrical issues could very well be just one aspect of a confluence of factors. If malicious actors were planning on hacking the ship, wouldn’t it be easier to penetrate a vessel with known issues? Wouldn’t those issues also then be a great cover to obfuscate what really happened? A nice alibi?
This is, of course, assuming the hackers didn’t want their hack to be known…
While electrical issues are not uncommon, the timing and severity of the Dali’s are suspect. Some anonymous online posters - ostensibly well informed in onboard systems - are quick to call BS on the ‘electrical excuse’…
In the image above, the poster refers to strutnex or whatever, by which he means Stuxnet, a so-called computer worm that “targets supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems and is believed to be responsible for causing substantial damage to the nuclear program of Iran.”
Did hackers use something like Stuxnet to target the control systems of the Dali? After all, many modern maritime vessels rely on SCADA systems, and it’s not like the International Maritime Organization (IMO) isn’t aware of their vulnerabilities…
And while we’re at it, let’s not pretend that remote interference is some far-fetched notion. Malicious entities can and do commandeer vessels without so much as a single person onboard.
Believe it or not, this has been known for years…
Given that the capability and technology are not only possible but actively being used, now one has to ask the next logical question. Who is using it?
It’s not like we’re talking about some computer genius in his pajamas in his basement (or are we?). If anything, we’re talking about malicious actors on an international scale. Could it be foreign adversaries, enemies, or competitors?
Could it be factions within our own government or intel agencies, the same that have evidently sprung open our borders, flooding us with unvetted illegal aliens and all the problems therein? The ones that kick up skirmishes offshore, fund proxy wars, and enrich their bedmate cronies while dissolving the financial bedrock of us pathetic, impecunious peasants?
If the Dali was remotely hacked by a cyber attack and then crashed into the Key Bridge, whodunnit?
Fourth-Generation Warfare
While traditional warfare still rages on with tanks and artillery, ships and planes, helicopters and drones, there is plenty that goes unseen. Some of it is right beneath our noses or directly in front of our eyes, so clear and close to our faces that we look right through it without ever knowing it’s there.
Hiding in plain sight.
The modern war between superpowers - unless catalyzed into a nuclear holocaust - will not be the direct conflicts of old. Rather, we will see attacks on our infrastructure. Attacks on our social fabric and culture. Attacks on financial, political, technological, and economic engines.
It will come as propaganda. As directives for our own safety and well-being. It will come with soothing tones and caring eyes. With false smiles and feigned concerns.
It will come as ‘accidents’ that stifle our questions, lest we’re labeled “conspiracy theorists.” It will come as suppression and censorship, revisionism and retraction, the end of objectivity and the beginning of subjective truths - but only within a narrow window.
Stray too far, too haphazardly from those sanctioned narratives, and you’ll know it loud and clear.
An Age of Distractions
Following an event like the Key Bridge collision, it’s easy to get inundated. The ceaseless news cycles are enough to leave even the most fervent info junkies mixed up and run down.
But what if this is by design?
According to Lara Logan and her Intel Community sources, there is a very strong psychological reasoning behind such stimulation overload. While people meticulously scrutinize every millisecond of Dali, obsessed and hung up on extraneous details and overblown theories, others have almost forgotten about ‘that bridge in Baltimore’ entirely.
Remember the attack in Moscow just recently that killed 143? Notice how quickly that disappeared from the headlines?
Given that Russia claims the ISIS-style mercenaries were proxies of the West, could Russia have been behind the Dali infrastructure attack? Was it payback? Or was it China? Or was it the U.S. government and intel agencies? Or some other actors?
The fact is, there’s a lotta noise. It can be hard to separate the deafening distractions from the clean signals. It can be hard to know where to look, what to focus on, and what to believe.
Have there been more train derailments, factory fires, and infrastructure disasters, like the chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, or are we just now noticing them more because they’re getting more coverage? Because we live in a digital age of incredible saturation and interconnectivity?
According to Lara, all of this may just be “engineered complexity” or noise designed to overload our systems and keep us from seeing what’s clearly there. In the case of the Dali hitting the Key Bridge, many people immediately noted that it looked to turn directly into the bridge at the last minute, almost head-on. Intentionally.
Immediately, others rushed to dispel this through variables like water levels and currents, rudder use, anchoring, discombobulated electrical and mechanical systems, and all sorts of other intricate and abstruse explanations.
Other people, still, didn’t seem to notice or care about any of these oddities, instead focused solely on the ongoing ‘search for survivors,’ as if individuals under the water for that long would somehow still be alive.
And then you have a swath of the population who is intently concerned with the details of ‘liability’ and ‘responsibility.’ How are these burdens distributed? In the insurance industry? The charterer? The operator? The companies paying for their cargo?
Who is responsible and liable for damages, people wonder, never entertaining the idea that maybe the ones responsible and liable are those who perpetrated an attack…
When we look at the collision and collapse, what do we see? Stripping away the irrelevant and redundant, and trusting our guts, what do we see?
Was the simplest, most devastatingly immediate explanation the right one all along? Or are we being led to believe something to then later discredit us?
Was the reason they rushed to tell us it was most certainly not terrorism because they wanted us to believe the opposite? Was it reverse psychology to then trap us?
As Lara Logan states on X, “engineered complexity” is a preferred tool of the Intelligence Community:
“1) Engineered complexity - where they throw in nonsensical variables (information) to distract. This is designed to keep you from serially processing multiple channels & give you processing overload that prevents you from toggling different channels of information. IE: they create processing decoys to distract you from truth.
2) They are trying to reframe the issue by focusing on details that do not matter. They do this by throwing in a variable that is not relevant to the main equation.
3) Common sense, skepticism and intelligence are huge “overlays” that get in the way of manipulating human behavior so they analyze you to learn how to create channel overload as you toggle/handle different channels of information such as the speed of the boat, temperature of the water etc.
4) They need to load you up with enough variance to create channel overload so you create an error that they can use to discredit you. One way is to create doubt in yourself. Most effective because you make yourself less efficient when your brain is processing self-doubt. And it will propagate into the future.”
As we try to make sense of this disaster, the truth is… we probably never will.
At least not in the sense of absolute clarity. Things will get swept under the rug, life will go on, and “conspiracy theorists” will continue to scream in their silos.
While the general public is certainly more distrusting and awakened than in recent memory, their opinions and thoughts will mostly remain under wraps, relegated to private conversations with like-minded friends & family.
Perhaps, people will even find a way to convince themselves out of believing that a cyber attack could have occurred.
After all, according to The World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC), “from 1960 to 2015,” there were “35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collision,” meaning that perhaps this one wasn’t that uncommon.
Was the Dali collision just a perfect storm? Bad luck? Preventable issues? Unforeseen circumstances? Human errors? A chain of events that while rare, was bound to happen eventually?
While nobody can say for certain, we can say one thing: times have changed. In 2024, given the world and state of affairs, what was once easily dismissed as a coincidence or accident deserves far more scrutiny.
Today, if you aren’t questioning everything and anything, you’re hardly even sentient.
Has anyone asked how the police were able to stop traffic on both sides with three minutes warning as reported. Were they already set up directing traffic because of repairs. Usually that type of direction is done by road crews. It’s an odd detail. Maybe I heard wrong.
I'm a 32 year cyber security pro, Intel agency before that. I think it was a cyber attack. Specifically GPS Spoofing that essentially hijacked their nav system. We need to know at what point the pilots and captain knew their nav system was screwed up giving them false readings. We only saw lights go off and on and back off and back on. We don't know the actual extent of power loss on that ship. I am wondering if lights going off and on so close to the bridge was the crews last ditch, desparate attempt to regain control. Sometimes a hard shutdown by pulling the plug works to thwart a cyber attack. Plugging back in and booting back up sometimes brings your system back. Sometimes it doesn't. Some cyber attacks have persistence.
GPS spoofing is a well known attack against a dangerous vulnerability in navigation systems using GPS, both maritime vessels and aircraft. No identification, no password, no authentication. Anyone can get on their frequency and send them fake GPS. Putin is known to use GPS spoofing to misdirect drones flying into Russia from Ukraine. A few years ago hackers at DefCon demo'd hacking ADS-B GPS navigation system used by aircraft. You literally can take over a plane. Since 9/11 maritime vessels have been required to install and use GPS based systems for ship identification, tracking and navigation. In the US the systems are called AIS and NCDIS.
GPS Spoofing is a very easy attack method to do, doesn't require much skill or expensive equipment. You can do it with a $40 Noelec SDR dongle and some free software. It could have been anyone with an axe to grind against the US. That list is getting long.