Another Curious Case

The DC pipe-bomb case is in the news due to a surprise arrest having been made after many years now of nothing at all. The charging document is of some interest.

Attentive readers may recall that we didn't think these were really bombs at all.

My friend Jim Hanson* and I looked over the photos of the 'bombs' that the FBI posted and determined we didn't think they were in fact functional bombs. The use of a kitchen timer, which just rings a bell instead of setting off an electrical charge that could trigger an explosion, was one tell: they look like time bombs, having a timer, but they'd then need significant additional mechanics to set off a charge. 

If we're talking about 'the chemical building blocks of black powder,' well, that's charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter (as Star Trek fans know). Those aren't explosive unless properly mixed.

The story about the arrest shows that the FBI used a fairly advanced series of electronic/machine-learning searches of corporate databases to find their man. Richard Fernandez ("Wretchard the Cat," for decades now one of the best thinkers in this space) points out that this use of tools like Palantir combined with corporate submission to Federal authority will make a lot of previously undetectable things plain to investigators. That's a problem to consider another day: how much of our lives do we really want under such microscopes, versus how much do we want to be able to react successfully to terrorist efforts (note: not 'prevent,' as these like most police work can only punish rather than stop the event from occurring)?

What the FBI was able to find, inter alia, was the purchase of the pipes and some attendant material: "six galvanized pipes, both black and galvanized endcaps, 9-volt batteries, Walmart kitchen timers and electrical wires". You could dodge that for now by paying cash, and distributing the purchases across multiple stores; this is the sort of thing that 'digitial currencies' would like to end, forcing all your purchases onto somebody's record.

What that doesn't explain is the explosive, which is why the charging documents interested me. Were these things bombs? The answer seems to still be maybe.

The component parts included a 1-inch by 8-inch pipe, end caps affixed to the pipe, 14-gauge electrical wire in red and black, alligator clips to connect the wires, a nine-volt (9v) battery, a nine-volt (9v) battery connector, a white kitchen timer, paper clips, steel wool, and homemade black powder. 

So if the kitchen timers were the sort that involved a metal bell being struck by a metal rod, you could use that to close a circuit between the 9v batteries and the steel wool placed inside the pipes. (I will leave off explaining how to wire that exactly, to avoid giving instructions on bomb-building; suffice to say that it could be done easily enough.) As camping enthusiasts often know, steel wool will burn if exposed to either flame or electricity. Thus, you could set a timer (for a short delay; these little kitchen timers don't have the ability to handle a long delay), and when the timer concluded and the bell struck it would close the circuit. You'd have to rig it so that the bell struck once and stayed struck, because it takes a while for the closed circuit to spill enough electricity into the steel wool to cause the burning; but if you did all that correctly, it could serve to touch off a main charge that was sensitive to such low-levels of fire. 

So these might really be mildly effective IEDs, if you mixed the black powder correctly. Well, that's not all that difficult; since it's the last piece of the puzzle I won't explain it here to avoid having explained exactly how to build a bomb, which might be pushing the limits of free speech (at least these days). The point is, it's also possible not to do it right, either accidentally or because you didn't really want to build a bomb but only a sufficient mock-up of a bomb to draw FBI attention for some reason (which is what J6 conspiracy theories have long suggested was the case here). Just getting the ratios wrong, or not grinding or not mixing correctly, would suffice to render these things inert. 

Still, it's looking a lot more like a live case than it was just a little while ago; and that was some actual detective work done by the FBI here, suggesting that at least some unit there is really interested in getting to the bottom of this case. It'll be curious to watch.