Berlin anarchists cite AI in assault on key vitality infrastructure
A gaggle of German anarchists have claimed duty for an arson assault on vital vitality infrastructure in Berlin, citing the “insatiable” vitality calls for of synthetic intelligence (AI) and different digital applied sciences.
On 3 January 2026, members of the Vulkangruppe (Volcano Group) used selfmade incendiary units to destroy cables linked to the Lichterfelde energy station in south-west Berlin, leaving round 45,000 households and a pair of,200 companies within the metropolis with out electrical energy, based on grid operator Stromnetz Berlin.
Whereas some key buildings like hospitals and faculties have been in a position to proceed working through emergency energy turbines, most households and companies have been left with out electrical energy till 7 January, though roughly 10,000 households and 300 companies have been reconnected inside 24 hours.
The five-day blackout attributable to the arson assault is reportedly the longest blackout skilled by the German capital because the Second World Battle.
In a assertion printed on-line, the Volcano Group mentioned its targets have been “the fossil gas economic system” and “energy-guzzling” digital applied sciences resembling AI which are contributing to the planet’s fast environmental destitution.
“Within the greed for vitality, the Earth is being drained, sucked dry, burned, ravaged, razed, raped and destroyed,” they mentioned. “Whole areas are rendered uninhabitable … With our militant motion, we reject the presents of participation in a world ravaged by destruction.”
The group additional argued that AI-driven digital infrastructure expansions – in Berlin but additionally globally – will solely promote additional environmental degradation whereas enabling extra authoritarian political options through the transformation of city environments into ‘sensible metropolis’ metropolises. “Change off the greed for vitality, change off the digital administration of life, change off the progress of destruction,” they mentioned.
Mayor remark
Berlin mayor Kai Wegner instructed reporters: “It’s unacceptable that left-wing extremists are as soon as once more overtly attacking our electrical energy grid and thereby endangering human lives.”
He later added: “This isn’t simply arson or sabotage – that is terrorism.”
Berlin’s vitality and economic system senator, Franziska Giffey, referred to as the assault a “critical blow to vital infrastructure”, and mentioned the perpetrators had possible used publicly obtainable knowledge to pick out their location.
“You will discover plenty of info on the web,” she mentioned, including that policymakers would want to prioritise safety over transparency going ahead. The group claimed in its assertion, nevertheless, that the sabotaged cables have been “not publicly documented”.
On 6 January, German federal prosecutors confirmed they’d launched a terrorism investigation into the arson assault by Volcano Group, which is thought of “a left-wing extremist organisation” by the German authorities.
Energetic since 2011 – when it sabotaged railway infrastructure in Berlin on the premise that it helped the German state mission army drive and transport nuclear know-how – members of the Volcano Group have claimed duty for quite a few acts of technological sabotage since then.
This contains assaults on high-voltage energy traces, transformers, radio stations and the ability provides of Tesla manufacturing websites.
A 2024 annual safety report by Germany’s home intelligence company highlighted that the group is a significant concern for the German state as a result of “huge influence and excessive quantities of harm” attributable to their assaults, which members view as “a doubtlessly promising approach of influencing” the nation’s local weather coverage.
Up to now, German police have did not establish or arrest particular people which have participated within the Volcano Group or any of its assaults. Whereas the group’s membership and organisational construction stay largely opaque, German authorities imagine it operates in a decentralised method.
Volcano Group motivations
Within the assertion printed on-line within the wake of its assault, the Volcano Group apologised to “much less prosperous and weak” Berlin residents impacted by the ability cuts, claiming they weren’t the “supposed targets” of the motion.
“Our sympathy for the house owners of the various villas, the actual property corporations, the embassies and different elite rich people within the space is restricted. The wealthy and their self-centred, delinquent life-style are at present destroying the planet,” they mentioned, claiming the assault intentionally focused the wealthier districts of town.
In a follow-up assertion printed on 8 January, the group expressed remorse on the influence on strange Berliners, including that figuring out the complete penalties now, they’d have deliberate the assault for a hotter time of the 12 months.
In its preliminary assertion printed on-line, nevertheless, the Volcano Group mentioned its targets have been “the fossil gas economic system” and “energy-guzzling” digital applied sciences.
Noting that strange folks “don’t have any say within the route of vitality coverage selections or town’s growth”, the Volcano Group members argued that the “modernisation” of Berlin’s digital infrastructure is about growing management and making it a pretty funding location, quite than bettering the lives of all of its residents.
“These economically liberal destroyers of a habitable future consider town when it comes to numbers, sums of cash, progress charges and competitors with different cities. Folks don’t rely, or solely as classes of low-income or high-income earners,” they mentioned, noting that whereas the latter will obtain a “sensible and exquisite” metropolis, the previous will face more and more repressive measures that curtail their motion and alternatives.
“The ‘vitality transition’ is a smokescreen that obscures the truth that it’s about vitality with none transition, with out ifs, ands or buts,” they added. “The principle factor is vitality, sustainable or not.”
Highlighting how the digital applied sciences being produced by resource-intensive manufacturing processes are contributing to folks’s social dislocation whereas bolstering the army and surveillance capacities of states across the globe, Volcano Group members claimed that its “public-spirited motion is socially useful.”
They added that though the assault won’t forestall Volcano Group members’ personal complicity “in an imperial life-style” constructed on the expense of billions within the International South, it would ship a sign.
“We try to interrupt the exploitation of the Earth, forestall CO2-related deaths, and halt the ailments linked to the local weather disaster,” they mentioned. “We’re additionally making an attempt to place an finish to species extinction and make the world a extra habitable place for everybody. Those that name us ‘eco-terrorists’ are themselves the actual eco-terrorists, utilizing this time period to serve their very own egocentric pursuits and energy calculations.”
On a regular basis digitisation
Volcano Group members additionally criticised the growing digitisation of on a regular basis life, claiming that algorithmically mediated communication through smartphones and social media means persons are “working their very own surveillance”, whereas additionally feeding their “loneliness and alienation”.
On the similar time, they argued that digitisation additionally means persons are “more and more excluded” from society if they don’t use sure applied sciences.
“We’re prisoners in a digital system that more and more deprives us of our proper to exist if we don’t undergo its guidelines and relocate our lives to social media, chat rooms and synthetic realities,” they mentioned.
“We obtain no cash, can’t ebook or purchase something with money. With out entry to the digital world, we’re more and more excluded, dropping contact with what appears regular. We’re afraid of what is going to occur to us and bury ourselves even deeper in our screens as an alternative of switching off our units and taking away the ability over us of those that monitor, monitor, observe and manipulate us.”
Highlighting how wealthy nations and billionaires are doubling down within the face of looming environmental disaster – utilizing rising useful resource shortage to advertise authoritarian political options whereas persevering with their destabilising useful resource extraction at tempo – the Volcano Group members referred to as for “a world motion that rejects progress primarily based solely on destruction, homicide and plunder.”
“Determined, indignant and decided, we name out, becoming a member of the calls of others: Sabotage the fossil gas infrastructure, the ability grids, the exploitation of the Earth, the datacentres, the chip business and its suppliers; destroy the foundations of the automotive and arms industries, of air journey, villas, yachts, spaceships and golf programs,” they mentioned.
“Destroy the police headquarters that assure patriarchal property relations, for the Earth belongs to itself and to all dwelling beings, to not people, or quite, to males alone, and to not the richest amongst them.”
Contending views
Because the sabotage, a 3rd assertion has appeared on-line from individuals who declare to be members of the unique 2011 Volcano Group that attacked the cable duct at Ostkreuz practice station.
Distancing themselves from the motion at Lichterfelde energy station, the members mentioned it contradicts what the group initially stood for and why they acted.
“Our level of reference was clear and restricted,” they mentioned. “Our targets have been Bundeswehr deployments, German participation in wars, and arms exports.
“Infrastructure was not an finish in itself or a taking part in discipline for us, however quite an emblem and car for exterior army drive. Our interventions have been directed towards battle insurance policies, not towards fundamental social companies, not towards folks of their on a regular basis lives.”
Noting that “our previous actions are getting used to legitimise, clarify or politically justify present assaults”, the group added that they’ve now distanced themselves from this and different latest Volcano Group assaults as a result of they don’t “wish to be a part of a dynamic through which criticism of militarism coincides with the precise weakening of societies”.
Nonetheless, simply because the identities of those that made the preliminary statements after the Lichterfelde assault can’t be definitively recognized, there is no such thing as a approach of concretely verifying the identities of the third letter’s authors.
