Chris Knowles

Patriots on the Watchtower Chris Knowles

Since before its founding, the United States of America has depended upon its militias to defend and maintain its freedom from incursion by foreign adversaries on American soil. Although frequently the subjects of scorn or ridicule, there are over 500 militias in existence within the country's borders today. Since 2013, China has openly been conducting invasions in America, only this time the invasions do not entail "boots on the ground." They are digital in nature. Blueprints for the latest-generation fighters and bombers have been stolen. Chinese knockoffs can be found in the skies today. Other than military technology, the single greatest target for China is the United States' power grid which depends, in part, upon nuclear power plants. Unit 61398, an office within the Peoples' Liberation Army, was created to initiate hacking attacks on adversaries in the realms of industry, energy, and intellectual property. In 2019, the target upon which they focused was the American power grid. A group known as the Michigan Cyberwarfare Militia, in concert with the National Security Agency, collaborated to fend off such an attack. In the aftermath, the nation's opinion of the militia movement in America came under enhanced scrutiny. Some groups collected information on them as "hate groups" and the FBI used this information in their databases. But their performance during and after a cyberattack on the country's power grid caused that information and those databases to be reassessed.