California is a state beset with problems, most of which are directly attributable to its elected leaders. The impeccably coiffed Governor Gavin Newsom seems to stumble from gaffe to goof in the process of transparently trying to set himself up for a presidential candidacy. The California Assembly still has a Democrat supermajority, which means California Republicans are, to put it mildly, kneecapped at the state level.
Meanwhile, California's communication network is literally under attack. Thefts and vandalism are shooting upwards, and it's not just the theft of copper cable causing the problems. There's more to it than that. And California, now, holds the lead nationwide for attacks on the communications network.
That's a serious problem, and California Democrats, predictably, seem uninterested.
New industry data released this summer counted 18,327 nationwide intentional attacks on communications networks, the cables, fiber lines, and towers that keep phones and internet working, in 2025. That’s a whopping 59 percent increase over the prior year, affecting 11.8 million customers. California and Texas together account for more than half of those incidents. Los Angeles alone suffered 1,131 attacks, the most of any city in America, and California absorbed an estimated $252.6 million in losses, the largest of any state.
Vandalism against communications systems are not victimless crimes against faceless corporations. When a thief cuts a cable, 911 calls fail, hospital networks and telemedicine go dark, small businesses stop taking payments, and remote workers stop working. In Amador County, cuts to fiber lines severed dispatchers from most incoming 911 calls. A deliberate fiber cut near Sacramento International Airport knocked out internet service and delayed flights. Industry data shows the average outage from one of these incidents lasts 138 hours, nearly six days without connectivity because someone wanted a few dollars of scrap. And often not even that.
Communications cables are now being replaced with fiberoptic cable, but that isn't stopping the attacks on the networks. Oh, there is still a major problem with copper theft, but this is a bigger issue. Furthermore, the copper theft problem does have some solutions; some states (not California) have made copper theft a felony, and stricter regulations on copper dealers, mostly requiring them to verify the source of any scrap copper they purchase, can also help.
These actions are not excessive. It is the role of government to protect the liberty and property of the citizens, and this is a vital component of that role. Not only do these thefts and acts of vandalism cost the communications companies and their customers millions, but blackouts in communications systems can literally cost lives. Law enforcement, fire departments, and medical facilities all depend on these systems.
But this may not be all about theft or petty vandalism.
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There are two major concerns in all this, and, not surprisingly, they all point back to the same problem: Four years of open borders, four years of refusal to enforce immigration laws, four years of allowing all and sundry to enter the United States with little or no screening or vetting, all during the presidency of Joe Biden.
First, the illegal immigration problem. There is no good data on how many of these thefts and acts of vandalism are carried out by illegal aliens, but a quick look at a map of where these acts are prevalent is revealing:
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) July 20, 2026
As a scientist, I'm aware that correlation does not equal causation. But it does sometimes reveal clues, and many of these locations on the maps correlate with areas with a high proportion of illegal aliens. The spike in communications system thefts and vandalism started as the Biden administration's open-border policies were just being cleaned up by President Trump.
Second, it's not unreasonable to wonder if something bigger isn't going on. If a group of people wanted to test-run a major attack on a region's communications services, one way to go about that would be to stage multiple smaller disruptions, map and evaluate their effects, and then plan a larger-scale attack that could shut down telecommunications over a wide area. This is also a larger problem because of the Biden administration's lack of any attempt at immigration enforcement; as I'm continually pointing out, there are still millions of illegal aliens here in this nation, from all over the world, including places like China and Iran. We still don't know where many of them are, what they are doing, or what they may be planning.
California, it seems, can be taught; it is making some steps to deal with this.
Credit should be given where credit is due. A new law passed last year tightened recycler documentation as of January. This year, Assemblyman Mark González’s pending legislation on organized metal theft moves in the right direction by creating a new organized theft crime, adds felony exposure, builds a statewide intelligence pipeline and does name the problem correctly.
That's what we call a "good start." But they are, once more, dealing with the symptoms, not the disease.
