Mesa’s Cybertruck blaze, the man who lit it, and why the Justice Department just called him a “terrorist.”
I’m writing this dispatch while the embers are still warm on a certain Tesla lot.
At 1:38 a.m. Monday, a lone rider pedaled up to a Tesla dealership in Mesa, Arizona. In his pack: a red five-gallon gas can, three fire-starter logs, a can of black spray paint, and a hand-drawn map of every camera on the lot. Ninety seconds later a silver Cybertruck was roaring like a magnesium flare, with the word “THEIF” (misspelt but unmistakable) was dripping down the stucco wall. No one was hurt. Property damage: one showroom façade and a single $80-ish-thousand-dollar status symbol piece of shit.
By sunrise, Tesla’s Security Center in Palo Alto had piped its real-time footage to local police. Officers matched the video to a biker who’d just climbed into a Chrysler minivan parked a quarter-mile away. Inside: the gas can, the mask, the lighter, and that map. They arrested 35-year-old Ian Moses on the spot.
From misdemeanor blaze to federal “terror”
Here’s where the story leaves the realm of routine vandalism and sprints head-first into the new America:
- 36 hours. That’s all it took for Attorney General Pam Bondi to yank the case out of Arizona state court and re-file it under 18 U.S.C. § 844(i)—malicious damage by fire to property used in interstate commerce. Max penalty: twenty years.
- Bondi didn’t stop there. In a press release she labeled the act “domestic terrorism.” She all but promised a terrorism-sentence enhancement if prosecutors can shoehorn it in.
- The FBI/ATF “Tesla Task Force”(yes, that’s a real thing) rolled agents to the scene in under six hours. They’re already tracking 30-plus incidents nationwide.
If they want to sink the money and effort into these cases, they should feel free to spread themselves thin.
Let that timeline sink in.
One burned pickup → full federal muscle → terror rhetoric → decades of cage time on the table. Compare it to how slowly the same people move when the morbidly wealthy attack us.
Different speed, different priority.
Why the overkill?
Washington has quietly re-classified anything stamped with an elongated “T” (compensating for the not so elongated wiener) as critical infrastructure. Musk is Trump’s favorite oligarch, the Cybertruck is the administration’s rolling campaign prop, and arsonhands them a security narrative.
Today’s message is unmistakable:
Hurt a worker? Maybe OSHA shows up next quarter.
Torch a Tesla? The national-security state is on your porch before breakfast.
This is deterrence by spectacle. It’s also a preview of the “freedom of movement” we’re giving these Trump-suckling stormtroopers.
Lessons for Staying Free (and Making Their Job Harder)
Don’t carry your case file. Ian Moses rolled out with a map of cameras, a gas can, and the exact tools used—all in his backpack, all recovered from the van he used to flee. If you must act, carry nothing that can place you at the scene: no receipts, no sketches, no burner phones with traceable logins. The best action leaves no forensic breadcrumb.
Avoid repeatable patterns. Riding a recognizable bike to and from a crime scene, then jumping into a nearby van? That’s what cops dream of. Never arrive or leave in ways traceable to you. Ditch phones. Rotate vehicles. Don’t park close. Don’t return to the area. If your plan requires convenience, it’s not a plan.
Delete the map. Moses had surveillance locations drawn out—useful for planning, damning in court. Digital or paper, it’s all admissible. If you scout, do it in person. Store nothing. Memorize, don’t document.
Ghost yourself. Before any high-risk move, erase your digital shadow. Factory-reset phones or leave them behind entirely. Use gloves and masks—real ones, not costume-level. Block license plates. Expect infrared and drones. Never assume you’re anonymous just because it’s dark.
Sow doubt, not clarity. The government wants a clean story. Don’t give them one. If they find a burned truck, let them find nothing else. No manifesto, no fingerprints, no matching vehicle. Make every attribution a stretch, every warrant a reach. Drag out the process. Confuse the chain of evidence. Force prosecutors to work, not celebrate.
Act like they’re watching—because they are. DHS flags anything around “critical infrastructure,” and Musk’s toys are on the list. If you’re near a Tesla lot, assume cameras, license plate readers, and wireless intercepts are live. If your action doesn’t assume full-spectrum surveillance, you’re gambling with prison time.
Stay away from lone-wolf theater. One-man shows with fire and slogans are not usually the most successful or impactful. People worry that these actions are fuel to justify new crackdowns, rightfully so. Be bold but be as smart as possible. Coordinated, collective, and legal-adjacent pressure that’s harder to label as “terror” is the smarter play.
Make prosecution unattractive. If a corporation is terrified of its own insurance premiums, jittery about investor optics, and faced with widespread yet low-risk dissent—it’s more likely to cut PR losses than call in the feds. A legal headache beats a criminal prosecution every time.
Narrative matters. You can’t (usually) win public sympathy with torched luxury cars, although in the shadow of Project 2025, it makes me smile a bit. If people want to see less of these types of actions, they should add to the collective power of striking workers and others in the resistance. Keep the spotlight on harm to our people, not damage to their property. 😉
What Moses taught us, if nothing else:
You don’t beat a security state by lighting a match in front of its cameras. You beat it by making surveillance useless, overreach costly, and prosecution a public-relations quagmire.
A word on Ian Moses
I don’t know Moses’ motives beyond what the criminal complaint says. Was he making a statement? Cracking under economic strain? Either way, he’s a cautionary tale.
Where we go from here
I’m here, not to scold a man I’ve never met or to glorify him, but to remind you that power loves nothing more than an excuse to amplify its own violence. Don’t give it free ammo.
Organize. Expose. Strike surgically.
When the inevitable overreach comes, meet it with twice the discipline and ten times the daylight. If Washington can turn a burned Cybertruck into a terror indictment overnight, imagine what it will do when the resistance finally moves from symbolic sparks to sustained, collective heat.
They don’t stand a chance.