FBI investigating whether 5G paranoia played a role in Nashville RV bombing

5G is not only the next generation of wireless service, according to some people it is also responsible for COVID-19 and more. Back in April, vandals in China and the U.K. started  destroying cell towers after Professor Martin Pall from Washington State University said that there was a connection between 5G and the virus. The city where the coronavirus supposedly originated in China, Wuhan, was reportedly set to host a huge increase in 5G towers last year from 31 at the end of 2018 to over 10,000 at the end of 2019. Professor Pall's theory got into the hands of some conspiracy theorists and celebrities like actor Woody Harrelson and you can figure out the rest.

The professor made it clear that he wasn't blaming 5G for the deadly pandemic that has infected more than 80 million people worldwide. What he says is that radiation linked to 5G helps extend the spread of the virus and makes coronavirus deadlier. All of these rumors and theories have been shot down by doctors and government experts in the U.K. For example, Dr. Michael Head of the University of Southampton told a U.K. newspaper that "Conspiracy theorists are a public health danger who once read a Facebook page. The celebrities fanning the flames of these conspiracy theorists should be ashamed." The celebrity who helped spread Professor Pall's theory, the aforementioned Woody Harrelson, is the perfect example of an overzealous conspiracy theorist. Discussing the professor's report tying 5G to COVID-19, Harrelson admitted that "I haven’t fully vetted it."

Now, 5G has been sucked into the bombing of an RV that took place in Nashville, Tennessee on Christmas morning. The New York Post reports that the FBI is checking out a person of interest named Anthony Quinn Warner who is considered a local tech expert in the city. The 63 year-old Warner was said to be paranoid about 5G according to a report from NBC's Nashville affiliate and believed that 5G signals were spying on Americans. The U.S. government has been blocking the use of 5G networking gear from China's Huawei and ZTE fearing that these firms are forced by the Communist Chinese government to spy on U.S. consumers and corporations. The U.S. has also, with mixed success, asked allies to keep 5G networking gear from those firms out of their 5G networks. Both Huawei and ZTE have denied the allegations and no "smoking gun" has ever been found. The explosion, right near the downtown AT&T building, caused outages for the carrier's wireless customers that are still being repaired.

In the mind of someone with paranoid tendencies, the constant drumbeat from U.S. regulatory agencies, lawmakers, and top administration officials stating that some Chinese 5G networking manufacturers are spying could lead to violence. A real estate agent named Steve Fridrich, who had hired Warner to do some IT work for him, told NBC that the FBI was interested in hearing about the suspect's 5G paranoia. The real estate agent said, "Nice guy. You know, he was a techie guy — don’t mean anything negative about that. He would do this thing and leave. He didn’t bother anybody. He did his thing and left." 

Some media outlets have been reporting that the FBI is looking into the possibility that the bombing of the RV, which injured three, was a suicide attempt. No one has yet connected any possible suicide attempt to a theory that 5G signals are spying on Americans. 5G is the next generation of wireless connectivity and will eventually offer download data speeds 10 to 100 times faster than 4G LTE. With faster latency, 5G could help deliver self-driving cars and other new technologies that we can't even fathom at the moment. HD movies that download in 20-30 minutes using 4G will download in the blink of an eye, and hospitals will be able to perform robotic operations controlled by surgeons located hundreds of miles away from the OR. The countries that control 5G will be leaders of the global economy which is why, when it comes to building out 5G networks, so much is at stake.

But does 5G cause coronavirus or allow certain countries to spy on Americans? Until there is absolute proof, it is best to be skeptical about these claims.