Skyler Philippi

Skyler Philippi (born approximately 2001, Columbia, Tennessee) pleaded guilty on September 9, 2025, to two counts in the Middle District of Tennessee: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction under 18 U.S.C. § 2332a, and attempting to destroy an energy facility. His plot involved attaching what he believed to be C-4 plastic explosive to a drone and flying it into a Nashville-area electrical substation. FBI undercover employees and confidential human sources disrupted the plot during its November 2024 operational phase, arresting Philippi on-site as he prepared to attach the explosive device to the drone. Sentencing was scheduled for January 8, 2026, with a maximum penalty of life in prison.¹

Prior Extremist Affiliations

In August 2024, Philippi told an undercover employee that he had written a "manifesto" outlining his desire to attack "high tax cities or industrial areas" and disclosed prior affiliation with Atomwaffen Division and the National Alliance. The National Alliance, founded by William Luther Pierce and the original publisher of The Turner Diaries, had undergone multiple leadership transitions after Pierce's 2002 death; its surviving membership in the early 2020s overlapped significantly with Terrorgram-adjacent online communities. Philippi's path from AWD-adjacent ideology to Terrorgram-era infrastructure targeting mirrored that of other defendants in the Terrorgram Collective network, though his case was charged separately, not within the United States v. Humber prosecution.

Planning and Operational Conduct

In June 2024, Philippi communicated to a confidential human source (CHS) that he wanted to commit a mass shooting at a YMCA facility near Columbia, Tennessee. He subsequently shifted his focus to infrastructure attack, researching previous attacks on electrical substations and concluding that firearms-only attacks were insufficient. He planned instead to use a drone with explosives capable of causing damage sufficient to knock out power to thousands of homes and critical facilities including hospitals.

Philippi researched self-built drone construction to reduce detection risk and identified TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide) and C-4 as preferred explosive materials. In November 2024, in a staged operation, Philippi and undercover FBI employees drove to his intended Nashville launch site; he was arrested as he prepared to attach a device he believed to contain 3 pounds of C-4 explosive to the drone.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Josh Kurtzman of the Middle District of Tennessee and Trial Attorneys Justin Sher and James Donnelly of the National Security Division's Counterterrorism Section.²