BGP Activity as an Enabling or Supporting Effect in Venezuela Power-Grid Disruption

Analytic Note

Subject: BGP Activity as an Enabling or Supporting Effect in Venezuela Power-Grid Disruption
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED / OSINT
Date: January 2026
Analytic Confidence: Moderate (infrastructure telemetry is strong; intent attribution remains low confidence)

Executive Summary

Observed BGP route-leak anomalies involving Venezuela’s primary telecom provider (CANTV, AS8048) occurred in temporal proximity to major infrastructure disruptions. While BGP manipulation alone cannot directly disable electrical generation or transmission, available evidence supports the assessment that routing instability plausibly functioned as an enabling or compounding effect, degrading communications, situational awareness, or coordination during a broader crisis.

At present, no conclusive evidence proves deliberate offensive use of BGP. However, the structure, scope, and timing of the anomalies justify continued investigation into whether routing manipulation was used intentionally as part of a multi-domain effects operation, rather than being a purely accidental misconfiguration.

Confirmed Observations (High Confidence)

• Cloudflare Radar and routing telemetry identified route-leak anomalies involving AS8048 (CANTV), with atypical AS-path behavior and announcements routed through external transit providers.
• A constrained prefix set was affected, notably eight prefixes within 200.74.224.0/20, registered to Dayco Telecom (Caracas).
• During the anomaly window, telemetry showed:
  • A spike in BGP announcements, and
  • A reduction in announced IP address space, consistent with partial withdrawal or instability.
• The affected address space overlaps with telecom, financial, ISP, and messaging infrastructure, which are operationally critical during power-grid incidents.

These observations establish routing instability, not intent.

Analytic Judgments

Judgment 1

BGP activity did not directly cause the Venezuelan power outage.
Confidence: High

Power-grid failures require physical, OT, or control-system disruptions. Internet routing manipulation alone cannot trip generators, destroy transformers, or collapse transmission networks.

Judgment 2

BGP instability likely degraded communications during the crisis.
Confidence: Moderate–High

Telecom networks underpin grid operations, emergency coordination, outage management, and restoration logistics. Partial reachability loss or routing asymmetry affecting Caracas-based infrastructure would materially hinder response efforts.

Judgment 3

The constrained and clustered nature of affected prefixes is atypical for random global BGP noise.
Confidence: Moderate

While accidental route leaks are common, tight geographic and organizational clustering raises the probability that the impact was selective, even if the trigger was misconfiguration rather than hostile intent.

Judgment 4

Deliberate BGP manipulation as part of a layered effects operation is plausible but unproven.
Confidence: Low–Moderate

Public statements referencing “layering different effects” conceptually align with BGP being used as a communications-shaping or intelligence-support layer, but no direct evidence ties the routing event to an offensive command decision.

Hypotheses (Not Mutually Exclusive)

H1 — Accidental Route Leak Under Crisis Conditions

Assessment:
A benign policy error or misconfiguration within AS8048 or a peer caused a route leak that coincided with broader instability.

Indicators Supporting H1

• Route leaks are globally frequent.
• No sustained interception or long-duration rerouting observed.
• Rapid normalization would favor this explanation.

H2 — Communications Degradation as a Shaping Effect

Assessment:
Routing instability—intentional or not—selectively impaired key Caracas networks, slowing coordination and situational awareness during the outage.

Indicators Supporting H2

• Tight prefix clustering.
• Impact on telecom-adjacent and institutional services.
• Observable reduction in announced IP space.

H3 — BGP-Enabled Intelligence Preparation or Traffic Observation

Assessment:
Short-lived routing anomalies were used to observe or map critical communications paths during a crisis window.

Indicators Supporting H3

• Unusual AS-path prepending behavior.
• Transit through major international carriers.
• Would likely be brief to avoid detection.

Key Caveat: No public evidence of TLS interception, credential compromise, or persistent MITM currently supports this hypothesis.

H4 Deliberate Noise or Decoy Activity

Assessment:
Routing anomalies functioned primarily as analytic distraction, drawing attention away from physical sabotage, OT compromise, or telecom infrastructure failure.

Indicators Supporting H4

• High visibility, low explanatory power.
• Lack of follow-on routing exploitation.

H5 Integrated Multi-Domain Effects

Assessment:
BGP activity was one component in a broader set of cyber, informational, telecom, or physical actions designed to constrain response options.

Indicators Supporting H5

• Alignment with known “effects-layering” doctrines.
• Requires corroboration from non-BGP domains (satcom, cellular core, OT logs).

Collection Gaps

To advance confidence, the following gaps must be addressed:

1. Prefix-level reachability measurements from multiple global vantage points during the incident window.
2. NetFlow / path data showing whether traffic was merely dropped or actually transited alternate AS paths.
3. TLS / certificate telemetry indicating possible interception.
4. Utility and telecom incident logs correlating comms loss with operational decision points.
5. Historical baseline behavior for AS8048, including normal prepending patterns and peer relationships.

Priority Intelligence Requirements (PIRs)

1. Did any utility, telecom, or government operator credentials show anomalous access during or immediately after the routing event?
2. Were outage restoration timelines measurably delayed due to loss of IP-based communications?
3. Did the affected prefixes host operator-facing services (VPNs, NOCs, dispatch systems) rather than public-facing content?
4. Are similar BGP anomalies observable before or during other infrastructure crises in the region?

Bottom Line

The most defensible analytic position is that BGP instability acted as a stress/force multiplier, not a root cause. Whether that instability was accidental, opportunistic, or deliberately induced remains unresolved. However, the event demonstrates that internet routing is a viable enabling layer in modern infrastructure disruption scenarios, particularly when telecom resilience is weak and crisis coordination depends heavily on IP networks.