In the early hours of a chilly November morning in St. Paul, Minnesota, residents awoke to find their neighborhood shrouded in darkness. The culprit wasn’t a storm or a technical glitch, but a more insidious threat: copper thieves had stripped thousands of feet of wiring from the city’s streetlights, leaving entire blocks in the dark and local officials scrambling to repair the damage. This scene, reported by The Wall Street Journal, is being repeated across the United States, as a surge in copper wire theft cripples critical infrastructure and disrupts daily life for millions.
The crisis, which federal regulators now call a "growing epidemic," is being driven by near-record prices for copper—a metal as essential to modern life as it is lucrative for those willing to risk the law. According to the Internet & Television Association, reported incidents of copper theft have nearly doubled in recent months. The attacks are not random acts of desperation, but increasingly coordinated efforts by organized criminal groups, as noted by the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. The result: widespread telecommunications outages, compromised emergency services, and repair bills that vastly exceed the value of the stolen metal.
Telecommunications companies, particularly giants like AT&T, are bearing the brunt of this costly crimewave. In the first ten months of 2025 alone, AT&T reported spending $76 million on repairs related to copper theft, according to iNews. Repair crews find themselves in a relentless cycle—restoring downed lines, only to have thieves strike again soon after. This persistent threat creates vulnerabilities that ripple through communities and businesses, especially those reliant on stable internet and phone service. The situation is so dire that, as Fierce Telecom reports, major carriers are offering substantial cash rewards for information leading to the arrest of copper thieves.
But why is copper suddenly such a hot commodity? The answer lies in the global push toward electrification and green technology. Copper’s unique conductivity makes it indispensable for everything from electrical wiring to electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. As the economy pivots toward cleaner energy and AI-driven data centers, demand for copper has soared, pushing its price above $4 per pound in 2025—historic highs that, according to CNBC, have fueled speculative trading and a supply squeeze. This market dynamic creates a massive incentive for theft. A thief might earn $100 for a bundle of wire stripped from a streetlight, but the cost to the city or company to repair the damage can easily top $5,000 per incident.
The economic impact is deeply asymmetric. As one industry insider put it, "The operational drag is significant; technicians who should be rolling out 5G upgrades are instead dispatched to splice cables in remote manholes." This constant diversion of resources is wreaking havoc on corporate balance sheets and slowing the rollout of next-generation infrastructure. For some carriers, the only solution is to accelerate the decommissioning of copper networks, replacing them with fiber optic cables that have no scrap value. Yet, as Fierce Telecom points out, this transition cannot happen overnight, leaving legacy networks exposed in the meantime.
Perhaps the most strategic threat posed by the copper theft epidemic is to the national rollout of electric vehicle infrastructure. The Biden administration and private automakers are investing billions in charging networks, but these stations—often located in unmonitored parking lots—are prime targets for thieves. Severed cables render the stations useless, undermining consumer confidence in EV reliability and slowing the green transition. According to The New York Times, charging companies are now forced to retrofit stations with hardened steel enclosures and advanced surveillance, imposing a "security tax" that raises the cost of installation and maintenance, particularly in underserved urban areas where chargers are needed most.
The consequences for ordinary Americans are profound. Residents face prolonged loss of phone, internet, and even 911 services. These outages can shut down schools, disrupt medical services, and leave entire neighborhoods isolated from critical communications. In one major incident in California, over 50,000 customers were left without service for 30 hours, disrupting emergency communications and public safety, as iNews reported. Cities like Los Angeles and St. Paul have seen streetlight outages that increase the risk of traffic accidents and crime, forcing municipalities to divert millions from other services just to keep the lights on.
Municipalities are fighting back with a mix of hardening and innovation. Some public works departments are welding access panels shut or filling junction boxes with concrete to deter would-be thieves. Others are switching to less valuable aluminum wiring, though this comes with its own technical challenges. Yet, as the Associated Press highlights, the sheer volume of theft has forced some cities to leave lights off for extended periods, admitting they simply can’t keep up with the pace of destruction.
At the heart of the crisis is the scrap metal ecosystem that enables stolen copper to be monetized. Scrap yards, sometimes unwittingly and sometimes complicitly, serve as the final stop for illicit metal. Although 14 states have enacted new laws in 2025 to crack down on copper theft—including better documentation requirements for scrapyards—enforcement is patchy. Thieves often sell stolen copper across state lines or to unscrupulous dealers who pay cash with "no questions asked." Industry groups like the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) are calling for a federal standard to close these loopholes. As Bloomberg reports, the black market remains robust, and the pressure on the recycling stream is only increasing as the supply-demand gap for copper widens.
To outpace the thieves, the industry is turning to technology. Utility companies are deploying IoT-enabled sensors that detect voltage drops in real time, allowing for rapid dispatch of security or police. Some are using DNA-traceable liquids to spray cables, so if the metal is recovered, it can be forensically linked to a specific crime scene. Telecom firms are also installing tracking devices in wires, using sensor alerts, and offering rewards for information leading to arrests. Yet, as effective as these measures may be, they add new layers of complexity and cost to infrastructure management. "The industry is effectively being forced to build a fortress around every utility pole and junction box," one executive told The Wall Street Journal, "a strategy that is financially unsustainable in the long run."
Beyond the economic and operational toll, copper theft poses a genuine threat to national security. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warn that attacks on the grid and telecom networks constitute a major vulnerability. While most copper theft is economically motivated, the tactics—breaching secure perimeters, disabling sensors, severing critical lines—mirror sabotage, raising fears that bad actors could exploit these weaknesses for more malicious purposes.
As the United States pours billions into modernizing its infrastructure through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the stakes have never been higher. Without a concerted effort to curb copper theft and harden assets, new investments risk being dismantled as quickly as they are built. For now, cities, companies, and federal agencies remain locked in a high-stakes battle to protect the nation’s vital lifelines from a crimewave that shows no signs of slowing.
