Comment by bredren

It was a mistake to attack the business side of the oil company, because it created what could be sold as reasonable doubt to shut down the pipeline.

As a result, the ransom had the optics of an attack on infrastructure. As evidenced by the coverage of Americans desperately filling up containers.

This created the impetus for the US to treat this as an incident far and above the ambient ransomware activities leading up to this.

It also gave the US an opportunity to show how effective it could be when it had the political cover to do so.