Interesting (Updated)

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Shock: New York Cell Service Disruption Plot Now Much Larger Than We Thought

On Friday, we reported on what appeared to be a coordinated attempt to disrupt cellular phone services in New York City, including service near the United Nations building. This attempt involved many thousands of "Subscriber Identity Modules", or SIM cards, set up in several hundred SIM servers.

This is a serious matter; it's not just interfering with Sam's ability to text his buddy Joe to meet up for beers. This has the potential to disrupt emergency services, law enforcement, business, navigation, and much more. What's more, a nation-state actor is implicated, and indications are that it's China.

Read More: New: 'Nation-State Actors' SIM Farm Threatens The American Cellular Phone Network

On Friday, we reported:

 Disrupting even a local network, like in the New York area, has the potential to disrupt not only personal communications but the media, business communications, emergency services, and government services. It's unclear how much damage could be done or how long-lasting it may be. These SIM farms do not appear to have the capacity to physically damage cellular infrastructure; such an attack could still have far-reaching consequences, and this particular instance took place in the vicinity of the United Nations building at the time of the recent General Assembly, as the Secret Service points out.

Now, things are much worse than initial findings indicate.

Note that ABC News is now reporting that this is a "China-linked plot that could have crippled every cell tower in the nation's largest city, jammed 911 calls, and unleashed chaos on communications networks." This could have disrupted communications over much of the New York metropolitan area. Maybe farther.

Secret Service personnel, along with officers from multiple agencies, seized hundreds of servers and over 100,000 cellphone SIM cards from around New York. Enough equipment to send 30 million anonymous texts every minute, which would collapse the telecommunications system.

They found empty apartments with servers and server walls capable of making millions of phone calls in and around New York City," said Donald Mihalek, an ABC News Contributor who was formerly with the Secret Service.

But this week, that number expanded. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that agents from Homeland Security Investigations found an additional 200,000 SIM cards in New Jersey.

These devices allowed anonymous encrypted communications between potential threat and criminal enterprises," said McCool.

The U.S. Secret Service is still working to figure out a motive and whether or not there was a specific target. It's also still not clear if the equipment was supposed to be triggered during the United Nations General Assembly, which took place in New York during the last full week of September.

So far, no arrests have been made but McCool did mention that forensic examination is underway. He also indicated there was cellular communication between foreign actors and individuals known to law enforcement.

….. Which begs the question: are there more of these SIM farms in other cities?

….The worst part of this is that there may be more of these SIM farms, maybe more in the New York area, maybe also in, say, Chicago, Miami, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. A coordinated disruption in those key cities could take down our information and communications infrastructure over much of the lower 48.

Finally, and perhaps most chilling of all, such an attack on our information infrastructure would likely only be a prelude to something much more serious.

UPDATE: A reader/friend who has some experience in this field writes:

Re: China's cell phone disruption plot, read Jim Olson's book, To Catch a Spy. Olson was formerly the head of Counter Intelligence at the CIA. Now a professor at UT. The furthest thing from a MAGA alarmist.

The book is truly eye-opening.  Very disturbing!

In fact -- and you would have to really scour the web to find this -- I believe I read that two CCP agents have been recently deported by the USA. 

IMO, many of the Invisibles', and other demonstrations (eg, "from the river to the sea,"), are funded/organized by agents or money from the CCP and/or Qatar. They're simply trying to destroy America. The Dems couldn't be happier to help out.

Unbelievable.

Except, it isn't.