A Chinese-linked operation to paralyze New York’s telecommunications network was far more extensive than authorities initially believed, according to law enforcement sources speaking to ABC News. The alarming scale of the plot has intensified the urgency of the federal investigation, as officials uncover more locations, more equipment, and a broader threat than first understood.
Plot Could Have Crippled NYC Cell Towers, 911 System
Federal agents say the operation had the potential to knock out every cell tower in the New York City area, jam 911 emergency calls, and sow widespread chaos by overloading critical communications systems.
Initial raids uncovered 100,000 SIM cards and hundreds of servers in five different vacant apartments and office spaces around the city. But now, officials say they’ve found an additional 200,000 SIM cards at a site in New Jersey, bringing the total haul to over 300,000.
Investigators with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Secret Service believe the equipment — capable of sending up to 30 million anonymous text messages per minute — was designed to overload and disable cellular networks.
“This wasn’t just spam or harassment,” one federal agent told ABC News. “This was infrastructure warfare.”
Motivation Tied to Targeting of High-Level Individuals
The investigation began after a series of suspicious incidents involving high-ranking individuals — including at least one person with direct access to former President Donald Trump — who were hit with “swatting” attacks and threatening messages sent directly to their private phones.
These incidents raised red flags among federal law enforcement and national security agencies, triggering a broader probe that eventually led to the discovery of the New York-area data centers.
So far, no arrests have been made, and authorities are still working to identify who rented the spaces and operated the sophisticated infrastructure hidden inside them.
