Blaze Media has come out with an excellent piece written by Steve Baker and Joseph M. Hanneman discussing how China is behind millions of linked SIM cards set up in a massive network that were ostensibly being used to carry out surveillance and target conservative leaders in what can only be seen as an “act of war.”
A massive network across the country
Previously, I wrote a post titled “Secret Service Takes Down Massive ‘Telecommunications Threat’ in NYC Used in ‘Swatting’ Attacks Against Republicans, Capable of Crippling Cellphone System.” It covered the discovery of the network in New York City near the United Nations General Assembly, which was meeting last week. More than 300 co-located servers and more than 100,000 SIM cards were found.
But that is far from the whole story here. The extensive network, which was spread out over a wide area, was capable of taking out cell towers, disrupting communications, swatting targets, and threatening infrastructure.
But as noted in that piece, the Secret Service and federal agencies didn’t get all of them because there is no way to know where all the farms are. New York City was only the tip of the iceberg… this is a major national security threat.
Chinese spies and acts of war
The Chinese Communist Party has been operating these SIM card networks as far back as 2004, according to Blaze Media, which spoke to sources in the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. intelligence community. Since President Trump was re-elected, their growth has exponentially exploded.
“This is something that is a direct threat to our nation right now,” a top intelligence official told Blaze Media in an interview. “A direct threat to our nation, and it needs to be shut down today — like ASAP. Only five of them have been taken down so far.”
Those five sites are in New York City, but it is a good bet that there are more out there and that similar sites are spread across the entire nation. Add to that the scary fact that China is deeply embedded in the software that controls our water systems and power grid, and you have the potential for an apocalyptic event that could kill millions in a relatively short period of time. It could also bring our military to a halt.
It comes as no shock whatsoever that the SIM networks were put in place by China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). They are an espionage agency for the communists, and their spies are all over the place because no one has been keeping tabs on the Chinese, according to the China Leadership Monitor. We take their money, but we don’t vet Chinese citizens, and they have taken full advantage of that to steal technology and spy on our military and citizens.
More from Blaze Media:
The MSS employs more than 800,000 people, nearly double the Soviet KGB at its peak. The MSS “now operates worldwide at a scale and tempo not seen in decades,” China Leadership Monitor wrote in a recent newsletter.
Several officials who spoke with Blaze News anonymously said the establishment and use of this destructive network by China should be considered an act of war. The potential threat to America would be “second only to thermonuclear war,” one source said.
“It’s absolutely an act of war — an internationally recognized act of war,” one intelligence expert told Blaze News. “Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure is, and facilitating terrorism to the point where you’re trying to kill high-ranking members of the United States government. Those two alone are acts of war.”
Swatting conservative leaders
Conservative leaders such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Tim Pool, and Steve Bannon, as well as a senior U.S. Secret Service official and FBI Director Kash Patel, have been swatted anonymously. It’s a good bet that this SIM network is behind it, probably being utilized by Americans through a foreign government or a criminal enterprise.
“These things were being used all summer to SWAT people since Trump was elected,” one source, speaking anonymously, told Blaze Media. “Swatting — that’s a terrorist act. The Trump administration declared that a terrorist act.”
The Chinese SIM farms, located in the Tri-State area, were discovered last spring when a senior Secret Service official and some Secret Service protectees were swatted.
“The only reason we found this network is because a senior Secret Service official was targeted for a SWAT raid,” the source told the media outlet. “Otherwise, this investigation would have never been initiated.”
Disturbingly, no U.S. intelligence or law enforcement agency detected the secret network. The three major wireless carriers here in the U.S., AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, and Verizon, also failed to detect it.
Potential for disruption
According to CBS News, 200,000 more SIM cards were just found in New Jersey.
“The potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated,” Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement. “The U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission is all about prevention, and this investigation makes it clear to potential bad actors that imminent threats to our protectees will be immediately investigated, tracked down, and dismantled.”
Homeland Security Investigations, the Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence are now conducting a forensic investigation into the servers and the SIM cards, according to Matt McCool, special agent in charge of the Secret Service New York Field Office.
“This was a difficult and complex effort to identify the source of these fraudulent calls and the impact on the Secret Service protective mission,” McCool contended in a video statement.
From Blaze Media:
The SIM farms and their networked cellular chips pose a threat to critical infrastructure with the ability to disable cell towers, enable internet denial of service attacks, and facilitate anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal cartels, the Secret Service said.
Officials who spoke to Blaze News said the New York raids and seizure of servers are the tip of a much larger iceberg.
A nationwide network using millions of SIM cards operated by China has the capability to wipe out communications across entire regions with a cyberattack; target large lists of victims for hoax SWAT calls; act as chatbots to interact with teens and young adults in online forums such as Reddit; and operate identity-theft rackets, among other applications.
“What’s shocking is that there may be up to 100 or more of these sites everywhere,” an intelligence source told Blaze News. “There’s probably 60, 80, 100 of these in the United States.”
The network could cause widespread cellular outages, according to George Hill, a retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst who ran counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and cyber operations for the four-state Boston Field Office
“EMS and hospitals rely almost exclusively on cell networks to coordinate responses to large-scale emergencies,” Hill, a U.S. Marine veteran who also worked for the National Security Agency, told Blaze Media. “An attack in a major metropolitan area that loses cell service would result in EMS being unable to coordinate triage and the movement of injured people. This would then overburden radio networks, resulting in dispatch and redeployment of first responders going offline.”
The farms have the potential to launch cyberattacks, spoof multifactor authentication to access and wipe out bank accounts, and allow spies to communicate covertly.
“They’ve used these non-attributable networks to sneak into our networks,” the intelligence analyst asserted. “So, they’ve launched cyberattacks from these; they’ve launched legitimate cyberattacks against our critical infrastructure.”
Funded by criminals and cartels
Criminal organizations, drug cartels, and scammers use these networks and then pay the SIM farms for their use. To operate the farms, it can cost $10-$15 million annually per location, but they are doing a booming business and making a large profit. A site with 100 SIM gateway boxes can make $240,000 per month in profit.
Blaze Media’s source noted, “Most of the SIM farms have a multifactor authentication capability, so they can create real-looking accounts for social media, cryptocurrency wallets, email, and banking. They can also create undetectable chatbots on Reddit, Discord, and Meta platforms to radicalize our citizens and divide our nation.”
A nation at severe risk
These spy operations could impact businesses across the nation, including hospitals, banking, gasoline and petroleum refineries, utilities, and domestic military operations. Cyberattacks have the potential to cripple these operations and kill Americans.
“The movement of traditional combat units’ equipment travels via the Military Sealift Command. These are government-owned ships operated by private companies,” Hill pointed out. “These too would come offline, as would the use of trains to move heavy combat equipment inside the U.S.”
The media is busy making light of the whole thing and memory-holing it. The Trump administration needs to call this what it is… an act of war and respond accordingly.
One thing’s for certain… when China makes its move on Taiwan, they will use these farms if we don’t stop them.
