It's just normal crime
Today, the Secret Service announced they foiled some big national security threat. Major news organizations (e.g. NYTimes) have repeated their claims without questioning them.
The story is bogus.
What they discovered was just normal criminal enterprise, banks of thousands of cell “phones” (sic) used to send spam or forward international calls using local phone numbers. Technically, it may even be legitimate enterprise, being simply a gateway between a legitimate VoIP provider and the mobile phone network.
The backstory is a Secret Service investigation into threats sent to politicians via SMS messages. The miscreant used one of this spam farms to mask their origin. When the Secret Service traced back the messages, using radio “triangulation” (sic) to find the mobile phones, they found these SIM farms instead.
One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable.
The Secret Service is lying to the press. They know it’s just a normal criminal SIM farm and are hyping it into some sort of national security or espionage threat. We know this because they are using the correct technical terms that demonstrate their understanding of typical SIM farm crimes. The claim that they will likely find other such SIM farms in other cities likewise shows they understand this is a normal criminal activity and not any special national security threat.
Their official statements are obvious distortions, like being within 35 miles of the UN building. Their unofficial statements are designed to exaggerate even more, like “never before seen such an extensive operation”. The Secret Service doesn’t normally investigate such crime, so of course they are unlikely to have seen such an extensive operation.
Another way you know that the NYTimes is lying is because of the independent “experts” they quote to confirm it.
For decades now, when the NYTimes has a cybersecurity story from anonymous government officials, they quote James A. Lewis to confirm it. This guy used to work for CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) but apparently has changed employers recently. Whenever I blog/tweet about bogus NYTimes cybersecurity stories, I point out this relationship with James Lewis. When you see anonymous government officials and James Lewis quoted in a NYTimes story, you are seeing government propaganda.
Another “expert” the NYTimes quotes is Anthony Ferrante [update]. He’s got the resume that the NYTimes loves. I’m famous among hackers for my technical expertise, but I would never be quoted in the NYTimes, because I don’t matter. The NYTimes only quotes people who matter, meaning, people involved at high levels of government, people with their resume posted on WEF.
Both of these “experts” claim things that are objectively silly. Ferrante says “my instinct is this is espionage” and “could be used for eavesdropping”. This is false, this arrangement cannot be used for eavesdropping and there’s nothing particularly related to espionage here. Lewis claims “only a handful of countries could pull off such an operation, including Russia, China and Israel”. That’s false, I can pull this off, personally. It’s just a SIM farm. Sure, there’s some capital involved, on the order of $1 million, but it could be setup and managed by a single person. It likely wasn’t setup all at once with that much money, but has been slowly growing for years as profits are funneled back into setting up more SIM accounts
Who are you going to trust, these Washington insiders, “people who matter”, or an actual hacker like myself?
I say “phones” above in quotes above because the actual hardware isn’t like the phones you have in your pocket. Your Android/iPhone is a computer with a single “baseband” radio that talks to the cell tower, and maybe two SIMs in case you have two different phone accounts. That’s what a SIM is — a chip that locks you to a specific phone account.
A “SIM box” has single computer (often running Linux), maybe 20 baseband radios, and maybe 100 physical SIM cards. It rotates among the SIM accounts when spamming SMS messages.
A SIM card may be the same sort of prepaid $10/month SIM you buy at Walmart that allows 1000 SMS messages per month. There are other types of accounts they might use, so they aren’t necessarily walking out of a Walmart with bags full of prepaid SIMs after clearing off the shelves, but it’s close enough. They are trying to fly under the radar, appearing to the mobile networks as normal users.
The Secret Service hypes this as some sort of national security threat that can crash cell towers. The reality is that this is just a normal criminal threat that sometimes crashes cell towers. SMS is an ancient technology that works slowly even in modern cell networks. Too many SIM boxes spamming SMS in one location can indeed overwhelm a cell tower. You actually don’t need a bunch of SIM boxes to do it — you can sometimes crash a cell tower with a single baseband radio. Ask me how I know.
The point is: while criminals do sometimes crash or overload cell towers, an actual foreign threat can do this much easier than using SIM farms. In any event, there are thousands of cell towers around New York City satisfying 10 million subscribers, so crashing a few won’t make much difference.
The correct quote from any expert is that this looks like a normal criminal SIM farm, that’s used for a wide range of purposes, often SMS spam. They are pretending to be thousands of normal mobile phone users to prevent the mobile phone companies from shutting them down. Some miscreant likely used the service to hide the origin of threats sent as SMS messages to politicians, which is why the Secret Service is involved. Theres no evidence the Secret Service is involved due to some actual national security or espionage threat — that’s just propaganda they are hyping.
35 miles radius centered on UN building:
Some comments on this blogpost;
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Comments
There is so much to address in this post but I want to look at just this part: "One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles. It’s the “Washington Game” of “official leaks”, disseminating propaganda without being held accountable."
It is not accurate to claim "that's not a thing". Citing anonymous sources is a long established practice (in particular when it comes to law enforcement activities or potentially sensitive political reporting). The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it. It doesn't mean the information is reliable, that's where an editorial eye comes into play, but it does fall under the category of normal journalistic practice.
Next the "Washington Game": there’s a grain of truth here, but it is overstated. Yes, leaks can be part of a strategic move by politicians and it can be a source of exploitation by political operators but to equate all anonymous sourcing with propaganda is misleading. Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib). Responsible reporting involves weighing a source's motivations as well as corroborating and contextualizing that information as accurately and truthfully as possible.
The author's dismissiveness oversimplifies (or mischaracterizes, if I am being less generous) the reason and function of anonymity here. They overstate the issue with propaganda and anonymous sources. Accurate in the sense that anonymity can enable propaganda (it has happened), it is inaccurate in its absolutism.
I feel like this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion and mistrust than it does into that of the truth and accuracy.
By snickerbockers 2025-09-2420:03 >Plenty of such reporting has resulted in significant truths being revealed and powerful people being held accountable (Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, Abu Ghraib).
And what, pray tell, is the major scandal in this case? The source isn't alleging any impropriety or illegal activity. Anonymous sources are for stories which are being suppressed or lied about, not for investigations which have not yet publicly been announced due to pending litigation. If there's no obvious motive for why the source would want to be anonymous then all you're reporting on is rumor and gossip.
By michael1999 2025-09-2419:472 reply Judith Miller taught me that either the NYT is totally corrupt, or easily misled. It is completely reasonable to place almost zero weight on stories they report on "national security" from nothing but anonymous sources from the intelligence community.
Real stories have real evidence.
No journalistic institution is perfect. And, there are indeed journalists who cut corners, tell misleading narratives, or are too credulous.
However, there have been important and sometimes shocking stories that have been told thanks to reporting based on trustworthy, anonymous sources. The Pentagon Papers is a textbook example.
By throwaway5752 2025-09-2420:04 Yes, but in this case, it is not the NYTimes that is the problem, it is the administration and it is important to not lose sight of that.
The author of this post is absolutely correct to point out the problems with the story and ask why this is being presented in the way it is. Ultimately these sort of actions can undercut faith in law enforcement.
One of the more sober assessments in this entire thread, and closely aligned with how I experienced it. It's not nothing to stress the fact that it was pretty far away from the UN and that it's not obvious why a case of SIM cards would enable surveillance (seems more like it would anonymize an individual bad actor). But a large part of this is completely unsubstantiated speculation that people are nodding along with, which, in my opinion, is showing a breakdown in the ability to comprehend logical or evidence-based arguments.
By onetimeusename 2025-09-2416:39 I think it's a form of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
The NYT article is not sufficiently critical (of something) so it is government propaganda but in other times and places the NYT was not propaganda.
> The NYT has formal editorial standards around the identity of anonymous sources that require editors to assess the justification for applying it.
They should also have editorial standards that judge the quality of the information and then decide whether to even print it or not. In this case, without a second source, it probably should /not/ have been printed.
That’s exactly what those guidelines say: https://www.nytimes.com/article/why-new-york-times-anonymous...
> What we consider before using anonymous sources:
> How do they know the information?
> What’s their motivation for telling us?
> Have they proved reliable in the past?
> Can we corroborate the information they provide?
> Because using anonymous sources puts great strain on our most valuable asset: our readers’ trust, the reporter and at least one editor is required to know the identity of the source. A senior newsroom editor must also approve the use of the information the source provides.
Is there a particular change you’re proposing?
By themafia 2025-09-2419:38 >> Can we corroborate the information they provide?
I can only guess, but based on the reporting, it looks like they skipped this guideline.
>> Have they proved reliable in the past?
Which is half the battle. The real question is "have they lied to us in the past?"
By enslavedrobot 2025-09-2419:141 reply How do you know they didn't have multiple confirmations from different anonymous sources? Generally this is the case with high quality journalism (souce: dated a journalist).
By boomboomsubban 2025-09-2418:001 reply To me, the article is saying that an "ongoing investigation" is not a valid reason to grant anonymity, not that there are no valid reasons to grant anonymity.
Who is being protected from whom by granting this source anonymity? With your three examples it's clear, but not as much in this case.
By SoftTalker 2025-09-2418:17 Officials who are not supposed to talk about ongoing investigations, and might get fired if they do, but can't help themselves so they do it anyway under cover of "anonymity."
And honestly, probably everyone in a position to know, does know who the "anonymous" source is, but it's just enough plausible deniability that everyone gets away with it. They get to push their narrative but also pretend they are following the rules that are supposed to protect various parties in the process.
Meanwhile if I were on a grand jury and blabbing to the press every evening about an investigation, I could get in real trouble.
> this sort of tone, with the absolutism, the attempt to reduce the complexity and nuance of reporting to the point where it can be dismissed is pretty typical of what passes for commentary in today's blog/tweet/commentary culture but it really plays more into the hands of those that would sow confusion
I think this is the mechanism of action that will lead to america's downfall.
algorithmic content has connected dopaminergic interest to extremism while simultaneously welcoming influence from both agents of neutral chaos and malicious destruction.
i am currently watching a schism unfold in my immediate family over the death of charlie kirk. if we literally cannot discern the difference between charlie and a fascist/nazi/racist because complexity and nuance are dimensions of information that do not exist, then we are destined for civil war.
you cannot understand vaccine safety, israel v palestine, russia v ukraine, or literally anything else by scrolling instagram reels. stop having an opinion and uninstall the poison.
By libraryatnight 2025-09-2420:05 In my extended family there's some government employees an auditor and someone in defense, and listening to them try to explain why the 'failed audit' fox news had their father ranting about as a reason everyone deserved to be fired by DOGE at the time and he was "loving every minute" was more nuanced and not good evidence for the conclusion he'd been fed was difficult.
Even in simple jobs I've worked there's always been something armchair experts don't consider that makes their quick fix "just do this" or "how hard can it be to do X" ignorant and irrelevant. But he was so enamored of Elon and "saving us money" he couldn't even fathom maybe his kids who are smart and have been in the industry for sometime might know or understand something he doesn't.
Later I asked him "What audit are you talking about?" And he said "Who cares, I know they failed and that's all I need to know." The brazen ignorance mixed with outright callousness masquerading as righteousness is not good.
By typpilol 2025-09-2419:33 Same. If Charlie was a Nazi then half of America is.
It's quite annoying
By johncessna 2025-09-2416:23 Click bait hating on other click bait
By 1vuio0pswjnm7 2025-09-2417:423 reply It's possible the author is wrong, but one should consider the author's history and demonstrated technical proficiency, e.g., the programs he has written. Take a look at his code. He has been around much longer than "blogs" and "Substack"
IMHO, he is also proficient at explaining complex topics involving computers. If others have differing opinions, feel free to share
Anyone know where can we see parent commenter's code or something that demonstrates their knowledge of computers, computer networks or particular knowledge of "SIM farms"
By 1vuio0pswjnm7 2025-09-2419:19 "Sometimes departments want to float ideas that a spokesperson would not want to put his or her name behind."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/which-anonymous-sources...
IIUC, the blog post is not claiming there is no such thing as speaking with the press on the condition of anonymity, it is claiming that requesting anonymity for disclosing the existence (cf. the details) of an investigation into routine criminal activity is reasonable cause for skepticism. The blog post then explains why the author believes the "SIM farm" is a routine criminal enterprise, not something more
One does not have to be an "expert in political propaganda" or rely on one to question, out of common sense, why anonymity is needed to disclose the discovery of a "SIM farm"
By Lerc 2025-09-2419:41 I think there is a bit of disconnect between people knowing what is possible and what people fear might be doable.
It's entirely possible that there are good non technical reasons for believing who was behind this while being technically incorrect about what it was that they intended to do.
Some of the more fanciful notions might be unlikely. Some of the evidence is only relevent in context. The distance from the UN is not terribly compelling on its own, the significance of the area of potential impact containing the UN is only because of the timing.
A state action might be for what might seem to be quite mundane reasons. One possible scenario would be if a nation feared an action suddenly called for by other states and they just want to cause a disrupting delay to give them time to twist some arms. Disruptions to buy time like this are relatively common in politics, the unusual aspect would be taking a technical approach.
By deelowe 2025-09-2418:00 > the programs he has written.
This is authority bias. Being a great programmer does not make one an expert in political propaganda, the inner workings of government, or the media.
By levocardia 2025-09-2416:366 reply Came here to post this. Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?
Claiming that anonymous sources inside an agency/administration is "not a thing" clearly betrays the fact that this person knows nothing about actual journalism. Heck even a casual NYT reader will know that they cite anonymous sources within the administration all the time! Just look at all the reporting about the Musk/Rubio dust-ups!
They do quote anonymous sources all the time, and, more often than not, those anonymous sources are leaking to the media to push their narrative, ie propaganda. The NYT is very clearly the puppet of washington insiders.
The “literal New York Times” doesn't exist anymore. This is not investigative journalism. This is just acting as the mouth piece for some anonymous government official.
By elzbardico 2025-09-2419:53 > Haven't we learned many times in the last 5 years that, on average, "The Literal New York Times" is a better and more reliable source than "Some Guy on Substack"?
Humm... No?
By f33d5173 2025-09-2417:26 News is a good source for facts. If they say the sky is blue, I would have no reason to doubt them. But if they say the sky is turning from blue to pink, and we should all be worried because this might be a sign of the end times, I wouldn't get up from my chair.
I found the focus on the source being anonymous odd as well. I think the correct lesson is that substacks have just as much propensity towards being propaganda as the nyt does.
By istjohn 2025-09-2417:32 Both can be bad. The NYT absolutely publishes some slop from time to time, and I'm inclined to believe this is one such occasion. But this Substack essay isn't a measured correction and has its own mistruths and exaggerations. In other words, there's a middle ground between total credulity and solipsistic nihilism.
By nostrademons 2025-09-2418:001 reply Uh, my recent experience is that "Some guy on Substack" is a significantly more reliable source than "The Literal New York Times".
Gel-Mann Amnesia affect applies here: every time I've seen mainstream media cover a subject that I have personal experience or expertise with, it's been shockingly inaccurate. This includes the NYTimes. It includes random guys on Substack too, but I've found that random guys on Substack when speaking about their area of expertise are actually pretty accurate. It's left to the reader to determine whether some random guy on Substack is actually speaking to an area of their expertise, but other comments here have attested that the author actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to SIM farms.
Maybe on average, but we've also learned there are too many times when "The Literal New York Times" either repeats propaganda for money, or literally just makes shit up.
There is a lawyer (Alec Karakatsanis) who has been writing about police driven propaganda for years. His recent book "Copaganda" is fantastic. He carefully breaks down how major papers (NYT is chief among them) create stories that fit a narrative by using very one-sided sources. Like an article on crime written in bad faith where the only people quotes are police, police consultants, and ex-police.
It's a really good book, I wish more people were aware of it and read it.
Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven.
In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the next article, most of them will and their managers will encourage it. Maybe you'll get a more in depth story if it makes it to On The Media a week or two later but that's basically all we have at this point which is very sad.
By dragonwriter 2025-09-2415:472 reply > The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven.
No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities are involved vs. other entities in similar factual circumstances (particularly, the use of constructions which separates responsibility for an adverse result from the actor, which is overwhelmingly used in US media when police are the actors—and also, when organs of the Israeli state are—but not for most other violent actors.) This is frequently described as “the exonerative mood” (or, sometimes, “the exonerative tense”, though it is not really a verb tense.)
Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.
By oezi 2025-09-2417:06 I thought insidious means sinister/evil, but what you point out just shows that we as a society don't value news enough to pay for anything more than the 1-4 hours of time invested per news article.
By notmyjob 2025-09-2419:36 Prosecutors are worse. Cops are going be cops. Our justice system is where the buck stops, or should.
By 0xDEAFBEAD 2025-09-2416:594 reply Who else would you have the journalists talk to, in order to get the other side of the story? Criminals?
By kmoser 2025-09-2417:26 Who better to talk to about crimes than those who commit those very crimes?
By serf 2025-09-2418:24 well, that's part of the job.
when Barbara Walters was interviewing Fidel Castro , what do you think was going on from the perspective of the United States?
They're not all such prestigious examples, but the point stands.
By lupusreal 2025-09-2419:56 The worst cop propaganda in America is the anti-cop propaganda. In the past few years, the proliferation of body camera videos have been exposing the anti-cop narratives for massive exaggerations at best. A fair number of cops are huge douchebags with ugly attitudes, which is regrettable. A very small number are homicidal maniacs, contrary to the anti-cop propaganda which would have people believe that every douchebag cop is murderer. Most of them are just regular people, and even when they have shitty attitudes they still do their jobs well. The speed with which most of them can switch gears from shooting somebody to giving lifesaving aid to that same person is actually incredible. And the number of times they shoot somebody they shouldn't have is remarkably small. In fact the number of times they shoot somebody even when that person deserves it is very small when you consider how many armed drunk meth smoking retards live in this country. Cops by in large handle the American population very deftly with great deescalation skills.
And I'm aware that it's conceivably possible that cops have altered their behavior with the introduction of body cameras.. If so, then good. But I don't believe police shooting statistics actually back up such a hypothesized change in police behavior, and I doubt making cops wear body cameras could really do much to alter the behavior of a cop set in his ways. And in fact, most police departments have been quite happy to have body cameras because the body cameras show the world what cops already knew; their job is to wrangle the most unhinged retards our country makes.
By louwrentius 2025-09-2414:27 Copaganda is indeed a good book, recommend.
By alansammarone 2025-09-2410:457 reply I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descriptive accuracy from the news. This sometimes requires resources that individuals don't generally have.
When I read a personal blog article articulating a personal opinion, presenting evidence and trying to make a case for their conclusion, I usually apply a different standard. From them, I expect sound reasoning, which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.
And let's just say this article is not exactly structured as a sequence of QEDs, so to speak. It doesn't seem like the conclusions follow from the premisses. That's not to say it's wrong, just that if it is right, it would be in part by accident.
By matthewdgreen 2025-09-2411:073 reply The novel information in this article (confirmed by some technical experts on other platforms) is that this kind of SMS scam relay is a well-known sort of enterprise. I wasn’t aware of this, although it doesn’t surprise me. Once you have that context, the rest of the NYT article kind of falls apart by itself.
By firesteelrain 2025-09-2411:275 reply I wouldn’t say the NYT article falls apart it is just less sensationalistic. Very likely as this substack article suggests that these SIM farms do knock out SMS from time to time because they DDoS the tower. So that part is correct. Nation state ? Ok maybe far fetched. These farms are not out of reach of a normal person who over time purchases the technical pieces. It’s an investment.
By alansammarone 2025-09-2411:16 Ok, that makes sense. I couldn't quite fish that out of the article (there's a lot more being said that obscures it), but you're right. If this is indeed relatively common (at this scale and/or level of sophistication), then that definitely would make it much more likely that this is a PR stunt. Not completely settled, but much more likely.
By skybrian 2025-09-2416:27 That sounds plausible, but could you link to those technical experts? I never heard of the author of this blog and he’s all “trust me I’m a hacker.”
It's not complicated. This is a normal sort of criminal enterprise. These rooms filled with SIM boxes are all over the world. The owners of them rent out the service to others -- letting them send 1,000 spam messages for a fee. One of the buyers of the service was indeed using it to threaten a politician. But this represents a tiny fraction (less than 1% of 1% of the SIMs normal use -- which is probably mostly phishing messages and other spam). It is a criminal enterprise and was used as some sort of political threat, but it's probably not set up by Russia or intended for that purpose.
By ecocentrik 2025-09-2418:39 These enterprises might not be setup by Russia directly but they might be setup by Russian criminal organizations which have been very active in the US over the last 20 years. That nobody in the current administration seem to be concerned with criminal organizations outside of some small or remnant groups from Latin America is very telling all on its own. This administration has never named any Russian gangs in official statements, even while they now dominate in some parts of the US.
By r3trohack3r 2025-09-2413:201 reply I believe the kind of journalism you’re hinting at is practically dead in what many people are referring to when they say “the news.” It’s hard to determine if I agree with your stance though since you didn’t actually define what you meant by news organizations; mind listing a few of your favorite sources of news and trusted commentators? If they’re quite good, it’ll help people find reliable sources of descriptive accuracy!
But a meta point: Most commercial news rooms have become propoganda arms for The Party that churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.” The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.
I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.
> I think we are going to see an increasing trend of “true journalists” leaving the legacy news industry to places where they can build direct relationships with their audience, can own their own content distribution channels, and directly monetize those channels. I.E. Substack, YouTube, X, et. al.
Those independent channels seem far more amenable to "opinion-havers" than "true journalists" (though perhaps the "true journalists" transform into opinion-havers or secondhand-analysts when they change distribution platforms).
> ...churn out low effort AP ticker derivatives, social media gossip, and literal government propaganda from The Party whispered in their ear by an “anonymous source.”
That stuff is cheap. How do you expect someone moving to a place of fewer resources and less security to make a more expensive product?
> The “news rooms” appear devoid of any real journalistic integrity.
I think you're seeing the result of budget cuts.
I think, the more extraordinary the claim is, the more proof is required. And I’m with you, I’d normally be incredibly skeptical of a substack post from an author I’ve never heard of before, who writes as egotistically as this. But there is just no extraordinary claim in this article. Only a very very ordinary claim that should be believable to any person who has ever owned a cell phone:
SIM farms are normal, common things that exist all over the place to allow messages from far-away senders to be sent as if they came from a local number.
That’s all the author is asking us to believe.
> SIM farms are normal, common things that exist all over the place to allow messages from far-away senders to be sent as if they came from a local number.
Meanwhile, many US companies won't let me, the actual legitimate user they're trying to authenticate, use Google Voice, because it's "so dangerous and spoofable, unlike real SIM cards".
Hopefully this helps a little bit in driving that point home.
> And I’m with you, I’d normally be incredibly skeptical of a substack post from an author I’ve never heard of before, who writes as egotistically as this.
It's always funny to see comments like this; because there's always at least 50/50 chance that the article is from someone that is actually prolific, just that the person has a blind-spot for whatever reason.
That is, also, the case here.
The article for me was weird in the sense that it makes the claim that the purpose was of the farms were not necessarily nefarious in a terror sense, but merely criminal. Even suggesting that they could be legitimate (that was a stretch, sim farms in residential apartments? Please.).
It also makes the point that its purpose wasn’t to disrupt cell service, although these things can and will disrupt cell services.
So from my perspective, the article is strange in the sense that the author seems pretty intent on splitting enough hairs to prove the secret service wrong. For me, I don’t care if they are wrong about its purpose— If this helps decrease spam messages, great. If it means that cell services are now more reliable in that area, great. If it’s something that could be hijacked and used for terroristic purposes and has now been neutralized, great.
By disiplus 2025-09-2413:53 yeah, like you go on alibaba and can get them right away. i was even thinking about them like 10 years ago when we had to send transactional sms to our customers to get one instead of paying for somebodies sms gateway.
https://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/faf448fd0d906a15/prod...
By WastedCucumber 2025-09-2410:56 This article describes some secret service messaging about busting some basic (possibly?) criminal enterprise, how the NYT amplifies that messaging without question, and names a couple of experts who the author finds questionable (which is the part I'm most unsure about, but honestly I just don't want to have more names to memorize).
After everything the gov't has tried to hype in the last decade (I'm including some things under Biden's term too), and esp. the efforts made in Trump second term, sure seems like it checks out to me.
So maybe you could name one of the conclusions and its premises, and describe how they don't follow. Cause I certainly don't follow what you're on about.
By xtiansimon 2025-09-2411:341 reply “…which often requires a form of independence/neutrality that news organizations don't have.”
Really? I see a difference between 24h infotainment news and News.
The News I listen to (AM radio) is compacted into fact, point, counterpoint. And that’s it. When it repeats, no more news. I’m old enough to remember this basic News playbook, and it’s not changed on those stations I listen to.
By alansammarone 2025-09-2412:07 Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I just meant more broadly - I think that inevitably, news organizations, as a whole, have more many competing interests - comercial, political, etc. I think that at least some of them at really trying their best to deliver accurate, factual claims. I'm generally less inclined to read opinion pieces, but I certainly get my news from the News, and I have a huge respect for honest journalists. I think they're one of the most under appreciated professions of our age.
By nixosbestos 2025-09-2410:482 reply Could you maybe write a normal sentence explaining the point you're trying to make?
By glenstein 2025-09-2411:26 I understood them perfectly so I'm not sure what you're talking about. It's a thoughtful high-level overview about the difference between authoritative factual communication and vibes-based speculation. I made a similar point in a thread yesterday about the various disorganized allegations of "fraud" attributed to MrBeast and how they rarely cohere into a clearly articulated harm.
I think scatterbrained, vibes based almost-theories that vaguely imitate real arguments but don't actually have the logical structure, are unfortunately common and important to be able to recognize. This article gets a lot of its rhetorical momentum from simply declaring it's fake and putting "experts" in scare quotes over and over. It claims the article is "bogus" while agreeing that the sim cards are real, were really found, really can crash cell towers, and can hide identities. It also corrects things that no one said (neither the tweet nor the NYT article they link to refer to the cache of sim cards as "phones" yet the substack corrects this phrasing).
The strongest argument makes is about the difference between espionage and cell tower crashing and the achievability of this by non state actors (it would cost "only" $1MM for anyone to do this), but a difference in interpretation is a far cry from the article actually being bogus. And the vagueposting about how quoting "high level experts" proves that the story is fake is so ridiculous I don't even know what to say. Sure, the NYT have preferred sources who probably push preferred narratives, but if you think that's proof of anything you don't know the difference between vibes and arguments.
So I completely understand GPs point and wish more comments were reacting in the same way.
By alansammarone 2025-09-2410:521 reply ...more like an ELI5? Sure.
When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green".
> One of the reasons we know this story is bogus is because of the New York Times story which cites anonymous officials, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation”. That’s not a thing, that’s not a valid reason to grant anonymity under normal journalistic principles.
