The US eliminates a threat to telecommunications in the UN area that could cut off communication

While about 150 world leaders were preparing to land in Manhattan for the UN General Assembly, the US Secret Service was quietly dismantling a giant covert telecommunications network in New York. This was reported by the agency Associated Press.

According to investigators, this system could have disabled cell towers, jammed 911 calls, and created chaos in the networks at the very moment when the city was most vulnerable.

The cache, consisting of more than 300 SIM servers filled with more than 100,000 SIM cards and concentrated within a 35-mile radius of the UN, is one of the largest communications threats identified in the United States. Investigators warn that the system could have led to a cellular outage in a city that uses it not only in everyday life, but also for emergency response and counterterrorism.

Officials said the operation, which took place as foreign leaders filled downtown hotels and motorcades crammed into Manhattan, highlights a new frontier of risk: plots aimed at the invisible infrastructure that connects the modern city.

The network was uncovered as part of a broader Secret Service investigation into telecommunications threats targeting senior government officials. Located at multiple sites, the servers functioned as banks of fake cell phones capable of generating massive calls and text messages, overloading local networks, and masking criminals with encrypted communications, officials said.

The agent explained that this system is capable of disabling cell towers.

"You can't send text messages, you can't use your cell phone. And if you add to that some other event related to the UN General Assembly, then, you know, let the imagination run wild, it could have catastrophic consequences for the city," he added.

Officials said they had not found a direct plot to disrupt the UN General Assembly.

The forensic investigation is still at an early stage, but agents believe that criminals from certain countries used the system to send encrypted messages to organized crime groups, cartels, and terrorist organizations. Authorities have not disclosed information about specific government or criminal groups associated with the network.

When the agents entered the facilities, they found rows of servers and shelves packed with SIM cards. According to investigators, more than 100,000 were already active, but there were also a large number of devices waiting to be deployed, indicating that the operators were preparing to double or even triple their network capacity.

One agent described it as a well-funded, highly organized enterprise, with equipment and SIM cards costing millions of dollars. He noted that the operation could send up to 30 million text messages per minute.

The Secret Service has warned of the chaos the network could wreak if left untouched. The agent compared the potential consequences to the cellular outages after the September 11 attacks and the Boston Marathon bombings, when networks failed due to overload. In this case, he said, the attackers could have forcibly shut down such a network at any time convenient for them.

• On September 22, the White House reported that on Tuesday Trump will speak at the UN General Assembly with an "important speech". He will also hold a series of meetings with foreign leaders.
• On the same day, American police officers blocked the road Macron after his speech at the UN headquarters because Trump's motorcade was passing through New York.