The Secret Service has dismantled a telecom threat near the UN. It could have disabled cell service in NYC

The Secret Service has dismantled a telecom threat near the UN. It could have disabled cell service in NYC Nation Sep 23, 2025 9:24 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — While close to 150 world leaders prepared to descend on Manhattan for the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. Secret Service was quietly dismantling a massive hidden telecom network across the New York area — a system investigators say could have crippled cell towers, jammed 911 calls and flooded networks with chaos at the very moment the city was most vulnerable.

The cache, made up of more than 300 SIM servers packed with over 100,000 SIM cards and clustered within 35 miles of the United Nations, represents one of the most sweeping communications threats uncovered on U.S. soil. Investigators warn the system could have blacked out cellul