China’s covert SIM farms exposed: Federal agents uncover nationwide spy network

By Steve Baker & Joseph M. Hanneman | Blaze Media

Millions of linked SIM cards carry out surveillance, target leaders for harm, and should be considered ‘acts of war.’

The discovery of SIM farms that threatened cellular networks in New York City is only the tip of a massive nationwide network run by the Chinese Communist government that poses an immediate threat to critical American infrastructure and has led to terrorist acts including hoax SWAT raids at the homes of national leaders, Blaze News has learned.

Sources in the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. intelligence community said these SIM card networks were operating in the United States as early as 2004. They have proliferated exponentially since President Donald J. Trump was re-elected to the presidency in November 2024.

“This is something that is a direct threat to our nation right now,” a top intelligence official told Blaze News. “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.”

The owner of the five sites raided in the New York City area is cooperating with Homeland Security Investigations and the Secret Service, the intelligence expert said.

The SIM networks were put in place and are managed by China’s Ministry of State Security, an ultra-secretive, massive espionage agency that has grown in prominence and global activity in recent years, according to the journal China Leadership Monitor.

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.”

Recently, these SIM farms are believed to be responsible for dozens of hoax SWAT raids, including a senior U.S. Secret Service official, FBI Director Kash Patel, members of Congress including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and media influencers such as Tim Pool and Stephen K. Bannon.

“These things were being used all summer to SWAT people since Trump was elected,” said one source, speaking anonymously because the source is not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. “Swatting — that’s a terrorist act. The Trump administration declared that a terrorist act.”

While the Chinese facilitated the SWAT raids, it is believed that Americans who are familiar with the system — either through a government or a criminal enterprise — are initiating the hoax calls, the source said.

The swatting of a senior Secret Service official and some Secret Service protectees last spring led to the investigation that discovered the Chinese SIM farms in the Tri-State area, the Secret Service confirmed to Blaze News. A Secret Service engineer assigned to the investigation was key to discovering the SIM network.

“The only reason we found this network is because a senior Secret Service official was targeted for a SWAT raid,” the source said. “Otherwise, this investigation would have never been initiated.”

No U.S. intelligence or law enforcement agency detected the secret network, nor did the three major wireless carriers in the U.S., AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Homeland Security Investigations led raids that disrupted five SIM farm sites in the Tri-State area of New York City just before the United Nations General Assembly, where President Trump spoke Sept. 23. The raids led to seizure of more than 300 co-located servers and more than 100,000 SIM cards.

“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.”

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