[glenstein]

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.

[rpdillon]

> 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.

This is how I feel about the NYT article. So much doesn't add up, and the more I read and investigate, the flakier it becomes.

Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.

[aerostable_slug]

There's a possibility that some of the evidence in the investigation is classified and/or stems from classified sources and methods. If the scammers are mixed up in foreign counterintelligence type stuff (very common with Chinese and Russian cybercriminal actors) then things get murky and people might go off the record because the documents they're reading have classification markings on them.

Just a possibility, I too feel this is weird.

[rpdillon]

One of the challenges here is that there are a lot of explanations that might be completely reasonable that cover all of the weirdness, but it feels like there's too much of it.

[impossiblefork]

I think, if one wants to inform people, one should not claim things that require accepting the reasoning without thought.

So even if the NYT article weren't propaganda and all the claims were correct, it would still be problematic, since writing it in this way, effectively claims that things that look like propaganda are legitimate journalism and totally normal.

So even if it were correct, someone who reads it and begins to accept articles of the same kind has been brought into a state of not being to reason critically about reality, and creating that cannot ever be ethical journalism.

[rpdillon]

Well said.

[impossiblefork]

Thank you.

[glenstein]

>Odd to have officials speaking anonymously about an investigation while the Secret Service is putting out press releases about it.

This is a bizarre new take that seems to be making the rounds. Not that they are right or wrong but they've been a staple of national security communication and reporting for as long as once followed the news, which for me is dating back to the George W. Bush admin. Glenn Greenwald in his heyday had a field day ripping apart credulous NSA wiretapping reporting that relied on unnamed officials. In fact I think he popularized the idea that the pervasiveness of such quotes was so widespread that they constituted a systematic problem with national security reporting. Not that I think it's necessarily a good practice but I wouldn't say it's presence in a story constitutes a "tell" that anything about the story is unusual.

[rpdillon]

I don't understand what's bizarre about it. When you're putting out a press release about something, you want the public to know about it for some reason. And the U.S. Secret Service met with a huge number of outlets and did lots of separate interviews about this particular takedown. A lot of self-congratulation going on in those articles.

And they try to tie the UN to this SIM card farm over and over in those official statements. Then there's this one anonymous source inside the New York Times article.

> There is no specific information that the network, now dismantled, posed a threat to the conference itself, Secret Service officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

So in the middle of a press conference and media blitz, including official posts on the U.S. Secret Service website, we're announcing this giant takedown, and then we have to go to one anonymous source to find out that there is no threat to the actual UN itself.

It could be that I'm the crazy one here, but that sure seems weird to me. Have you seen that kind of thing before?

The story has a number of technical problems with it, but there's a lot of other weird stuff besides this. I listed it out in a separate post if you want to go look.

[rpdillon]

Just to follow up, Schneier thinks something is weird as well.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/09/us-disrupts-m...

[garyfirestorm]

Honestly the mechanism is missing. Having hundreds of SIM card or a physical device is not a conclusive proof of anything. Show us the attack vector - exactly how will this cause problem.

[onetimeusename]

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.