After telephone services from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile companies went down this Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of users disconnected for hours, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) posted a chilling warning about potential cyberattacks on his X (Twitter) account.
“I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage,” Rubio wrote. “But I do know it will be 100 times worse when China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a Taiwan invasion. And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank.”
I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage
But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion
And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water and your bank
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 22, 2024
Rubio’s publication came after various telephone companies, notably AT&T, reported general failures in their cell phone lines, Internet and even residential phone service.
The outages started appearing just before 3:30 a.m. ET, according to the website Downdetector, which tracked the outages and detailed the entire “blackout” in a graphic.
AT&T, the company that presented the most service failures, apologized this afternoon for the massive drop in service.
“We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future,” the company said.
By 9:30 a.m. ET, some 70,000 users had reported the outages to Downdetector. Some reported Internet problems, and others general signal failures.
Rubio’s post also comes weeks after FBI Director Christopher Wray warned of the rise of Chinese cyberattacks against the United States and its allies.
“You might find your companies harassed and hacked, targeted by a web of corporate CCP proxies,” Wray said at a meeting in Germany with world leaders earlier this month. “You might also find PRC hackers lurking in your power stations, your phone companies, etc., poised to take them down when they decide you stepped too far out of line, and that hurting your civilian population suits the CCP.”
