Swatting is the act of a mean-minded hoaxer calling in an emergency, such as an armed burglary or home invasion, in the hopes of messing up their victim’s day.

Swatting is incredibly dangerous. Faking an emergency and sending heavily armed police to the scene of a nonemergency is a recipe for a potential accident. Really, it can be interpreted as attempted murder, using the police as a weapon. It diverts police from actual emergencies. Wasting law enforcement’s time is a crime, and so is harassment — which is how “swatting” is currently classified.

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a victim of swatting multiple times, as have others.

One would assume that these acts of harassment were performed by disgruntled malcontents of the opposite political party. And perhaps some are. However, according to The Hill, more than 100 of these types of attacks were actually committed by foreign nationals.

“Thomasz Szabo of Romania and Nemanja Radovanovic of Serbia were each charged with one count of conspiracy, 29 counts of threats and false information about explosives and four counts of transmitting threats in interstate and foreign commerce, according to the press release from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.,” The Hill reports. These foreign nationals have been working together to attack others using swatting since December 2020.

Forty of the misleading phone calls were against private individuals, and 61 were against government officials ranging from members of Congress to state officials. They also weren’t very particular about political party affiliation.

“According to chat records investigators recovered from the two men,” The Washington Times reports, “they pursued targets across the ideological spectrum. That included people they labeled as conservative influencers and ‘a libtard zoomer’ who made TikTok videos. ‘Need the libtards to cry too. We are not on any side,’ Mr. Szabo said in one message recounted in court documents.”

It was a pretty sophisticated operation. Radovanovic told the Secret Service that he was given his target and a script of what he was supposed to say to get the police out there.

While Greene isn’t officially listed as one of the affected victims on the indictment, one of Radovanovic’s calls to a suicide hotline reporting a homicide sounded eerily similar to the attack on Greene on Christmas Day.

While these men were clearly up to no good, there have been no reports detailing their motive, nor is there any clear indication of whether or not they will be extradited to the United States to stand trial for their crimes.

It’s unsettling to think that our foreign enemies have become so sophisticated that they are able to cause chaos with a single phone call. Here’s the question that needs to be answered: How many of the swatting incidents were from political malcontents, and how many were from bad foreign actors? And how do we put a stop to such attacks?