You seem to not understand how propaganda puff pieces work. You are taking the anonymous sources and the SS agents' words at face value as if they are good faith normal language. But given the clear propagandistic nature of the piece, you should instead immediately suspect every statement as being the most weasely possible "technically true" statement that could have been made. When someone is willing to call 35 miles away from NYC as "close to the UN", you should absolutely expect that they would be willing to call "a known fraudster and a corrupt official from Kazakstan" as "nation-state threat actors and individuals known to federal law", which they technically are.
You get specific numbers (two arrests and eight search warrants), more specific locations (names of big cities aren't very specific, but they're more specific than a circle 70 miles wide), a specific country running the agents (China), and a specific goal (recruit spies in the US military).
The vague statement about the SIM farms is pretty clearly an attempt to puff up an operation that didn't accomplish much.
