In a bid to counter the rapidly growing threat of global cybercrime, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has built an entirely fake, fully functional small town, according to TechCrunch. The massive 22,000-square-foot replica facility is located on the FBI's campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Named the "Kinetic Cyber Range", the mock town has been designed to simulate a typical American community, complete with fully furnished houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery shop, a courthouse, a hospital, and an operational power company. It even has its own network of roads and working traffic lights.
The primary objective of this unusual project is to take cyber training beyond the traditional classroom. Law enforcement officers are given hands-on experience with the latest consumer and corporate technologies, which are regularly targeted by international hacking syndicates, according to TechCrunch.
The scale of the threat explains the need for such advanced infrastructure. According to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Report, cybercrime losses in the US reached a staggering 20.9 billion dollars, marking a 26 per cent jump within a year. Ransomware remains the single largest threat to critical infrastructure worldwide.
Every single facility inside this mock town is wired with real devices that behave exactly as they would in a genuine city. This allows instructors to launch live cyberattacks, such as shutting down a hospital's power grid, within a safe environment. Trainees are then forced to make high-pressure decisions to restore services and protect lives, without any risk of the malware leaking into the public internet.
The facility also features a massive data centre housing more than 200 physical servers. Program managers state that these server rooms are deliberately designed to be cold, cramped, and noisy to perfectly replicate the miserable corporate environments that investigators encounter when responding to a real digital breach.
Since opening in February 2025, the mini-town has already trained more than 1,400 investigators, including FBI personnel and international security partners. Officials say the hands-on experience is invaluable for mastering digital forensics, which helps police break through the encryption of modern devices to gather evidence against cybercriminals.
