Histories of the Armenian Genocide are full of telegrams. From the initial deportation orders to the instructions for removing the dead, recovered telegrams have helped historians expose the bloodshed and demonstrate the culpability of the Ottoman government. Yet, while there has been much talk about telegrams as evidence of the genocide, there has been very little discussion of the role of the telegraph in expediting the violence, and what such a role might imply about Ottoman modernity. This paper examines the place of the Ottoman telegraph network in the events surrounding the genocide, highlighting the ways in which the technology facilitated the Ottoman state in carrying out a program of violence that was unprecedented in scale and scope. Without minimizing the agency of human actors, it explores the ways in which the form of the technology, and its social practices, set particular temporal and spatial parameters for the catastrophe and gave specific shape to its unfolding. By framing the violence as enabled by technology, this paper connects the genocide to other instances of technological and bureaucratic barbarity in the twentieth century, particularly the Holocaust. In doing so, I argue that the rapid and comprehensive violence of 1915 should be understood not as a primitive blip in the modernization of the Ottoman Empire, but as reflective of the new lethal power and invasive reach of the modern, Ottoman state. However, by using the telegraph as a mechanism to understand the contours of Ottoman modernity, this paper also suggests a more complicated understanding that moves beyond the bleak view of the modern as defined primarily by the rise of omnipotent states that use technologies to dominate populations. By also examining the role of the technology in increasing international awareness of state violence against Armenians during the 1890s, and in the relief efforts both in the 1890s and after the genocide, it demonstrates how the technology also helped to disrupt Ottoman state power. As a result, this paper discusses how the Ottoman telegraph acted both as a tool for a domineering state and a means for those seeking to restore and save Armenian life.