this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Yeah, I've been wondering how the fuck they pulled this off. If it turns out that the only pagers that exploded belonged to Hezbollah members, then that would signal to me that this was done entirely digitally.
I've heard that batteries (can't remember if it was laptop or phone batteries) contain the energy of a small grenade, but getting it to release that energy all at once without physical access is absolutely fucking wild and has serious fucking implications for device security.
EDIT: To avoid spreading misinformation, I'm providing this edit to say that the batteries absolutely were not the cause of the explosion. This was a supply-chain attack. Explosives were inserted into the pagers. The batteries in these pagers cannot be made to explode like this. I was overly excited when I made this comment.
Getting batteries to release energy isn't very difficult, even getting them to release it quickly isn't very difficult. What's difficult is getting them to release it over the course of a few milliseconds. Which is what you would need for an explosion.
If the battery simply dumped all its power over the course of 30 seconds that's basically just a fire that you can run away from.
Also I wouldn't have thought a pager had that much charge, I wouldn't have thought this sort of thing would be possible as they would tend to just go off with a loud bang, assuming you could even get them to release all the energy at once l, which again I wouldn't have thought was possible.
For fairly obvious reasons I don't think we're ever going to find out how this was done.
Maybe there will be a faulty one laying somwhere now thrown away by the owner? That will be nice for analysis.
I'll save you time. Licensed factory in Europe, making Chinese beepers, was compromised or owned by Israel. They then put explosives in the pagers and set them to explode when paged a certain code.
They knew hezbollah was the purchaser, and would disperse them amongst its members.
I think its stupid unless it stopped some imminent horrible attack. Otherwise, Israel has given themselves away, and only killed 8 people for it. Maybe they had trouble rigging them to steal their communications.
It wasn't "stupid". As a psy-op, it further complicates Hezbollah's communications, sows fear among Hezbollah members, demonstrates Israel's far-reaching capabilities, makes civilians suspicious of Hezbollah officials, etc. If Israel does something similar a couple more times, Hezbollah will have to resort to bicycle couriers and smoke signals.
It also undermines Hezbollah's credibility. The Lebanese people are not stupid. They know that Hezbollah is a shadow government allowing Iran to control Lebanon and use it as a staging ground for attacks on Israel. That leaves Lebanon in a permanent state of semi-war with Israel, not to mention its involvement in multiple other external conflicts. None of which is helpful for the health and prosperity of Lebanon.
Lebanon is a natural trading nation and always has been. It is a beautiful country full of kind people with excellent commercial instincts. They are held down as a nation by the fact that Hezbollah has turned the country into a pawn of the Ayatollah.
Thats a fair opinion, although I think its likely to cause the opposite reactions than you listed. But again, who really knows.
Also I'm sure most people in most places are good people, just like anywhere, Lebanon included.
Good point. I should have qualified what I said by saying that the Israeli operation may have the effects I listed. But, as you say, it might backfire and have the opposite of the intended effect. I guess that is always a risk with these types of operations.
Maybe the truth is both will happen, but its not clear which would be the majority opinion, or the opinion of those in power.
The obvious solution is to just procure their equipment from China only as they are naturally not allied with Israel if only because geostrategicaly they'd adversaries of the top Israeli ally, the US.
Given the indiscriminate nature of this attack this might imply purchasing decisions all over the World from much more than merely "members of groups deemed terrorist by the US".
Well sure. Modern war is all about adaptation. Exploding pagers were never going to be a knock-out blow, just a clever psy-op. One among many, I'm sure.
The point being that sometimes things that look "clever" if you only look at the obvious primary effects are not at all clever when you also consider secondary effects.
If only when it comes to "ease of eavesdropping" it might very well be in the best long term interest of the Israeli Security Services that the rest of the World keeps on acquiring Made In Europe and Made In US devices which this action will likely impact (one thing are accusations of "backdoors" in certain devices a whole different thing is seeing on TV a mass attack were a batch of devices all made in a nation allied with Israel contained explosives and that were detonated in all manner of arbitrary places hitting thousands of arbitrary people).
Then there's the possible impact on Israeli Allies' exports of electronics given these pagers were specifically manufactured in Hungary (a very strong ally of Israel) by a company licensing the brand name - is it really a good idea for anybody in a political, state or security position in any nation not allied with Israel to buy any device with remote access capabilities from made in any nation allied with Israel or with a significant part of the supply chain passing thorugh one of those nations. If they're willing to have explosives put in them and detonated in the middle of crowds of civilians, what else are they willing to do - it's the same reason why buying Security Software from an Israeli company is extremelly stupid for any company (even in allied nations) only now Electronics is also included, there's very obvious proof that they will do just about anything (rather than merelly an unproven risk of industrial espionage) and the risk also includes things sourced from nations allied with Israel.
Time will tell just how big those two classes of secondary and tertiary effects really are.
Mind you, as I see it anybody who gets in bed with ethno-Fascists like the Zionists deserves all the damage that comes from them having no limits whatsoever to what they'll do.
When I say "clever", I dont necessarily mean it was a good move toward their long-term goals. I mean that it was ingenious and skillfully executed, requiring the coordination of many parts, and displaying deft trade craft.
Frankly, arguing whether "ethno-fascist Zionists" or "Muslim fundamentalists" are worse is kind of pointless. Neither is high on the list of things I support.
Most Israelis are not "ethno-fascist Zionists" any more than most Gazans or Lebanese, or even Iranians, are Muslim fundamentalist theocrats. All of those populations are caught in bad situations that were set in motion decades ago. On balance, if forced to choose a side to support, I would support Israel, like most other Westerners. At least they have a functioning democracy and largely adhere to Western values. The Israeli religious right wing is extremely problematic, of course, but it looks to me like they are headed for defeat in the next election. We can't say the same about Hezbollah or the Iranian theocracy or any of Iran's other proxies.
The bottom line is: FUCK ALL RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM. Doesn't matter whether it is Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or Hindu. They all suck.
Specifically in Hungary, same country that has been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government.
It sure makes manufacturing involving explosives much more easily to go ahead if the local government has approved of it.
I'm curious what this will do to the "Made In EU" brand in the rest of the World.
There was already an article I saw saying it will have a chilling affect on western electronics to at least some degree.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-explosives-hezbollahs-taiwan-made-pagers-sources-say-2024-09-18/