this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers (www.aljazeera.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 114 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

no way it was just the batteries.

batteries burn but don't detonate with shrapnel

it was altered devices with explosives added.

[–] Nightwind 54 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah they got into the supply route and added c4 to all those pagers. Makes me wonder how many pagers or smartphones have added explosives still.

[–] Aceticon 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

There are several reports that the devices were made with the explosives built-in.

According to the spokesperson of the Taiwanese brand in a press conference, those were all devices produced by a Hungarian licensee of the brand.

Hungary, you know, been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government which is massivelly racist against Arabs.

Kind makes sense that those things were manufactured in a country very friendly of Israel and with their authorization, already with the explosis built-in.

The interesting second and third level effects to consider of this are around the impact on things like Globalization (if having to start paying attention to the alliances of the countries the stuff you buy comes from the places which are part of a supply chain stop being irrelevant) and even brand licensing (that Taiwanese company will have their name pop-up associated with this in every single internet search from now on)

Also curious about what will this to to "Made in EU" - Hungary might just have screwed the rest of us much more than ever before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mass producing disguised explosives is risky business.

Obviously they wanna price them low, to attract buyers in the target market. But if you price them too low, they become an opportunity for middlemen to resell to another market.

And now you’ve spread several batches of explosives to who-knows-where.

Hopefully they thought of that and restricted the detonation trigger to specific country codes. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there are explosives in the device.

[–] Aceticon 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

This made me think that the whole unofficial production of everyday devices with explosives in Hungary was a great opportunity for well connected Hungarian criminals wanting to get their hands on what are probably military explosives which is typically highly controlled stuff hence valuable.

I'm wondering if some of the stuff which was suppsed to have been used for this won't pop-up elsewhere in the EU in the hands of some criminal group, possibly even used for a terror attack.

The possible implications of this shit just keep in getting better and better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah… What a mess. A horrible, horrible idea.