Cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel have been on since October 7, but Israel’s latest airstrikes in Lebanon have been horrific in their targeting of civilians. Hospitals and streets in Lebanon are overrun with injured and terrified civilians trying to escape war.
Meanwhile, it seems apparent that Operation Exploding Pagers on September 18 marked the beginning of Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon and Syria. Netanyahu has been losing credibility internationally and in Israel over Gaza, but his Likud party is seeing a resurgence in popularity following the attacks on Lebanon. Outside the realm of geopolitics, we should all be alarmed about the larger implications of turning everyday tech into weapons of destruction.
Israel is yet to claim responsibility for the pager explosions in Lebanon but the country has a history of turning tech devices into explosives. In 1973, Israel assassinated PLO leader Mahmoud Hamshari in Paris by hiding explosives in the marble stand of his phone. In 1996, Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security wing, assassinated Hamas’s chief bomb-maker, Yahya Ayyash, through a small explosive in his mobile phone which was then remotely detonated. In 2009, in collaboration with the CIA’s former Director Michael Hayden, Israel killed the terrorist Imad Mugniyeh by placing a bomb in the spare wheel compartment of his SUV in Damascus, Syria.
Much of the fear around personal devices being turned into remote controlled explosives is two fold: Could any of our devices and appliances be turned into bombs? What does this mean for international supply chain contamination? Writing about Hezbollah, Kim Ghattas notes that mothers in Lebanon turned off baby monitors out of fear for their childrens’ lives.
To begin with, it’s important to understand why Hezbollah relies on low tech like pagers and landlines. Reuters reported earlier this year that Hezbollah switched to low tech to counter Israel’s sophisticated surveillance tactics. Pagers also run on a different wireless network than mobile phones which makes them more resilient in times of emergency.
The AR-924 pagers that turned into explosive devices on 18 September were believed to have been made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese firm. Since the terror attack, Gold Apollo’s CEO has confirmed that it authorized another company, Budapest-based BAC Consulting, to use its brand name for product sales in certain regions. Gold Apollo has denied any links with BAC’s manufacturing operations. In turn, Hungarian authorities have reported that BAC Consulting was only an intermediary, with no manufacturing or production facilities in Hungary. They claim that Hezbollah bought its pager stock from a company registered in Bulgaria, Norta Global. The trail grows ever more complex, with Bulgarian authorities confirming that no customs records prove the existence of such goods being exported through the country. The Japanese company that was initially believed to have manufactured walkie talkies that blew up in the second attack in Lebanon, has also released a statement saying they discontinued making the devices in question ten years ago.
An Indian man and a Hungarian woman who were part of the companies implicated in the manufactured devices are reported to have gone missing.
Media coverage has both praised Israel for its tactical genius in targeting Hezbollah and described the attack as an act of terrorism — but it is important to remember that Israel is not the only country to have planted explosives in unexpected places. From the 1960s up until the 2000s, the US and CIA used multiple methods including exploding cigars and seashells in their attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Contaminating supply chains is also an old intelligence tactic, according to Emily Harding, a veteran of the CIA and the U.S. National Security Council, who told Kevin Colliers at NBC that these stories are often kept from the public: “Supply chain compromises are tried and true in intelligence work,” said Harding. “I literally cannot think of a single example that is unclassified.”
