It is election season in Israel right now, i cant help but wonder if there is some sort of internal politics going on with the article.
The article seems careful to say "manipulated equipment", which sounds more like snowden style eavesdropping devices than bombs. That would be more believable to me, as sneaking exploding devices into countries they are not at war with seems implausibly diplomatically stupid. It also mostly worked for hezbollah because they were a non state group that didnt have the budget to do supply chain security. I could see targeted spy devices being plausible, but hezbollah style exploding pagers doesnt seem all that plausible or even desirable against real countries.
Consider me doubtful.
If it was really true, i'm pretty sure they would STFU about it.
Considering implausibly diplomatically stupid things Israel has done historically, I don't find this that far fetched. Particularly when they are very willing to act antagonistically towards an ally like the United States both publicly and privately.
I dont think they have done anything remotely comparablely stupid. I think a lot of people don't like Israel and that colours their assesment on how rational they view Israel's actions.
As far as USA goes - countries dont have friends they have shared interests. They are allies because their interests largely align, but they are very far away from perfectly aligning. I think people believe the propaganda that Israel is a vassal of USA too much - that isn't the case; Israel has more than enough power to plot their own foreign policy and they dont hesitate to do so when it suits their interests, just like any other country does when they have the ability.
Maybe we could do a survey of old mobile phones and pagers to see how many of them have explosives in them. I never thought of myself as a terrorist but if one of my phones wound up with a small bit of C4 in it, that would be a finding.
They likely mean manipulated equipment for purposes of spying. It follows from the context further in the article when he's talking about Gaza.
Ever wondered how much Israel uses their 8200 alumni it has embedded in all major tech corporations? Maybe this is part of it. Embedding backdoors, and plausibly deniable bugs, or giving access directly, exfiltrating data, whatever.
For the hezbollah attack, it wasnt detectable because they used a very small amount and they used PTEN which is harder to detect than other explosives. Even still there is a lot of speculation online that they might have detonated earlier than planned due to being discovered
I would guess the people targeted with these devices do not travel a lot via commercial airlines. Or at least do not carry phones that can be confiscated and scanned.
"Have you ever bought a produce that was almost perfect except for a couple of feature they never make. This is a solution for you. With our SCAAAS you can customize your product after the fact."
Maybe ODMs can monetize this service. Pay me X amount for the part or X + Y amount to ensure some third-party didn't embed a back door or explosive in your part.
"Would you like a smart tv that doesn't spy on you? Too bad that doesn't exist. But for the low rate of $19.95 we will rip all that out with our patented SCAAAS. No surveillance or your money back. Surveillance for our observability may be present. Terms may apply"
Not implausible, but also not implausible to lie there.
Why wouldn't you claim that you have this kind of capability? It only is beneficial to you especially when you're Mossad.
It is a very weird thing to say though, given that the pagers targeted a very specific group doing very specific things with very specific processes using very specific tools (the pagers).
The logistics of that don't check out. That's not something that just lurks "everywhere".
So Devices "like" the pagers.. what does that mean?
I suppose cyber implants (for the lack of a better word) would be plausible, but also stretching the whole "like" comparison.
Yes, these agencies have implants in tech. All of them do. Where's the news?
Smartphones are everywhere, and Israeli spyware is well known, some companies producing it are even banned in US. Not in EU though, for whatever reason. (one probably being, some governments are/were using it against opponents, like in Poland, Hungary or Greece)
Are governments yanking apart or x-raying all devices anywhere remotely close to them yet?
I find this pretty strange, as the last thing an intelligence officer would do is go public about their work, even if they're retired or even defected. This is like a really early or really late April Fools.
That's a good point. I wonder, what about those pagers themselves, did they get flagged? They say the supply chain stuff, like pagers, started in ~2006. So there was 20 years until 2026. Some must have gone through airport screening?
The nuance is important. The title misquotes him. What he actually says is "In every country you can imagine" which is subtle but reads to me like "We've used this tactic everywhere we have conflict" and not what the title suggests which is "We have these in England, France, Russia, Australia..."
Not sure how reliable is this guy- and I don't think at all that he is referring literally to explosive devices, but just to long-running intelligence and spying operations with sophisticated logistics.
Anyway consider this. If you were Israel, where would you put more effort in:
1) fighting off a militia that is in no case a match for a country armed with F35s and nuclear weapons;
2) keep benefiting from the "unwavering" support of the West (and, by a lesser extent, the flow of money from the US)- which both grants you a state-of-the-art army and weapons, and a full diplomatic cover and support in any circumstance, from the most important actors in the world.
Now consider the amount of effort and ingenuity they put in 1), and infer the amount of effort and ingenuity they must be putting in 2).
I have been wondering for some time if terrorism is considered acceptable in certain situations? In a David vs Goliath situation where there is no realistic chance of stopping or defeating a more powerful aggressor, would it be considered acceptable to use non-conventional means and terrorism? Or is the weaker victim expected to play by the rules of warfare and accept its eventual defeat?
Some of what gets labeled as "terrorism" is very legitimate resistance. For instance, there's little difference between the Haitian Slave Revolt, the Pueblo Revolt, the Warsaw Rebellion and the Al Asqa Flood (Oct 7th). Yet only the latter is labeled as "terrorism". Repressed people or people forced off their land always have the right to armed resistance. It's also debatable if anyone living on stolen land can be considered a "civilian".
There's probably an argument that it's okay when states do objectionable things. Certainly there are large portions of the population that are opposed to actions their states take on their behalf? What's the difference between the US bombing an Iranian pre-school and ISIS decapitating journalists? Mostly that one is sanctioned by a powerful state and the other is not.
It's quite literally terrorism. Telling people "we can blow people up anywhere in the world" is intended to make people afraid. It's deliberately creating a climate of fear. That's what terrorism is.
If it targets others, it is. Some countries have ideas like that only non-state entities can commit terrorism, but that is nonsense. My own country's laws don't distinguish between state and non-state acts in its terrorism legislation, for example.
Yes, distributing explosives into the public is terrorism, regardless of if they're discovered or not. I'll add that this mossad agent is also, by definition, engaging in terrorism since he's trying to cause mass fear that they've distributed explosives worldwide.
The article seems careful to say "manipulated equipment", which sounds more like snowden style eavesdropping devices than bombs. That would be more believable to me, as sneaking exploding devices into countries they are not at war with seems implausibly diplomatically stupid. It also mostly worked for hezbollah because they were a non state group that didnt have the budget to do supply chain security. I could see targeted spy devices being plausible, but hezbollah style exploding pagers doesnt seem all that plausible or even desirable against real countries.
Consider me doubtful.
If it was really true, i'm pretty sure they would STFU about it.
As far as USA goes - countries dont have friends they have shared interests. They are allies because their interests largely align, but they are very far away from perfectly aligning. I think people believe the propaganda that Israel is a vassal of USA too much - that isn't the case; Israel has more than enough power to plot their own foreign policy and they dont hesitate to do so when it suits their interests, just like any other country does when they have the ability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
Ever wondered how much Israel uses their 8200 alumni it has embedded in all major tech corporations? Maybe this is part of it. Embedding backdoors, and plausibly deniable bugs, or giving access directly, exfiltrating data, whatever.
For the hezbollah attack, it wasnt detectable because they used a very small amount and they used PTEN which is harder to detect than other explosives. Even still there is a lot of speculation online that they might have detonated earlier than planned due to being discovered
Supply Chain attack as a service.
Why wouldn't you claim that you have this kind of capability? It only is beneficial to you especially when you're Mossad.
It is a very weird thing to say though, given that the pagers targeted a very specific group doing very specific things with very specific processes using very specific tools (the pagers).
The logistics of that don't check out. That's not something that just lurks "everywhere".
So Devices "like" the pagers.. what does that mean?
I suppose cyber implants (for the lack of a better word) would be plausible, but also stretching the whole "like" comparison.
Yes, these agencies have implants in tech. All of them do. Where's the news?
I find this pretty strange, as the last thing an intelligence officer would do is go public about their work, even if they're retired or even defected. This is like a really early or really late April Fools.
Anyway consider this. If you were Israel, where would you put more effort in:
1) fighting off a militia that is in no case a match for a country armed with F35s and nuclear weapons;
2) keep benefiting from the "unwavering" support of the West (and, by a lesser extent, the flow of money from the US)- which both grants you a state-of-the-art army and weapons, and a full diplomatic cover and support in any circumstance, from the most important actors in the world.
Now consider the amount of effort and ingenuity they put in 1), and infer the amount of effort and ingenuity they must be putting in 2).
If it targets others, it is. Some countries have ideas like that only non-state entities can commit terrorism, but that is nonsense. My own country's laws don't distinguish between state and non-state acts in its terrorism legislation, for example.
War is not terrorism.
After the 'exploding pagers', every government was inspecting and scanning their devices.
It's in Mossad's favor to keep everyone second-guessing.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pms-office-confirms-netanyahu-...