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Crazy news out of the Middle East today.
While Iran plots its big revenge via Hezbollah, Israel isn't just waiting around for them to strike. They're pre-emptively disrupting their operations. And today's attack is next-level.
Somehow, Israel hacked the pagers used by a couple thousand Hezbollah members. And then they made the pagers explode simultaneously, leaving over 200 of them seriously injured.
People on Twitter are speculating that Israel confiscated the pagers, then implanted explosives, and then returned them to Hezbollah who stupidly continued to use them . It seems unlikely that a software hack could make a battery explode. Edit: A better explanation is that Israel somehow intercepted the pagers during shipping and implanted explosives.Whatever happened, its more evidence of both Israel's ability to strike at its enemies, and also the incompetence of those enemies.
From a strategic standpoint, it seems that Israel is now grimly determined to win the war militarily as they (accurately) perceive their enemies as unreliable partners in peace.
On one hand, it's impressive that they actually could pull off such a scheme that seems like it's straight out of the movies; on the other, it's clear that there would be a lot of collateral damage, and I can't help but think that my feeling of being impressed is very similar to how I felt about the 9/11 attacks. I can't imagine this having a positive effect on the levels of sympathy towards Israel, which was already fairly low, among the all-important Western public, no matter how much supportive media coverage they get. Is this a sign that they do want to accelerate the timeline towards a big showdown, perhaps thinking that delaying it for longer would only make their enemies stronger (Iran getting the bomb?) and their allies weaker/more distracted (derivative of public support in the West negative anyway, plus US/EU might get occupied by Russia and eventually China)?
Yeah, it seems like they aren't really trying to play the PR game anymore.
But attacks like this make enemy leaders think they can be killed at any time. It might be an effective strategy. I think there's a bit of grift involved for high-end leaders of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. By fanning the flames of hatred they bring money into their organizations and get rich personally. Attacks like this alter the calculus, as now these leaders have to think about their own personal safety. No longer can they just send teenage zealots into a market with a suicide vest. They, personally, will be found and killed.
In any case, this is a lot better than aerial bombing.
Uh, no? There's no need for those leaders to alter the calculus or think any more about personal safety than they already do. They were already thinking of their own personal safety and have for an incredibly long time - it isn't like Soleimani was the first leader to get whacked. What it will actually do is force them to take a long, hard look at their supply chains and how they actually procure electronics. The biggest change I can see coming from this is a market opportunity for Chinese/Russian pager manufacturers.
The Chinese can be bribed and there are plenty of rich Jewish Russians in senior positions in industry and manufacturing, so it’s unclear that that’s a great path for them.
If the Chinese are so easy to bribe why aren't they giving Israel their full-throated support right now? From where I'm sitting it looks to me like China has no real motivation to assist Israel and they definitely don't act like it (understandably, in my view, given how Israel has treated their last imperial patron). As for Russia, I don't actually believe in the antisemitic conspiracy theory that jews are a fifth column who will abuse their economic power to subvert the will of the nation they live in - so I don't think the presence of jews in industry/manufacturing actually means anything when it comes to geopolitics.
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