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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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Everyone was cheering when Israel infiltrated a consumer electronics supply chain to plant hidden explosives inside batteries. That is actually pushing the boundaries of normalized warfare.

Did anyone not in Hezbollah get a pager with explosives in it?

If you define Hezbollah as, “the entire Shia population of Lebanon,” then probably not. If you define Hezbollah as, “people engaging in or directly supporting militant operations,” then yes, a whole lot of innocent people got exploding pagers.

I have no idea how this didn’t kill the export market for Israeli electronics. For all we know, Mossad has the capability to kill anyone anywhere in the world with an Israeli-made chip in their car at any time.

Mossad has deviously sabotaged Intel's 10nm and 7nm processes, forcing Windows laptop manufacturers to rely on Israeli-made chips - when overloaded with excess wattage - to reach temperatures high enough to detonate the lithium ion batteries within. That's why real warriors of the Ummah use AMD and ARM.

There were reports of collateral victims, yes but that hardly matters. Planting hidden explosives in the consumer supply chain is normalized terrorism, so I don't really want to see people act shocked that Iran is projecting power over its Strait, literally the most normal and predictable wartime maneuverer ever.

I don’t love the term “terrorism” here since the electronics were clearly aimed at military targets and not civilians. No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too. Terrorism I think by definition is causing civilian harm to change politics.

I don’t love the term “terrorism” here since the electronics were clearly aimed at military targets and not civilians. No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too. Terrorism I think by definition is causing civilian harm to change politics.

I agree, but the basic playbook is (1) identify conduct which is perceived as being reprehensible; (2) falsely accuse Israel of doing it. Thus, the false accusations of "genocide," "apartheid," "terrorism," etc.

No one calls it terrorism when you bomb an army base but some collateral damage kills civilians too.

American authorities have done this regularly since at least the 1983 Beirut bombing, through the attack on the Cole, and the Kabul bombing just a few years back. Maybe their definition is slightly more consistent if you expected uniforms while doing combat actions, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" isn't completely wrong either.

So if a mail bomb is sent to some IDF recruit by Hezbhollah to blow up inside his house then that's not terrorism because it's a military target?

It's not the target that is exceptional here, it's the clandestine appropriation of a consumer supply chain as a weapon. That is actually unprecedented, it's a method of warfare that fundamentally erodes global trust in economic trade and cooperation, it is far more unusual than a blockade of a Strait in the middle of an existential war. As to the semantics, feel free to not call it terrorism if it makes you feel better, even though you would call it that if/when bombs are set off inside the homes of Israeli or US troops.

Spitting in the food in the back kitchen isn't such an enormous taboo because of the direct consequences, but because none of us want to live in a world where that is remotely acceptable behavior, we want to trust our food has been handled properly and not question it when we sit down to eat. But people here defending the planting of hidden explosives in consumer goods can't seem to wrap their minds around those consequences. Why is Hezbollah such a dangerous enemy Israel has to normalize spitting in the food as a method of warfare?

So if a mail bomb is sent to some IDF recruit by Hezbhollah to blow up inside his house then that's not terrorism because it's a military target?

If Hezbollah were genuinely targeting a specific soldier, I wouldn't call that terrorism, especially if Hezbollah had the option of destroying the entire neighborhood the soldier lived in but instead decided to use a mail bomb. I would object for other reasons, but I wouldn't call it terrorism.

As far as blockades go, I agree that the rules of war do not have a general prohibition on naval blockades. However, I recall the following:

(1) A blockade must be directed at enemy territory, as distinguished from a blockade of the high seas or of an international waterway. Thus, if the Iranian Navy blockaded the Port of San Diego, this would arguably conform to the rules of war. But I doubt that blockading the Strait of Hormuz would conform.

(2) The blockading state must not play favorites, i.e. the blockade must be enforced against all states, friendly or not.

I'm not an expert, but it looks to me like this is an illegal blockade. Of course I am open to being corrected.

Targeted killing of enemy combatants is not terrorism. Simple as.

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