The classical refrain of the exasperated teacher — “I don’t care who started it, it’s got to stop” — feels appropriate. But sounding as if it were something straight out of science fiction, this event is well worth considering on technical grounds.
In particular, at the time the news was breaking, multiple theories were circulating about how the detonations had occurred. While we now know how it was done, the fact that such an audacious operation was ever contemplated sheds light on new tactics that could be used in conflicts far beyond the Middle East.
In the aftermath of what has been called a “broadcast bombing”, we learned that the explosions were the culmination of years of Israeli preparation. Israel had implanted small explosive charges in pagers under the brand name Gold Apollo, although Gold Apollo itself did not manufacture the pagers in question. Hezbollah purchased its pagers from a company called BAC Consulting in Budapest, and Israel had targeted its tampering so that only the pagers destined for Hezbollah were modified in this fashion.
This is what is known as a supply chain attack: the sabotage of a product performed either during manufacture or by intercepting it during shipping, in order to place compromised equipment in an adversary’s hands. At the time, however, another possibility was under consideration — and I will freely admit it was the one I thought most likely when I first saw the reports.
What if Israel had not needed to implant deliberately designed bombs in those pagers, and had instead made use of the inadvertently designed ‘bombs’ that were already there? Lithium-ion batteries....<<<Read More>>>...
