NNA - The American University of Beirut Medical Center announced in a statement: "At a crucial time when AUBMC physicians, nurses, and staff have been fully mobilized to deal with the aftermath of today's injuries, several malicious social media outlets have started spreading rumors and conspiracy theories about the types of communications systems AUB has in place, attempting to link AUB to this tragic event. The university categorically denies these baseless allegations.
Following are the facts. Our paging system infrastructure was upgraded in April 2024. The Go-Live for switching to the new system took place on August 29, 2024. The scope of this upgrade was to enhance emergency and code communication, as several devices and systems had become obsolete.
The American University of Beirut Medical Center has received over 160 seriously injured individuals over the last three hours, with more to come. Our full focus must be on saving lives and caring for the wounded to the best of our ability. Rather than waste time spreading baseless rumors, we urge all to rally to support AUBMC and the heroic but overwhelmed medical system in Lebanon."
My more excitable Twitter-infected friends have been speaking about these scraps of news items in “we” terms too. Is it just that the theatricality of this whole thing has ginned up a good ol’-fashioned Twitter mob “investigation”?
Indiscriminate? Aren’t these operations targeting individual pieces of military operational hardware, the sort of thing that only combatants have any reason to have, and that the combatant force keeps confined to its own personnel for security reasons?
Tawdry, unsportsmanlike, I can see those lines of criticism—but how does it get much more discriminate than this?
It's more discriminate than bombs, but like poisoning food and hoping it gets to the right target I think anything where you don't actually see the person before choosing to detonate isn't that surgical either. They couldn't actually check if the pagers were on the targets at the time or etc.
But they didn’t arbitrarily poison food and hope it got to their target, poisoning all sorts of civilians along the way. That is a strawman.
These devices were not used by non-militants. These devices were used for communications, by militants. No civilian was “playing with” or using these devices, as they were issued by Hezbollah to their operatives. It would be no different from targeting specific guns used by Hezbollah and booby-trapping them to shoot backwards. That is a targeted attack.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell to condemn the "indiscriminate" nature of the covert operation. "Even if the attacks seem to have been targeted, they had heavy, indiscriminate collateral damages among civilians, including children among the victims." Borrell said.
Edward Snowden :“What Israel has just done is, via any method, reckless.
They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.”
> It's funny to think that there are members of Hezbollah here on HN.
It's worth remembering that Hezbollah as a whole is more than just the paramilitary branch which is commonly referred to as a terrorist organization. Some entities (like the EU) only considers the paramilitary arm of Hezbollah as a terrorist group, while the rest is a proper political organization.
Like always, things aren't quite as black and white as many want it to be.
>Some entities (like the EU) only considers the paramilitary arm of Hezbollah as a terrorist group, while the rest is a proper political organization.
And that decision is much more political than it is legal or rational. Imagine arguing that ISIS officials are off-limits because they're "not paramilitary".
Hezbollah's occupation & control of southern Lebanon is against international law in the first place, but nobody actually wants to deal with that problem. I've never seen a comment that criticizes Hezbollah violations of UN Resolution 1701 the way that people criticize Israel.
Same with Hamas, really. At this point anything either organization does basically violates the "just war" (oxymoron, I know) tenant of only attacking an enemy when you believe you have a reasonable chance of success.
Generally speaking, when the Israelis mutually recognize Arab nations, they respect the terms of the agreement. Jordan and Egypt are examples. So long as the other party says "you get to exist" and doesn't actively tolerate anti-Israeli militant activity within their borders, Israel won't use its military against them.
There are probably some exceptions to this rule, and yes, their occupation of the West Bank violates international law, but attacking just no longer works. Gaza lies in ruins and the IDF conducts operations in the area at will. There are currently thousands of people wrapping their electronics in aluminum foil in Lebanon. Disarming and sitting down to talk in brokered negotiations is probably more effective at this point.
And if Israel can physically plant explosives in its enemies' electronic devices, can you imagine what it does to those whose support it needs, namely US politicians?
This is a strawman. US politicians are not at war with Israel, and do not use specifically distributed devices for military ops and communication against them.
Continued US support is absolutely essential to provide Israel a licence to keep doing basically whatever it wants. Making sure that politicians keep supporting Israel is possibly even more important than delivering blows to enemies.
Israel planted cellphone spying devices near the White House:
> the implication that US politicians are on board with Israel because of some perceived threat of danger to their lives is absurd
No, sorry if that's what it sounded like. No, my argument was a little more subtle: if these are the tricks Israel employs to deal blows to its enemies, imagine those it uses to ensure the vital support it needs. If it can plant literal explosive in its enemies electronics, do you think it refrains from hacking, wiretapping, manipulating and, if necessary, blackmailing those whose decisions count?
Israel undoubtedly surveils US citizens; but as a counterpoint, the US also absolutely surveils Israel. Surveillance is a thing countries do to enemies and allies; it's just rarely talked about. But there have been plenty of public instances of it in the past.
Blackmail is less likely, since it's too easy for that to come out and an ally to have egg on its face, but using knowledge gained through surveillance to further their own gains? Absolutely.
> Israel undoubtedly surveils US citizens; but as a counterpoint, the US also absolutely surveils Israel
There is no symmetry whatsoever between Israel and the US. The US are a superpower, Israel is (supposedly) a small client state. The US have a vast political influence over the richest part of the world, Israel has almost none of its own. The US by surveilling Israel might saves themselves some embarrassment (doesn't really work, obviously); Israel by surveilling the US and possibly manipulating its politics manages to sway the world's most powerful nation to serve its own interests.
You missed my point. Everyone surveils everyone else. There are no exceptions.
Any country with the capabilities to surveil other countries does. We do it to every country we can, allies included. Allies do it to us. And everyone does it to enemies.
That is my point; it has nothing to do with Israel or the US in particular.
Specifically, Israel's intelligence apparatus is one of the main reasons they are such a useful partner to the US in the Middle East. It is far easier for us to deal with Israel, even now, than it is to deal with Iran or Pakistan or Qatar; but suffice it to say that every single country surveils every other country it can.
> Continued US support is absolutely essential to provide Israel a licence to keep doing basically whatever it wants
We give it latitude it wouldn't otherwise have. But its military and MI complex are among the largest in the world. It could prosecute its wars for quite some time without our support. (It's also ambiguous whether they couldn't find a friend in China or the Gulf.)
> Is that why the US sent tens of billions of dollars just in the past year to them?
Not sure what "that" you're referring to, but broadly, yes. Israel is an ally about whom most Americans have a favourable view [1]. (It's a non-issue for most likely voters [2]. Foreign policy pretty much always is.)
Not sending arms would mean contemplating, in increasing order of severity: Israel losing the war and confidence in America; Israel defecting to another benefactor; and Israel ceasing to exist because America pulled support. These are problems for the U.S. geostrategically, given it weakens our position in the Middle East but also with allies in Asia. (An ally who abandons you halfway through a war is worse than useless.) The latter two would probably tank an administration.
If you're saying that our volume of aid is evidence Israel needs them, note that Israel is still--by and large--using precision weapons. If we cut them off from those they'd do what Russia has been doing.
I'm not expert but does small amounts like this are really detectable in bulk? Even at the airport for some reason you have to remove all electronics and put in separate box.
The latest FDA Guidance on Cybersecurity requires that we show how we secure our device's software supply chain. Next time someone complains, I'm going to remind them of this attack.
And the person complaining will say "unless you can guarantee a greater than 50% chance of that happening in the period we're budgeting for, we're not going to bother with all of that work."
> the person complaining will say "unless you can guarantee a greater than 50% chance of that happening in the period we're budgeting for, we're not going to bother with all of that work"
If you've worked at a medical-device manufacturer, please blow a whistle. That isn't normal and could seriously hurt people.
The reason it isn't a broad issue is the cost of approval revocation, or even suspension, is existential for many companies.
The explosives in the pagers were purportedly almost undetectable by any scanner. They could grind up a pager and do residue tests but now you don't have a pager.
Wonder if US have that capacity. So they think that if it is everywhere they can activate it at will on whoever they think is worthy, until a bug/mistake or backdoor is used to do that on everyone. Its the kind of elephants in the room stampede that you don't want to get caught in.
I think possibly this is Israel sticking a dagger in Chinese manufacturing.
We sort of knew all along something like this could happen, hence why Huawei got kicked out from the West. But this makes you realize that anything made in mainland China with a Lithium battery is a potential incendiary device, worse still, usually connected to the Internet. Not that I necessarily think China would want to do that, but basically the genie is out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in.
The theoretical threat has just literally exploded in people's faces.
(I know this was actual explosives not batteries but you could do a lot of damage with batteries)
> I think possibly this is Israel sticking a dagger in Chinese manufacturing.
Based on the small amount of information available, hard to say. Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...) quotes one device as made in Japan, so seemingly goes beyond Chinese manufacturing. Probably some point along the import/export that got hit instead?
> Images of the exploded walkie-talkies examined by Reuters showed an inside panel labeled "ICOM" and "made in Japan."
> According to its website, ICOM is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.
> The company has said that production of several models of the ICOM hand-held radio have been discontinued, including the IC-V82, which appeared to closely match those in images from Lebanon on Wednesday and which was phased out in 2014.
> The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
Oh yes, I'm not blaming this on China in any way. Rather, this has crystallized the risk of having all manufacturing outsourced, one way or the other - out of control of "trusted allies", whatever that means. Somehow, things we 100% know can happen are much scarier once they actually happen.
Everything seems to be going up at once. The pagers were an unprecedented and major attack. It was also pretty incredible they managed to also infect their radios but now its already a farce.
The nth good example why we need mandatory open hardware and FLOSS from the first line on any commercial project. Remember such attacks are perfectly possible from any country to another...
Oh, and imaging a supply chain attack against drugs, something that does not act so quickly...
"Pictures of exploded solar panels, fingerprint readers and other devices circulated through social media, though it was unclear if they blew up by themselves or were simply near walkie-talkies which blew up." [1]
After these incidents, Israel can now never be trusted commercially for its software or hardware. Their backdoors are not just backdoors; it's a blowdoor.
> can now never be trusted commercially for its software or hardware
Obviously not if you're an enemy or adversary of Israel's. If America and China go to war and Chinese equipment shuts down or starts exploding, that's fair game under the rules of war.
> Chinese equipment shuts down or starts exploding, that's fair game under the rules of war.
I am not so sure that it is fair game. Here is what Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has to say:
> "such attacks violate international human rights law and potentially international humanitarian law."
> if you're an enemy or adversary
You seem to have conveniently forgotten how backdoors work. They eventually leak, and then anyone can exploit and trigger them. No matter the original intended target, pretty soon everyone can become a target.
> seem to have conveniently forgotten how backdoors work. They eventually leak, and then anyone can exploit and trigger them
This is also true of the access controls to a weapons system. We get angry when people let others use their weapons. It's sort of par for the course when it comes to war.
Just waiting for the world police to go in an arrest them and hold them accountable for their crimes, I'm sure they'll get around to it after they have finished arresting all those Russians for their war crimes.
I mean yes, blowing up things in another country's territory is an act of war. If you commit acts of war against the America, the U.S. government will do war to you.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadcommunication, power and food processing and production.
The next thing is the food. Keep fingers off tomatoes.
Especially given that the pagers weren't naturally explosive. Instead the explosive was put into them at some point in the delivery chain.
In unrelated news, the American University of Beirut Medican Center replaced the pagers of their doctors and staff two weeks ago.
https://www.nna-leb.gov.lb/en/miscellaneous/722089/aub-medic...
My more excitable Twitter-infected friends have been speaking about these scraps of news items in “we” terms too. Is it just that the theatricality of this whole thing has ginned up a good ol’-fashioned Twitter mob “investigation”?
Tawdry, unsportsmanlike, I can see those lines of criticism—but how does it get much more discriminate than this?
Everyone seems to want to find a reason to claim Israel is targeting civilians here, but they aren’t.
This is surgical, which is what everyone wanted Israel to do more of, when it came to how they wage war.
These devices were not used by non-militants. These devices were used for communications, by militants. No civilian was “playing with” or using these devices, as they were issued by Hezbollah to their operatives. It would be no different from targeting specific guns used by Hezbollah and booby-trapping them to shoot backwards. That is a targeted attack.
That's a statement you have to prove if you want it to qualify.
They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.”
It's worth remembering that Hezbollah as a whole is more than just the paramilitary branch which is commonly referred to as a terrorist organization. Some entities (like the EU) only considers the paramilitary arm of Hezbollah as a terrorist group, while the rest is a proper political organization.
Like always, things aren't quite as black and white as many want it to be.
And that decision is much more political than it is legal or rational. Imagine arguing that ISIS officials are off-limits because they're "not paramilitary".
Hezbollah's occupation & control of southern Lebanon is against international law in the first place, but nobody actually wants to deal with that problem. I've never seen a comment that criticizes Hezbollah violations of UN Resolution 1701 the way that people criticize Israel.
Same with Hamas, really. At this point anything either organization does basically violates the "just war" (oxymoron, I know) tenant of only attacking an enemy when you believe you have a reasonable chance of success.
I'd want all militaries to disarm too, unlikely to happen unless everyone starts to agree to not get into everyone else's business.
So besides getting everyone to disarm, what could we do?
There are probably some exceptions to this rule, and yes, their occupation of the West Bank violates international law, but attacking just no longer works. Gaza lies in ruins and the IDF conducts operations in the area at will. There are currently thousands of people wrapping their electronics in aluminum foil in Lebanon. Disarming and sitting down to talk in brokered negotiations is probably more effective at this point.
Is that right? Then their flag on wikipedia is even funnier. It screams "Islamic terrorists".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
Byline says from associated press but abcnews isn’t carrying this story?
So if this is fake news then _why_? Clicks, or something else like discrediting solar power?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go.com
ABC news is an extremely well known US news organization. For a random example it was just the host of the US presidential debate a few days ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205
I'm not sure what electronics I'd be able to trust at this point.
This has nothing at all do with politics.
Israel planted cellphone spying devices near the White House:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/12/israel-planted...
No consequences whatsoever, why?
If Israel threatened, even once, to attack the US, rest assured their US support would be gone in an instant.
Surveillance is separate. We surveil allies all the time, and they surveil us. It’s not nice, but it’s par for the course.
No, sorry if that's what it sounded like. No, my argument was a little more subtle: if these are the tricks Israel employs to deal blows to its enemies, imagine those it uses to ensure the vital support it needs. If it can plant literal explosive in its enemies electronics, do you think it refrains from hacking, wiretapping, manipulating and, if necessary, blackmailing those whose decisions count?
Israel undoubtedly surveils US citizens; but as a counterpoint, the US also absolutely surveils Israel. Surveillance is a thing countries do to enemies and allies; it's just rarely talked about. But there have been plenty of public instances of it in the past.
Blackmail is less likely, since it's too easy for that to come out and an ally to have egg on its face, but using knowledge gained through surveillance to further their own gains? Absolutely.
There is no symmetry whatsoever between Israel and the US. The US are a superpower, Israel is (supposedly) a small client state. The US have a vast political influence over the richest part of the world, Israel has almost none of its own. The US by surveilling Israel might saves themselves some embarrassment (doesn't really work, obviously); Israel by surveilling the US and possibly manipulating its politics manages to sway the world's most powerful nation to serve its own interests.
Any country with the capabilities to surveil other countries does. We do it to every country we can, allies included. Allies do it to us. And everyone does it to enemies.
That is my point; it has nothing to do with Israel or the US in particular.
Specifically, Israel's intelligence apparatus is one of the main reasons they are such a useful partner to the US in the Middle East. It is far easier for us to deal with Israel, even now, than it is to deal with Iran or Pakistan or Qatar; but suffice it to say that every single country surveils every other country it can.
We give it latitude it wouldn't otherwise have. But its military and MI complex are among the largest in the world. It could prosecute its wars for quite some time without our support. (It's also ambiguous whether they couldn't find a friend in China or the Gulf.)
Not sure what "that" you're referring to, but broadly, yes. Israel is an ally about whom most Americans have a favourable view [1]. (It's a non-issue for most likely voters [2]. Foreign policy pretty much always is.)
Not sending arms would mean contemplating, in increasing order of severity: Israel losing the war and confidence in America; Israel defecting to another benefactor; and Israel ceasing to exist because America pulled support. These are problems for the U.S. geostrategically, given it weakens our position in the Middle East but also with allies in Asia. (An ally who abandons you halfway through a war is worse than useless.) The latter two would probably tank an administration.
If you're saying that our volume of aid is evidence Israel needs them, note that Israel is still--by and large--using precision weapons. If we cut them off from those they'd do what Russia has been doing.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/611375/americans-views-israel-p...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-t...
More than 300 people were injured.
The renewed attack comes just a day after a coordinated explosion of pagers killed 12 in Lebanon and left more than 2,800 people injured. "
If this is still a question of implanted explosives, it’s detectable. If it’s firmware spinning up, that’s far more troubling.
If you've worked at a medical-device manufacturer, please blow a whistle. That isn't normal and could seriously hurt people.
The reason it isn't a broad issue is the cost of approval revocation, or even suspension, is existential for many companies.
With the pagers and radios, it's pretty clear that it was limited to Hezbollah according to Hezbollah's own statements.
Hezbollah hand-held radios detonate across Lebanon, sources say
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41580205
We sort of knew all along something like this could happen, hence why Huawei got kicked out from the West. But this makes you realize that anything made in mainland China with a Lithium battery is a potential incendiary device, worse still, usually connected to the Internet. Not that I necessarily think China would want to do that, but basically the genie is out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in.
The theoretical threat has just literally exploded in people's faces.
(I know this was actual explosives not batteries but you could do a lot of damage with batteries)
Based on the small amount of information available, hard to say. Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-planted-exp...) quotes one device as made in Japan, so seemingly goes beyond Chinese manufacturing. Probably some point along the import/export that got hit instead?
> Images of the exploded walkie-talkies examined by Reuters showed an inside panel labeled "ICOM" and "made in Japan."
> According to its website, ICOM is a Japan-based radio communications and telephone company.
> The company has said that production of several models of the ICOM hand-held radio have been discontinued, including the IC-V82, which appeared to closely match those in images from Lebanon on Wednesday and which was phased out in 2014.
> The hand-held radios were purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought, said a security source.
Oh, and imaging a supply chain attack against drugs, something that does not act so quickly...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/sep/18/middle-ea...
Obviously not if you're an enemy or adversary of Israel's. If America and China go to war and Chinese equipment shuts down or starts exploding, that's fair game under the rules of war.
I am not so sure that it is fair game. Here is what Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has to say:
> "such attacks violate international human rights law and potentially international humanitarian law."
> if you're an enemy or adversary
You seem to have conveniently forgotten how backdoors work. They eventually leak, and then anyone can exploit and trigger them. No matter the original intended target, pretty soon everyone can become a target.
This is also true of the access controls to a weapons system. We get angry when people let others use their weapons. It's sort of par for the course when it comes to war.
I mean yes, blowing up things in another country's territory is an act of war. If you commit acts of war against the America, the U.S. government will do war to you.