It’s truly remarkable. It’s like it’s straight out of a James Bond movie.
You interfere with someone’s communication devices—mobiles, pagers, walkie-talkies, or whatever they might be carrying—plant explosives inside, and simultaneously detonate them.
Thousands of explosions at once, in different locations wherever the device owners happen to be: in a supermarket among other people, on a bus, in a car with their child, in a hospital…
Incredible, inventive, intelligent, impressive. Almost like a video game.
You press a button and kill without getting your hands dirty, without facing the victim, without seeing their gaze or putting yourself in danger.
You’re far away, invisible. Truly like playing a war game. Except it’s not a game.
But who cares about the victims, the device owners, or anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
If something like this were carried out by an organisation, it would be immediately classified as a terrorist act.
When a state does it, however, it’s simply part of warfare.
After all, those holding such devices were somehow connected to Hezbollah, the villain of the story.
And if some were killed or injured as collateral damage, well, that happens.
Mossad, without claiming responsibility for the explosions in the pagers, has only furthered its legendary status. .
As David Ignatius writes in The Washington Post though, “Hezbollah will be the one to write the next chapter of this thriller.”
And humanity, more impressed than fearful, awaits the response as America rushes to clarify that it had no involvement or prior knowledge of the operation involving the pagers. An operation that sets the tone for the future.
Battles are no longer fought on the battlefield.
“The surveillance devices are in your pockets. If you’re looking for the Israeli agent, look at the phone in your hand or in the hands of your spouses and children,” Hezbollah’s leader had warned, hastily replacing mobile phones with specialised pagers from the past, believing them to be secure.
He was proven wrong. Every device can be turned into a weapon. “Beyond its devastating effect on Hezbollah, the attack marks the beginning of a new and very dangerous era in cyber warfare. Any device connected to the internet can potentially be turned into a weapon,” writes Ignatius.
The “wrong” device could be your phone, your fridge, or even your TV, he notes. Or perhaps even the e-cigarette in your mouth, he wonders.
It’s astonishing how much brainpower is spent on destruction.