Updated: Ingenious precedent made historical rubberneckers of most of the world fascinated by reports of Israel’s synchronous pager attack on Lebanese Hezbollah yesterday, and today, Wednesday, a second wave by exploding Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies and some solar equipment. That Hezbollah is a designated terrorist group lobbing rockets at Israel made it easier to self-justify fascination with the boldness of such an astonishing operation.
And yet..implication-horror sets-in as empathy aids critical thinking, as it should not only with explosive pagers and walkie-talkies but every rocket launched by Hezbollah at Israeli cities:
(1) Innocent people might easily be standing by, including VIPs (children) who might have been playing with the pagers, walkie-talkies, or near other devices;
(2) Can malware overheat smart phones and other devices to make them into lethal incendiary devices?
(3) Few know or question what happens to their ordered items in the stream of commerce before receiving them, a gaping vulnerability where terrorist retribution may seek out supply chains to hated free nation markets.
(4) If a nation state normally hewing to rules of law and war will do this, how much more will terrorists copycat their operations?
(5) China has immense supply chain access begging the question of how many mass produced items could be spiked to explode by wireless command, targeting hundreds of thousands, filling hospitals, and causing chaos at the start of a war?
Those analyzing supply chain attacks could foresee this but likely would not think an attack could succeed at the scale of targeting over 2,000 people personally with synchronicity. For that, Hezbollah likely helped-out by shopping convenience and bulk prices like everyone else.
In viewing the video footage of exploding pagers, we see ourselves in the produce section perusing the apples right-of-boom. And we wonder how Lebanese know if their blueberry stocker is a Hezbollah operative who will soon be blowing-up others’ Blackberries by night from his wheelchair.
The simplicity of terrorist training camps targetable in the badlands seems like the ‘good ‘ol days.’ Is it possible to secure the stream of commerce all the way up to the rainfall rivulets feeding it? Or is it easier to make peace? This is why experienced combat leaders repeatedly remind civilian leaders that diplomacy is an instrument of power to be used wisely wherever it can be before warfare gets the call. Or is paged.
