Phil A. McBride: What Israel did is incredible. And it will change things

You can be sure that the people who manufacture our smartphones (as well as the governments that use them) are losing some sleep this week.

By: Phil A. McBride

On Tuesday, in the mid-afternoon (Lebanon time), hundred of pagers — maybe thousands — belonging to Hezbollah leadership, operatives, support staff and supporters started to beep. They were receiving a message, and people did what people always do when their device beeps. They reached for it.

That’s when they exploded.

Barely 24 hours later, two-way radios — known as “walkie-talkies” — also began to explode. Video available on X (formerly known as Twitter) even shows one of these devices exploding during a funeral procession for someone killed by their pager the day before. It appears that switching to the walkie-talkies was Hezbollah’s backup plan. Once they stopped trusting their pagers, and they were only using pagers because they’d already decided that smartphones were too easily hacked, they switched to radios. Then those blew up, too.

I have spent my life in IT, and today run an IT company — our lifeblood is communication. I’m also an amateur radio operator (a “Ham,” for “ham radio,” as we’re sometimes called). That means I know more than most people about these kinds of devices. They’re my business and my pleasure. I don’t claim any particular insight into geopolitics or intelligence, but I know a lot about the technology. And trust me when I tell you that what Israel has done is absolutely astonishing. Not just in terms of the intelligence coup. But also the technical one. This is huge.

There is a lot we still don’t know, and may never know, but within hours of the blast, I was starting to figure out what Israel must have done. What we’ve seen reported since generally conforms to what I’d concluded. According to news reports, the pagers were purchased by Hezbollah earlier this year for fear that their other means of telecommunications weren’t safe from eavesdropping by Israeli intelligence. As it turns out, these devices were sold to Hezbollah through a European company, which was part of an elaborate intelligence operation that Israel invested years in. This company, which Hezbollah clearly didn’t suspect was actually part of Israeli intelligence, bought up thousands of pagers and sold them to numerous clients. The ones intended for Hezbollah were modified with a tiny, hard-to-detect explosive.

Although less clear, there are reports of other electronic devices exploding in close proximity to Hezbollah members and sympathizers, including fingerprint readers and the charge/load controllers that are the “brain” of any modern solar power system. All of these devices appear to have been modified to include a very small amount of explosive material that was able to be detonated from afar.

Detonating the pagers and other devices would have been a relatively easy thing to do (to the extent that any of this was easy!), since it’s obvious that Israel had already penetrated the pager network, and Hezbollah’s communications generally, before the devices were even deployed. Once Israel was confident that they’d put all the devices into the right hands, they simply sent a message — remember, these devices are all intended to receive telecommunications — that somehow triggered the explosions we saw. I don’t know if the explosives did all the damage, or if the batteries were somehow overloaded as well. What is clear is that the explosions were enough to kill, injure and maim people who were directly holding the devices, but not much more. Videos posted online show people suddenly dropping to the ground in agony after their device explodes in their hands, pockets or backpacks, but people in their immediate vicinity are unharmed.

Again, none of this is easy, but if one is looking to remotely detonate a bomb, it helps when the bomb it intended to literally receive incoming communications.

What happened with the radios is less clear. But to me, more interesting.

Based on the photos available, the affected two-way radios were either using very high or ultra-high frequencies (VHF and UHF, respectively) and were probably limited to four to six watts of power. This means that, under ideal circumstances — good weather, clear terrain, no tall buildings or natural formations blocking the signal — the effective range of these radios would be between 15 and 20 kilometres. In the real world, where radios will very rarely be operating in ideal environments, radios like this use “repeaters” — high-powered transceivers placed in high-elevation locations that receive transmissions from the smaller radios and rebroadcast those transmissions simultaneously on a different frequency. Coverage areas of a repeater, which operate with much greater power than the handful of watts typical for a hand-held radio, can be several hundred square kilometres, depending on the height of the antenna and the terrain below. 

For the radios to receive the command to detonate, someone would have to be within the coverage area of the repeater or the various two-way radios on the network. 

That covers the pagers and two-way radios, but what about the other various items that exploded? While almost everything electronic you can buy these days has internet/wireless capability, Hezbollah went through a lot of trouble to be as disconnected from the internet as possible. I can only assume they wouldn’t have connected a device meant to read the fingerprints of terrorists trying to enter a safe house to the internet, where a Mossad hack is a constant threat. This means that any other device that exploded not only had explosive charges installed, but also a radio capable of receiving a remote detonation command. The most efficient approach would have been to tune those radios to the same frequencies used by Hezbollah’s two-way radios to minimize the infrastructure needed to pull off what was already an insanely complex operation, but we will need more information to even begin to understand that part of Israel’s plan.

And let’s talk about the plan. The level of sophistication for such an operation cannot be understated. Everything that we’ve seen over the last few days indicates a complete and total breakdown of Hezbollah’s internal security. Israel managed to intercept and infiltrate both their primary and backup communications networks before they were even deployed, as well as a swath of other electronic equipment, and turn them into bombs. 

It has been said that communication is the most important component of any military system, but I don’t think anyone had ever thought of actually weaponizing the opposition’s communications infrastructure itself before now. This is something genuinely new in warfare.

I have zero doubt that Iran, Syria and Lebanon are in the process of gutting their government and military command/control communications networks. There is footage circulating on X of soldiers disposing of electronic equipment and bomb squads performing controlled detonations of smartphones and other such peripherals. This means that for a limited amount of time, Israel’s enemies cannot effectively command and control their military forces. That is absolutely crippling. Add to that the actual physical injuries caused by the exploding devices, plus the incredible psychological shock, and we start to understand the full scope of what Israel has done.

At zero direct risk to Israeli military personnel. This might be the greatest asymmetrical attack in human history.

This is, to my mind, a good thing. I am very much on Team Israel, as it were. But setting that aside, as a man deeply invested in the security of our civilian and military communication networks, I cannot deny feeling uneasy. Who is to say that what happened over there can’t happen over here?

The good news, if there is any, is that this was not a hacking of these devices to turn the batteries into explosives. Good. However, lithium-ion, lithium iron phosphate and lithium-ion polymer batteries can overheat and combust — and, yes, even explode under the right circumstances. You can be sure that the people who manufacture our smartphones (as well as the governments that use them) are losing some sleep exploring this very possibility.

What has struck me the most in the last couple of days is the contrast between the two major conflicts currently roiling the world. The Russo-Ukraine War is, more or less, a traditional kinetic war. They’ve added drones for modern measure, but it’s a war that deals in guns and tanks and planes and territory and supply lines and the kind of strategy that we have become accustomed to over the last century or so. What we’re seeing play out in the Middle East is becoming the opposite. It began as a terrorist attack on Israel’s southern communities, which morphed into a kinetic response in a densely urban environment, that has bred the most sophisticated and precise military assault in modern history — perhaps ever. 

Albert Einstein is famous for musing “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” It’s possible that the former will be fought with those primitive weapons because that’s all that may be left after our infrastructure randomly explodes around us.

I have written about our civil police agencies, their current inability to deal with modern cybercrime and the need for them to (quickly) catch up. It is my sincere hope that all Western governments will carefully observe what has happened in Lebanon over the last 72 hours and take to heart the lessons they need to learn to keep us safe from the perils of this new kind of threat. Israel has just established a whole new means of waging war. We’d better get ready.

Phil A. McBride is a friend of The Line and an information technology specialist with over 25 years of experience. He owns readyIT Computing Solutions, a managed IT service provider which serves clients in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta. He is also an amateur radio operator of 30 years (VA3QR) and the president of Radio Amateurs of Canada.

---

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded — no federal subsidy for us! If you value our work, have already subscribed, and still worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today.

---

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  lineeditor@protonmail.com