Trump’s record of leaking intelligence and doubts over his new team have allies worried, experts say

Rhian Lubin
Fri, November 1, 2024 

The Independent

Trump’s record of leaking intelligence and doubts over his new team have allies worried, experts say


With days to go until America decides who will become the next president, there are concerns among some US allies over one of the most important aspects of their relationship with the world’s most powerful nation — intelligence sharing.

While a Kamala Harris presidency is expected to fit into a more predictable pattern of intelligence handling, security experts say some US allies have more “anxiety” about the alternative: Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

The Independent spoke to experts in intelligence, national security, and foreign policy from the UK, Australia, and Canada on the implications of a second Trump term. They all agree that the stakes couldn’t be higher – and suggest that the Republican candidate’s track record when it comes to leaking secret information is one of their causes for concern.


“There is trepidation about Mr Trump in the US intelligence community and throughout the Five Eyes network,” Dr Michael Fullilove, executive director of Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, tells The Independent, referring to the intelligence-sharing network made up of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

“The handling of secrets requires people to follow rules,” Fullilove says. “But Mr Trump doesn’t seem to believe that rules apply to him. He sees himself as existing in a rule-free zone. When you’re talking about the handling of classified intelligence, that’s a problem.”

During Trump’s first administration, the White House “leaked like a sieve,” Dr Daniel Larsen, a lecturer in intelligence and war studies at Scotland’s Glasgow University and previously at Cambridge, tells The Independent.

As a matter of law, a sitting president can declassify the most secret classified information, but US defense experts say even presidents have to transmit declassification orders through the proper channels.
Trump and classified information

In May 2017, months after taking office, Trump shared classified Israeli intelligence, concerning an undercover operation to infiltrate Isis, with the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the US at the time, Sergey Kislyak, during a meeting in the Oval Office. Amid uproar, Trump insisted he had every right to do so, tweeting: “As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism.”

In 2019, Trump tweeted a classified satellite image of a failed Iranian rocket launch to his millions of followers. Critics said that by doing so he risked revealing information about US surveillance techniques. Trump responded by telling reporters: “We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do.”

Trump is accused of illegally hoarding thousands of classified documents — including papers relating to nuclear weapons and spy satellites – at his Mar-a-Lago resort after his term as president ended. Criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith were sensationally dismissed by a federal judge who was appointed by Trump, but Smith has appealed that decision. Meanwhile, Trump has said he will “fire” Smith for investigating him if he is elected, and has suggested that Smith should be forced to leave the country.

Trump allegedly shared classified information about nuclear submarines to an Australian billionaire at Mar-a-Lago.

In 2019, Trump’s administration was accused of leaking information from the investigation into a terrorist attack on an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, which left 22 people dead. In response, British police briefly stopped sharing information with the US, although the UK intelligence agencies did not.

Trump with Sergey Lavrov, left, and Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office in May 2017. During the meeting Trump revealed secret information to his Russian guests about an Israeli intelligence operation. He later insisted he was entitled to do so (EPA)

Despite the leaks from Trump’s first term, experts largely agree that intelligence sharing between the allied nations would continue under a second Trump administration, but they acknowledge there would be some level of risk.

Professor Thomas Juneau, a former defense analyst with Canada’s Department of National Defense, explains that his country relies heavily upon the network as it “gets way more than it gives.”

“Is Trump going to kill the Five Eyes on day one? No. That’s way too extreme. But it is conceivable,” says Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa. “Is it conceivable that in four years, the Five Eyes are weakened and that we don’t necessarily get as much through as we used to? Yes, of course it is.”

Fullilove, of the Lowy Institute, maintains that the Five Eyes “will survive” Trump, and says the assertion that US allies would stop sharing information with the Americans if he were elected is “unrealistic”. But he adds an important caveat: “Trust is critical.”

Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the US who resigned in 2019 following the leak of some of his dispatches that were critical of Trump, told The Independent that the relationship between the UK and US intelligence communities “is close, strong and durable” and “will flourish whatever the political climate.”

Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk who found himself at the center of a worldwide controversy after he authored the so-called Steele dossier, a series of startling allegations suggesting Trump might have been compromised by Moscow, has a much graver assessment. He tells The Independent that concern among British intelligence officials “should be very high” if Trump is re-elected.

“I don’t think we can feel confident that any information that we give America as part of our very close and very important intelligence and security alliance would be safe,” Steele says. “In my 40-year career, I’ve never felt so concerned about the state of the world.”

In 2019, a US Department of Justice report found that the FBI had “raised doubts about the reliability of some of Steele’s reports”. However, Steele maintains to this day that the dossier — an intelligence report collated for a private client — contained “original intelligence [and] was obtained from credible sources.”

In a new book titled Unredacted, Steele warns of “a new world disorder” if Trump takes back the White House next week.

The view on Trump’s home turf was that some of his behavior was “very disturbing” to those in the intelligence world, according to former New York Times correspondent Thom Shanker, who covered the Pentagon, the military and national security for the paper.

In June 2023, prosecutors unsealed an indictment that contained photographs of boxes of classified information stacked in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

“That’s kind of what really shocked people,” Shanker, George Washington University’s Project Director for Media and National Security, tells The Independent.

Boxes of classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort (US Department of Justice/AFP via Getty Images)

“They were just in the open, where countless numbers of people just walked by and could have reached in and grabbed some or read them. So I think that was very disturbing to a lot of people who work in that world.”

Joe Biden’s home was also raided by the FBI in early 2023 after it emerged that he, too, took classified documents home with him when he was vice-president. Biden complied with the investigation, and no criminal charges were brought. Trump, however, was accused of a cover-up.

“When confronted with it, one cooperated with investigators, one obstructed,” Shanker says. “Taking the classified documents home is less telling than how they responded once they were confronted with it.”

So what do US allies think Trump 2.0 might look like?

Darroch says he is more concerned about a potential second term.

“Back in 2016, Trump had never served in any level of government, so was entirely inexperienced on how to make things happen,” he tells The Independent. “And he brought some mainstream Republican figures into government who turned out not to share his ideas and objectives.”

He continues: “If he wins a second term, it’s clear that he will appoint only supporters to positions around him, and he will have learnt from his first four years how to deliver. So bad ideas are much less likely to get stopped.”

Kim Darroch resigned as UK ambassador to the US in 2019 after dispatches critical of Trump were leaked (Getty)

Juneau says it would be “naive” to assume Trump’s second term would be like the first.

“My fear is that Trump two will be different,” he warns. “And the assumption that many are making here in Canada, but elsewhere too — that we survived Trump one, so we’ll be OK with Trump two — I find that that’s a naive assumption, even if it’s not completely impossible. Trump two will hit the ground running.”

Allied security services will be keeping a watchful eye on anyone Trump potentially nominates to head up the CIA and the NSA if he wins a second term.

“The thing that British intelligence would be watching like a hawk would be who he appoints to those positions,” says Larsen, the British intelligence historian. “There would obviously be more anxiety about a Trump administration just because of the much greater uncertainty as to who he might appoint and what those appointees might do.”

British officials, Larsen adds, would consider whether Trump appointees “might do something that would fundamentally change the bureaucratic relationship between these agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. [Whereas] with the Harris administration, you could count on the pretty traditional appointees to these organizations who would leave the relationship in place as it is,” he says.

Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland on 16 July 2018 (AP)

Differences in foreign policy could include Trump’s attitude to Nato, the 32-member Western defense organization, which he has repeatedly criticized. In February, he said the US would not help defend members who failed to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defense, as per NATO targets. Instead, he said, he would tell the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want”.

John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, has said he feared Trump was planning to pull the US out of NATO completely. Some observers suggest he may do that in a second term, or perhaps just make clear that he would not back NATO’s Article 5 commitment to come to the defense of any member that is attacked.

Trump has also repeatedly praised Russian president Vladimir Putin, among other dictators. At a joint news conference in Helsinki in July 2018, Trump surprised onlookers by taking Putin’s word over that of US intelligence agencies on the issue of whether Russia had interfered in the 2016 US election.

Unlike the first administration, Juneau says, Trump would “surround himself with people who will loyally implement his true vision from day one.”

“Jim Mattis, the first secretary of defense, some of [Trump’s] first national security advisers, some of the people at the CIA, like [Mike] Pompeo, they were Republicans. They were conservatives, but they were professionals, and they were actively blocking Trump’s craziest ideas,” says Juneau.

“The fear has got to be, from a Canadian national security perspective, [that] that won’t be the case under Trump two.”

Fullilove agrees that Trump “leant on the so-called adults in the room” when he was first in office. “This time, he has said that he doesn’t want those kinds of people in the room, and many of them will choose not to be in the room with him because they’ve seen what happened to the people who served him in his first term,” he adds. “So you are likely to see more Maga characters in senior positions.”

Trump in the Oval Office during his first term (EPA)

But Fullilove stresses that while “it would be harder” a second time round, Trump would not go completely unchecked. “On the other hand, don’t underestimate the resilience of the American system: the permanent civil service, the military, the Congress, the courts.”

He is also encouraged to hear JD Vance express his support for AUKUS, the trilateral security and defense partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US — but warns that there is still “some nervousness” because of his running mate.

“I asked JD Vance about AUKUS at the Munich Security Conference in February, and he said that he’s a fan,” Fullilove said. “The problem is that Mr Trump has no personal stake in AUKUS, and he has made a habit of ripping up deals that his predecessors signed. So, there is some risk to AUKUS. I wouldn’t overstate it, but there is some nervousness in Canberra.”

When approached for comment, the Trump campaign claimed that the Harris-Biden administration has “put our national security at risk more than any administration in history.”

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said in a statement to The Independent: “When President Trump was in office, NATO was strong, there was no war in Ukraine, and the Middle East was stable. Under Kamala Harris, the entire world is on the brink of a major war as Putin continues his crusade into Ukraine and Iran is funding terrorist attacks against our ally, Israel.”

Leavitt added: “President Trump will restore world peace through American strength and ensure European nations carry their weight by paying their fair share to our mutual defense to lighten the unfair burden on American taxpayers.”

As Americans head to the polls on Nov. 5, the world holds its collective breath as the count to determine the most powerful politician in the world goes down to the wire.

“The world is in the most fragile and dangerous state that it has been for a generation with war in Europe, conflict in the Middle East, and tension with China,” Darroch said. “Against this backdrop, the American people’s decision on who leads them for the next four years is more consequential than ever.”

DEEP STATE REVEAL

Collapse of national security elites’ cyber firm leaves bitter wake


 Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, speaks at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on April 21, 2009. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

IronNet co-CEOs William Welch, center left, and Keith Alexander, center right, ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, to celebrate their company’s listing, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. Partially obscured behind Alexander is Andre Pienaar. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander approaches the witness table on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 18, 2013, to testify before the House Intelligence Committee hearing regarding NSA surveillance. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

BY ALAN SUDERMAN
October 3, 2024


WASHINGTON (AP) — The future was once dazzling for IronNet.

Founded by a former director of the National Security Agency and stacked with elite members of the U.S. intelligence establishment, IronNet promised it was going to revolutionize the way governments and corporations combat cyberattacks.

Its pitch — combining the prowess of ex-government hackers with cutting-edge software – was initially a hit. Shortly after going public in 2021, the company’s value shot past $3 billion.

Yet, as blazing as IronNet started, it burned out.

Last September the never-profitable company announced it was shutting down and firing its employees after running out of money, providing yet another example of a tech firm that faltered after failing to deliver on overhyped promises.

The firm’s crash has left behind a trail of bitter investors and former employees who remain angry at the company and believe it misled them about its financial health.

IronNet’s rise and fall also raises questions about the judgment of its well-credentialed leaders, a who’s who of the national security establishment. National security experts, former employees and analysts told The Associated Press that the firm collapsed, in part, because it engaged in questionable business practices, produced subpar products and services, and entered into associations that could have left the firm vulnerable to meddling by the Kremlin.

“I’m honestly ashamed that I was ever an executive at that company,” said Mark Berly, a former IronNet vice president. He said the company’s top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit “just like Theranos,” the once highly touted blood-testing firm that became a symbol of corporate fraud.

IronNet’s collapse ranks as one of the most high-profile flameouts in the history of cybersecurity, said Richard Stiennon, a longtime industry analyst. The main reason for its fall, he said: “hubris.”

“The company got what was coming to” it, Stiennon said.

IronNet and top former company officials either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

The general

IronNet’s founder and former CEO Keith Alexander is a West Point graduate who retired as a four-star Army general and was once one of the most powerful figures in U.S. intelligence. He oversaw an unprecedented expansion of the NSA’s digital spying around the world when he led the U.S.’s largest intelligence agency for nearly a decade.

Alexander, who retired from the government in 2014, remains a prominent voice on cybersecurity and intelligence matters and sits on the board of the tech giant Amazon. Alexander did not respond to requests for comment.

IronNet’s board has included Mike McConnell, a former director of both the NSA and national intelligence; Jack Keane, a retired four-star general and Army vice chief of staff, and Mike Rogers, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. One of IronNet’s first presidents and co-founders was Matt Olsen, who left the company in 2018 and leads the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

Alexander’s reputation and the company’s all-star lineup ensured IronNet stood out in a competitive market as it sought contracts in the finance and energy sectors, as well as with the U.S. government and others in Asia and the Middle East.

IronNet marketed itself as a kind of private version of the NSA. By scanning the networks of multiple customers, the company claimed, IronNet’s advanced software and skilled staff could spot signals and patterns of sophisticated hackers that a single company couldn’t do alone. The company dubbed the approach the “Collective Defense Platform.”
The South African

Venture capital firms were eager to invest. Among IronNet’s biggest early boosters was C5 Capital, an investment firm started and run by Andre Pienaar, a South African who had spent years serving the needs of the ultra-rich while cultivating business relationships with former top national security officials.

C5’s operating partners – essentially expert advisers — include former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen and Sir Iain Lobban, who used to lead the U.K.’s signals intelligence agency equivalent to the NSA. Former C5 operating partners include National Cyber Director Harry Coker Jr. and Ronald Moultrie, who resigned earlier this year as undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security.

Prior to going into venture capital, Pienaar was a private investigator and started a firm called G3 Good Governance Group whose clients included blue chip companies, wealthy individuals and the British royal family. Pienaar also worked at the time to help Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg cement relationships with London’s rich and famous, according to William Lofgren, a former CIA officer and G3 co-founder.

“The relationship was steady and frequent because both Andre and Vekselberg saw merit in it,” said Lofgren.
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Pienaar also helped Vekselberg win a share of a South African manganese mine in 2005 and then later served as one of the oligarch’s representatives on the mine’s board of directors until early 2018, internal G3 records and South African business records show.

Vekselberg has been sanctioned twice by the U.S. government, first in April 2018 and again in March 2022. The U.S. Treasury Department has accused him of taking part in “soft power activities on behalf of the Kremlin.”

In 2014, the FBI publicly warned in an op-ed that a Vekselberg-led foundation may be “a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research.”

Pienaar’s long association with Vekselberg should have disqualified him from investing in IronNet, which was seeking highly sensitive U.S. defense contracts, former intelligence officials said.

The company’s leaders “absolutely should have known better,” said Bob Baer, a former CIA officer.

He added that Russian intelligence services would have had a strong interest in a company like IronNet and have a history of using oligarchs like Vekselberg to do their bidding, either directly or through witting or unwitting proxies.

Pienaar also sponsored a swanky Russian music festival that Vekselberg and a close associate, Vladimir Kuznetsov, put on in Switzerland. Kuznetsov, who served as a key investment adviser to Vekselberg, was also an investor in Pienaar’s investment firm.

Alexander and others at IronNet either did not know the details of Pienaar’s relationships with Vekselberg or did not find them troubling: A month after Vekselberg was first sanctioned in 2018, Pienaar joined IronNet’s board and C5 announced it was putting in a $35 million investment.

C5’s investment would grow to $60 million by the time IronNet went public, giving the investment firm around a 7% stake in the company.

Vekselberg did not respond to requests for comment. Kuznetsov told the AP he stopped speaking to Pienaar about five years ago but did not say why.

“I’m not commenting on that,” Kuznetsov said.

Pienaar’s attorneys said he has never had a relationship with Vekselberg. The lawyers said the mine’s filings with the South African government’s regulatory agency that listed Pienaar as a director were incorrect and should be “viewed as suspect” because news reports indicated the agency has been hacked.

Pienaar filed a defamation lawsuit last year against an Associated Press reporter who sought interviews with Pienaar’s former associates. The AP said the suit, which remains pending, was meritless and an attempt to stifle legitimate reporting.
The fall

Not long after Alexander rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange in September 2021, IronNet’s stock price soared, making its founders and early investors extremely wealthy on paper.

Top officials were prohibited from unloading their stock for several months, but Alexander was allowed to sell a small amount of his shares. He made about $5 million in early stock sales and bought a Florida mansion worth the same amount.

IronNet was projecting exponential growth that required the company to land a handful of major contracts, according to confidential board documents obtained by the AP.

Those prospective deals included one valued at up to $10 million to provide cybersecurity for the U.S. Navy’s contractors and a more than $22 million deal with the government of Kuwait.

It did not take long for IronNet’s promises to slam into a tough reality as it failed to land large deals and meet revenue projections. Its products simply didn’t live up to the hype, according to former employees, experts and analysts.

Stiennon, the cybersecurity investing expert, said IronNet’s ideas about gathering threat data from multiple clients were not unique and the company’s biggest draw was Alexander’s “aura” as a former NSA director.

The AP interviewed several former IronNet employees who said the company hired well-qualified technicians to design products that showed promise, but executives did not invest the time or resources to fully develop the technology.

When IronNet tried to land contracts with the NSA, officials dismissed the company’s offerings as unserious, according to a former member of U.S. Cyber Command who was at the meeting but not authorized to discuss government procurement proceedings publicly.

The failure to win large contracts quickly derailed IronNet’s growth plans. In December 2021, just a few months after going public, IronNet downgraded its annual recurring revenue projections by 60%.

Another sign that things were not well: IronNet and C5 were engaging in a questionable business practice in an apparent effort to juice the cybersecurity firm’s revenues, according to C5 records and interviews with former employees at both firms.

In addition to being a major investor, C5 was also one of IronNet’s biggest customers, accounting for a significant part of the cybersecurity firm’s revenue when it went public.

C5 had signed two multi-year customer contracts with IronNet for $5.2 million, according to internal C5 records.

Contracts of that size were typical for large clients with thousands of employees, not a small investment firm like C5 that had a couple dozen employees and partners, former IronNet employees said.

“That’s an inflated number,” said Eddie Potter, a former top sales executive at IronNet, when told by the AP of the size of C5’s contracts with IronNet. He added there was “no way” that C5 required services “worth $5 million.”

Indeed, one C5 internal record obtained by the AP shows it budgeted only about $50,000 a year for IronNet’s services.

Pienaar’s attorneys said C5’s contracts with IronNet were to help protect the U.K. government’s hospitals and other entities against “escalating cyberattacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.” His attorneys said the work was coordinated through a charity Pienaar and C5 created in 2020.

Securities and Exchange Commission filings and C5 records show C5’s contracts with IronNet were signed in the summer and fall of 2019 — several months before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Pienaar’s attorneys said Alexander and Pienaar were “briefed on the shocking scale of hostile nation-state cyberattacks on hospitals” in 2019, which created the “foundation” for IronNet’s work with C5.

Pienaar’s charity never registered with the IRS, as one of Pienaar’s companies claimed in U.K. business filings, and former C5 and IronNet officials said they did not see it do any substantive work.

“It was marketing, fluffy crap,” said Rob Mathieson, a former IronNet vice president.

Pienaar’s attorneys said his charity was successful but there was “insufficient time” for it to register with the IRS.

After reporting millions in revenue from C5 from 2020 to 2023, IronNet wrote off $1.3 million from C5 in what the cybersecurity firm claimed was “bad debt,” IronNet’s filings with the SEC show. Pienaar’s attorneys said the write-off represented a reduction in the cost of providing services to his charity and denied that C5 had not fulfilled its financial obligations to IronNet.

IronNet was not alone in having trouble getting money from Pienaar and his firms.

A group of nuns sued C5 in 2022, court records show, alleging it failed to return their $2.5 million investment in a tech incubator that Pienaar had promoted as a way to boost socially conscious start-ups. C5 agreed to refund the nuns’ investment, plus attorney fees and expenses, to settle the lawsuit, records show. The nuns’ financial adviser, Carolyn LaRocco, told the AP that Pienaar used the nuns’ investment to pay expenses she believed were unwarranted.

An affiliate of the United States Institute of Peace, a nonprofit established by Congress, sued Pienaar in 2020 after he failed to pay a promised $1.5 million personal donation, federal court records show. The nonprofit’s affiliate then took Pienaar back to court after he failed to make payments on time as part of a settlement. Pienaar used $500,000 from a C5 bank account to meet a court-ordered deadline for payment, court records show. C5 staff were concerned about Pienaar’s use of the firm’s funds to cover his personal debt, according to C5 records.

In the last year, Pienaar-controlled entities have been sued by a top former CIA executive who alleged C5 owed him back wages and a Washington landlord who accused Pienaar’s firms of failing to pay more than $140,000 in rent and associated costs. The suits were dismissed soon after they were filed, indicating the parties likely settled, court records show. A lawsuit recently filed by a financial services firm alleges C5 owes it more than $1 million in unpaid debts.
The crash

After slashing revenue projections in December 2021, Alexander tried to project confidence and said IronNet was still on track to see its revenue rise.

It didn’t work. IronNet’s stock went into a prolonged skid and the company underwent multiple rounds of layoffs.

In April 2022, the company was hit with a class-action lawsuit from investors who alleged IronNet had fraudulently inflated its revenue projections to boost its stock price.

The company has denied any wrongdoing but recently agreed to pay $6.6 million to settle the lawsuit, according to a proposed settlement filed in federal court. Alexander told Bloomberg News this past January that IronNet’s troubles stemmed in part from his naivety about how the business world worked.

C5 began loaning money to IronNet to keep it afloat starting at the end of 2022 while Pienaar continued to try and boost the company’s brand.

In September of last year, IronNet announced it had run out of money and was closing its doors.

A Pienaar-controlled entity stepped in shortly afterwards with $10 million in loans to allow the company to restructure via bankruptcy.

A dramatically scaled-down version of IronNet led by Pienaar’s allies went private in February and announced Alexander had stepped down as chairman of the board.

Pienaar remains bullish on the company, which he said continues to successfully protect clients in the U.S. and Europe from cyber threats. IronNet’s more recent activities have included looking to partner with the government of Ukraine.

“Any accusation that IronNet has been anything other than successful is categorically false,” his attorneys told the AP.

Many of C5’s investors and former employees are baffled by Pienaar’s continued heavy bets on IronNet after it has been soundly rejected by the market.

During bankruptcy proceedings earlier this year, an investment bank approached 114 prospective buyers for IronNet, federal court records show. None of them made an offer.

ALAN SUDERMAN
Suderman is an Associated Press investigative reporter interested in national security, cybersecurity and other related topics.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Fog of (Dis)Information in Escalating Israel-Lebanon Conflict

NAKED CAPITALISM

Posted on September 24, 2024 by Yves Smith

As many commentators have noted, Israel’s exploding pager/walkie-talkie attacks, followed by air strikes on a Hezbollah command post and then broadly across Lebanon are a gambit to try to get Lebanon to respond in a manner that would get the US to come in more formally on Israel’s side as the Axis of Resistance is inflicting costs on Israel over its Gaza genocide.

However, the reporting on the large scale terrorist act of the communication-devices-turned-bombs illustrates how corrupted this information environment is. Israel and its cheerleaders have attempted to justify this act as part of an intended military operation, to disrupt Hezbollah’s operations. The only “bad” thing was they executed prematurely.

In fact, as we’ll unpack further below, this tech-bombing was even worse than you imagined. The military wing of Hezbollah does not use pager or walkie talkies. They’ve used their own fiber optic network since 2006, and otherwise rely on couriers. These devices were in the hands of civilian Hezbollah workers, such as members of its large social services effort. Yes, military members may have been hurt too, but that was dumb luck, like being in proximity to blown-up pager-user or picking up a ringing device on behalf of someone else.

Needless to say, this also means that the device attacks were pure terrorism, with no remotely colorable military purpose whatsoever. Remember, the press has brayed that Israel has been working on this caper for 15 years. But Hezbollah moved its military comms to fiber optic before that. And Israel surely knew that. So that means this entire enterprise was from its outset a terrorist scheme and never a military operation.

But why should that be a surprise? This is how Israel has rolled since its Stern Gang days.

Because we are in what Lambert would call an overly-dynamic situation, rather than attempt a state-of-play account, it seemed more productive to alert readers to how the deeply polluted state of Anglosphere reporting. It should be no surprise that it is coming to resemble Western reporting on the Ukraine conflict, as overstating Israeli successes and underplaying or ignoring Hezbollah/Axis of Resistance wins.

This matters because if Israel’s efforts to subdue the Axis of Resistance fall short, which seems likely, the campaign to get the US committed to the conflict will only intensify. Mind you, in reality, it’s not as if we could do all that much even if we wanted to, ex possibly commit more air power. As Associated Press pointed out yesterday, the US has only 40,000 men in the entire theater. They presumably already have things to do. It takes 6+ months to move more men and the needed logistical support in were we to deploy more than say some Special Forces types. And the US is low on materiel world-wide, thanks to having drained our stockpiles to back Ukraine. For instance, one thing the US is short on globally is Patriot air defense missiles, and at least as of now, we are prioritizing Ukraine.

The general tendency for Western reporting to favor our allies dovetails with Israeli press censorship. The Israeli government finds it important to restore if at all possible the image of the IDF as formidable, both to restore its citizens’ once central belief that Israel was safe place for Jews, and to project power in the region.

Yours truly in now finding it necessary to listen to Alastair Crooke’s Monday morning talks on Judge Napolitano to sanity check Israeli claims. Readers may recall that a few weeks ago, we showcased one of these interviews immediately after some much-ballyhooed Israel air strikes into Lebanon. The claim was that Israel had sent in 100 planes and destroyed Hezbollah rocket launchers right before a planned Hezbollah attack, defanging it.

This is what Crooke reported:

Whatever you’ve read is almost certainly wrong. It’s a narrative…..First of all, it all happened at around 4 o’clock in the morning on Sunday. The Israelis started to see people moving in Lebanon and moving towards platforms. Hezbollah was planning the operation to fire drones and rockets at 5:15 on Sunday morning. And Israel started to, an attack, a direct attack. It involved I think about a hundred aircraft.

But contrary to what the Israeli propagandists at the IDF are saying, and I know this not from Hezbollah but I know this from inside Lebanon, people who are on the ground there, it was chaotic twenty minutes. Israel just bombed various valleys where they imagined the ballistic missiles were. But they’d been cleared out of there some time ago. There were no ballistic missiles. You can check that, there are people on the ground who know what’s happened. There are no missiles. So when they said they destroyed thousands of missile launchers, this is a complete lie. Because first of all, there are no missiles, no ballistic missiles, no large missiles south of the Litani River. What you have is drones and small rockets. And none of these have launchers. And they destroyed none of them. It was just a show, a show of force and it only lasted about twenty minutes…..

On top of that, the Hezbollah attack that Sunday morning, in retaliation for the assassination of senior Hezbollah military official Fuad Shukr in Beirut, did take place. Israel immediately clamped down on all reports. At first, Israel claimed the Hezbollah strikes were ineffective (there was Twitter fun about Hezbollah striking a chicken coop, which does seem to have occurred). However, it finally came out that Hezbollah was successful in striking a building in the military airport near Tel Avis that housed Unit 8200, which is akin to our NSA. Hezbollah believed Unit 8200 planned the killing of Fuad Shukr. “Successful” as in some Unit 8200 members died (there is speculation that Hezbollah got a very top level official; I’ve not seen anything convincing either way).

Now let us turn to the series of exchanges that started with barbarism-by-pager. Per Moon of Alabama:

Last week Israel launched a terror attack on Hizbullah operatives who were using pagers to receive alarms and orders. These people were part of the civil administration side of Hizbullah and not its armed fighters.

But since a new trope coming out of the bogus claim that the Hezbollah militia used pagers and didn’t even inspect them is (just like Russians!) that this proves that they are incompetent. So let’s again turn to Alastair Crooke:

The notion that Hizbullah’s communications are crippled is wishful thinking that fails to distinguish between what may be called civil-society Hizbullah, and its military arm.

Hizbullah is a civil movement, as well as a military power. It is the Authority over a significant slice of Beirut and a country – a responsibility that requires the Movement to provide civil order and security. The pagers and radios were used primarily by its civil security forces (effectively a civil police managing security and order in Hizbullah-controlled parts of Lebanon), as well as used by its logistics and support branches. Since these personnel are not combat forces, they were not seen to require truly secure communications.

Even before the 2006 war, Hizbullah ended all cellphone and landline communications in favour of their own dedicated optic cable system and hand-courier messaging for the military cadres. In short, Hizbullah’s communications at the civil level took a major hit, but this will not unduly impact upon its military forces. For years, the Movement has operated on the basis that units could continue with combat, even in the event of a complete rupture of optic communications, or the loss of a HQ.

So again in a close parallel to Ukraine, the real reason for this attack appears to be to try to break the will of the long-suffering Lebanese people and turn them against Hezbollah, just as some collective Ukraine officials fantasize that if they cause enough pain to Russian civilians, they will turn on Putin. At least so far, Lebanese citizens instead appear to be pulling together. Journalist Laith Marouf, now in Beirut, told Rachel Blevins that thousands of citizens came to hospitals offering to donate one of their eyes to a victim of the cyber attack (starting at 9:20). Even though that’s beyond current medical technology, it’s an indication of the depth of public support. Marouf also contends that the Lebanese know what they are up against, that wars of decolonization take years.

A second leg of the attack, coming shortly after the device carnage, was an assassination attempt via precision air strike in Beirut against Hezbollah paramilitary leader Ali Karaki, reportedly one of the top three on Israel’s kill list. The press cheered his death. That turns out to have been premature. From Military Watch:

A senior commander for the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah, Ali Karaki, has survived an Israeli assassination attempt, after a precision strike on a military headquarters in the capital Beirut was launched to eliminate him… Confirmation of his survival follows multiple reports from Western media outlets, citing Lebanese military sources, that the commander was eliminated during an Israeli attack on Beirut’s Madi neighbourhood.

It was a nice touch for Military Watch to point out that the initial Anglosphere accounts cited (or made up) “Lebanese military sources”. Admittedly, it is possible this was disinfo while Karaki was being moved to safety.

Now to the next Israel move, widespread air strikes that extended into Syria. The claim was that they were targeting rocket launchers, So far, they have killed nearly 500. But as for the rockets, we again turn to Alastair Crooke, here on Judge Napolitano. Starting at 9:00:

But for the moment, they have bet on escalation dominance, “escalating to de-escalate,” first the pagers, then the assassination on its heels, and then they’re banking on intelligence and firepower to push Hezbollah into an agreement. But first of all, there was no agreement. Amos Hochstein was in Lebanon but he was acting more for the Israelis and for the Americans, but it was a complete failure, the attempt for some sort of diplomatic route. I mean there isn’t one. It’s been talked about, but there was no agreement, Americans know that, Israelis know that too. So this is really what they are betting on is they can either push Hezbollah in. And to this extent, we’re seeing this massive air attacks taking place in the south and in the Bekka, that you just spoke about. But really what we’re talking about is ineffectiveness of air firepower in these circumstances, when put against deep, deep buried rockets and missiles. In the beginning, in ’23, Hezbollah was looking at losing about 10 men a day. Now they’re not really losing any. There were about 2 Hezbollah who were supposed to be killed but they were religious figures, they din’t have to do with Hezbollah per se, they sadly will be civilian losses.

They are heavily bombing the area, and although it’s being presented as being by intelligence as if they’re knocking out rocket launchers, that too is pretty much bunk. Because they too basically try and find launchers by combing the forest, because this is mountain area, forest area. Very difficult terrain. Deep valleys, little nooks and crannies. So they film all of this, looking for movements, and then they use artificial intelligence detection methodology to try to find where someone has moved. It’s not done by spies or intelligence per se. It is done by using AI, again, to spot some sort of movement. And Hezbollah for years, since 2006, have been adept at putting up ghosts and fake missile launchers, fake men, moving them around, fooling the Israelis who are basically bombing every spot in the forest, hills and valleys where it thinks possibly going to be a rocket launcher….

Crooke also stressed that even the death of a senior commander would only be a tactical loss. As 7:40, he explains that every top Hezbollah officer trains his successor.

Crooke turned to the Hezbollah response, which is to increase the range of territory in Israel that they consider to be fair game for attack. At 14:20:

Hezbollah has escalated too, just to be clear. Because one of the things they are facing again is Israel has put another big blackout notice on everything, no filming, no photos, no reporting at all from anywhere north of Haifa, which is in the center, right on the coast of Israel. No news is allowed to be presented. But you do get some because there are Israelis in the settlements that are sending videos. The point here is there is major destruction in Haifa, a major port. Hezbollah’s reported an attack on an airbase, there are attacks going on, there are rocket continuing. So with all this bombing, all this so-called carpet bombing, it’s actually quite ineffective. It’s not stopping Hezbollah. I emphasize here htat we are seeing rockets, [not sure of name] 1 and 2, which are probably similar to a HIMARS. They’re not guided, they’re not smart. Hezbollah hasn’t even begun to use its smart missiles. They’re using the rockets to create destruction of houses. Nearly a million Israelis were in the shelters last night [Sunday].

Dmitry Liscaris claims in this interview (at 15:13) that Hezbollah attacks took out one of Israel’s three airbases, the Ramat David airbase in the Golan Heights, and a major arms making plant, Rafael Military Industries complex, which makes air defense equipment, as well as hitting targets near Tel Aviv. He also said waves of drones were coming from Iraq.

It has not gotten as much mention in the (far from comprehensive) press I follow, but Twitter does confirm the drone attack:

Without trying to give a comprehensive account of the latest strikes and counter-strikes, Arab News reports a new attack on Beirut killed a different top Hezbollah commander, Ibrahim Qubaisi. With the news blackout in Israel, we don’t (and won’t for a while) have much news on damage and deaths there. Even though Crooke depicted Hezbollah as making a discrete, as opposed to open-ended escalation, such niceties may not count for much

UPDATED

Pagers and walkie-talkies over cellphones – a security expert explains why Hezbollah went low-tech for communications

A police officer examines a damaged car after thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon on Sept. 17, 2024. AP Photo/Hussein Malla

THE CONVERSATION
Published: September 18, 2024

Electronic pagers across Lebanon exploded simultaneously on Sept. 17, 2024, killing 12 and wounding more than 2,700. The following day, another wave of explosions in the country came from detonating walkie-talkies. The attacks appeared to target members of the militant group Hezbollah.

The pagers attack involved explosives planted in the communications devices by Israeli operatives, according to U.S. officials cited by The New York Times. Hezbollah had recently ordered a shipment of pagers, according to the report.

Secretly attacking the supply chain is not a new technique in intelligence and military operations. For example, the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted computer hardware bound for overseas customers, inserted malware or other surveillance tools and then repackaged them for delivery to certain foreign buyers, a 2010 NSA internal document showed. This differs from accessing a specific person’s device, such as when Israel’s Shin Bet secretly inserted explosives into a cellphone to remotely kill a Hamas bombmaker in 1996.

Hezbollah, a longtime adversary of Israel, had increased its use of pagers in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. By shifting to relatively low-tech communication devices, including pagers and walkie-talkies, Hezbollah apparently sought an advantage against Israel’s well-known sophistication in tracking targets through their phones.

The second wave of explosions in Lebanon involved walkie-talkies. AP Photo

Cellphones: The ultimate tracker

As a former cybersecurity professional and current security researcher, I view cellular devices as the ultimate tracking tool for both government and commercial entities – in addition to users, criminals and the mobile phone provider itself. As a result, mobile phone tracking has contributed to the fight against terrorism, located missing people and helped solve crimes.

Conversely, mobile phone tracking makes it easy for anyone to record a person’s most intimate movements. This can be done for legitimate purposes such as parents tracking children’s movements, helping you find your car in a parking lot, and commercial advertising, or nefarious ends such as remotely spying on a lover suspected of cheating or tracking political activists and journalists. Even the U.S. military remains concerned with how its soldiers might be tracked by their phones.

Mobile device tracking is conducted in several ways. First, there is the network location data generated by the phone as it moves past local cell towers or Stingray devices, which law enforcement agencies use to mimic cell towers. Then there are the features built into the phone’s operating system or enabled by downloaded apps that may lead to highly detailed user tracking, which users unwittingly agree to by ignoring the software’s privacy policy or terms of service.

This collected data is sometimes sold to governments or other companies for additional data mining and user profiling. And modern smartphones also have built-in Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS capabilities that can help with locating and tracking user movements around the world, both from the ground and via satellites.

Your phone contains many sensors that make it useful – and easy to track.

Mobile devices can be tracked in real time or close to it. Common technical methods include traditional radio direction-finding techniques, using intelligence satellites or drones, deploying “man in the middle” tools like Stingrays to impersonate cellular towers to intercept and isolate device traffic, or installing malware such as Pegasus, made by Israeli cyberarms company NSO to report a device’s location.

Nontechnical and slower techniques of user tracking include potentially identifying general user locations from their internet activity. This can be done from website logs or the metadata contained in content posted to social media, or contracting with data brokers to receive any collected location data from the apps that a user might install on their device.

Indeed, because of these vulnerabilities, the leader of Hezbollah earlier this year advised his members to avoid using cellular phones in their activities, noting that Israel’s “surveillance devices are in your pockets. If you are looking for the Israeli agent, look at the phone in your hands and those of your wives and children.”

Researchers have shown how these features, often intended for the user’s convenience, can be used by governments, companies and criminals to track people in their daily lives and even predict movements. Many people still aren’t aware of how much their mobile devices disclose about them.

Pagers, however, unlike mobile phones, can be harder to track depending on whether they support two-way communication.

Why go low-tech

A pager that only receives messages does not provide a signal that can facilitate tracking its owner. Therefore, Hezbollah’s use of pagers likely made it more challenging to track their operatives – thus motivating Israeli intelligence services’ purported attack on the supply chain of Hezbollah’s pagers.

Using low-tech tactics and personal couriers while avoiding the use of mobile phones and digital tools also made it difficult for the technologically superior Western intelligence agencies to locate Osama bin Laden for years after the 9/11 attacks.

In general, I believe the adversary in an asymmetric conflict using low-tech techniques, tactics and technology will almost always be able to operate successfully against a more powerful and well-funded opponent.

A well-documented demonstration of this asymmetry in action was the U.S. military’s Millennium Challenge war game in 2002. Among other things, the insurgent Red forces, led by Marine General Paul van Riper, used low-tech tactics including motorcycle couriers instead of cellphones to evade the Blue forces’ high-tech surveillance. In the initial run of the exercise, the Red team won the contest in 24 hours, forcing exercise planners to controversially reset and update the scenario to ensure a Blue team victory.

Lessons for everyone

The preference for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and al-Qaida to avoid using smartphones is a reminder for everyone that you can be, and likely are being tracked in various ways and for various purposes.

Israel’s purported response to Hezbollah’s actions also holds a lesson for everyone. From a cybersecurity perspective, it shows that any device in your life can be tampered with by an adversary at points along the supply chain – long before you even receive it.

Author 

   

Richard Forno
Principal Lecturer in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Disclosure statement
Richard Forno has received research funding related to cybersecurity from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the US Army during his academic career.

Did Israel work with US to booby-trap Lebanon's pagers, walkie-talkies?

Lebanon opens probe into explosions to determine the cause, officials say, but they blame Israel.



Reuters

The explosives, reportedly weighing between one and two ounces, were discreetly placed next to each device’s battery. / Photo: Reuters

First, pagers. Later, walkie-talkies.

A series of explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday rocked Lebanon, killing at least 26 people and wounding over 3,000, according to security and health officials.


A preliminary investigation into the Tuesday explosions found that hundreds of pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said. While the probe is still “in its early stages,” a judicial official said, security services continue to investigate the blasts, which they blamed on Israel.


According to The New York Times, Israel conducted a covert operation targeting Hezbollah by concealing explosive material in Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon.

The operation, revealed by American and other officials familiar with the details, involved tampering with pagers ordered by Hezbollah from Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company.


Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told the Times that most of the pagers in the shipment were the AR-924 model, though three other models from Gold Apollo were also included.


The explosives, reportedly weighing between one and two ounces, were discreetly placed next to each device’s battery. A remote trigger mechanism was embedded within the pagers, allowing the explosives to be detonated from a distance.



Likely sabotage


At 1230 GMT in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that appeared to come from Hezbollah’s leadership, but in reality, it activated the embedded explosives, according to two of the officials. The pagers reportedly beeped for several seconds before detonating.


"Data indicates the devices were pre-programmed to detonate and contained explosive materials planted next to the battery," a Lebanese official said.


The official added that the investigation is focusing on identifying the type of explosive materials used in the devices and tracing the shipment’s “country of origin and where they were booby-trapped.”


Some of the devices that exploded were being inspected, the security official said, but "most of them were destroyed and burned."


The official also noted it was unlikely that lithium batteries inside the devices had heated up and exploded. "Exploding lithium batteries cause a fire-like incident... that may cause minor burns, but the blast from these devices resulted from highly explosive materials," he said.


A source close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity, said "the pagers that exploded concern a shipment recently imported by Hezbollah", which appeared to have been "sabotaged at the source".



Israel-US link


Israeli media has revealed what it described as "coordination" between Israel and the US on the explosions of wireless communication devices used by Hezbollah and medics in Lebanon, despite earlier denials from Washington.


Explosions of thousands of pager and Icom wireless devices in several areas of Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday resulted in the deaths of at least 26 people and injuries to more than 3,250.


According to KAN, the official Israeli broadcasting channel, there was coordination between Israel and the US concerning the explosions that rocked Lebanon.


The broadcaster reported that Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had two telephone conversations with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in the last 24 hours.


"The first call between Gallant and Austin took place on Tuesday, just minutes before the first wave of pager device explosions in Lebanon," said KAN. "The second call occurred before the second wave of explosions."


The US, however, has denied involvement in the explosions.



State-led espionage



The precise timeline of when the pagers were ordered and when they arrived in Lebanon remains unclear.


While Israel has yet to confirm or deny involvement in the pager explosions, it has a history of cross-border attacks — whether cyber in nature or sabotage.


One of the most prominent examples is Israel’s use of Pegasus spyware, developed by the NSO Group. The Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation by multiple news organisations, revealed that the spyware has been used globally to hack into the phones of activists, journalists, and political leaders.


Despite the company’s claims that the software was designed for counter-terrorism purposes, investigations showed its use in surveillance across 11 countries, including Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico, and against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.


Additionally, the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated malware, sabotaged Iran’s uranium enrichment program, significantly hindering its nuclear ambitions. This attack is often regarded as the first known use of a cyber weapon to cause physical destruction.


These are just a few publicly known examples that demonstrate how Israel’s advanced cyber capabilities have played key roles in state-led espionage, surveillance and sabotage, affecting countries worldwide.

Mystery shrouds Hungary firm allegedly manufactured explosive pagers

September 18, 2024 at 4:56 pm

A view of the head office of the BAC Consulting KFT company in Budapest, Hungary on September 18, 2024 [Jakub Porzycki/Anadolu Agency]

Mystery shrouded a Hungary-based company that allegedly manufactured the small messaging device pagers that were filled with explosives and blasted in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

A video of the office, according to the address provided on its website, clearly shows that it is located in a residence in Budapest. However, later on Wednesday afternoon, the website became inaccessible, and the firm also did not respond to Anadolu’s repeated attempts to obtain clarification on the entire issue, which appeared to point fingers at it.

On Tuesday, at least 12 people, including 2 children, were killed and nearly 2,800 others injured in a mass explosion of pager communication devices in different areas across Lebanon, according to Lebanese Health Minister, Firas Al-Abiad.

Hezbollah confirmed that at least two of its members were killed and several more injured in the pagers’ explosions, and it held Israel fully responsible for the incident, vowing “retaliation”. Israel has not responded to the pagers’ blasts.

READ: 3 killed as more pagers explode in Lebanon

A batch of 5,000 pager devices imported by Hezbollah five months ago was “almost certain” to have been rigged with explosives before arriving in Lebanon, a former Lebanese Brigadier-General said on Wednesday.

The wireless devices “were rigged with several grams of hard-to-detect explosives, placed in the battery in a way that ensures they can’t be detected by sensors or any explosive detection tools,” Mounir Shehada, the government’s former coordinator with the UN peacekeeping mission UNIFIL, told Anadolu.

Earlier on Wednesday, Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo Corporation, denied making pager devices that exploded, explaining in a statement that the company has established a long-term private label authorisation and regional agency cooperation with BAC company, which has a license to use its brand.

“According to the agreement, we authorise BAC to use our brand trademark for product sales in specific regions, but the design and manufacturing of the products are entirely handled by BAC,” it said.

The BAC Consulting KFT is based in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

Earlier on Wednesday, the company website was an ordinary page filled with generic images and information, including the services offered by the company.

“We work internationally as agents of change with a network of consultants who put their knowledge, experience, and humanity into our projects in a connecting and authentic journey!” the BAC Consulting KFT said on its website.

Cristina Arcidiacono-Barsony was listed as the CEO and founder of BAC Consulting KFT.

According to the website, she has “acquired an international experience (EU, Africa, MEA) over several years enjoying various roles” such as “strategic advisor for major International Organisations including Financial companies (Venture Capitals, IAEA, UNESCO, CNRS, EC, etc.),” and “business developer and savvy analyst for Innovative Solutions in diverse fields (Sustainable Development (SDGs), Water, Energy, Resilience-Mitigation-Adaptation, Capacity Building, Complex Emergencies, Digitalisation (AI, Blockchain, ICT) within Humanistic Economy).”

She explains that this “diverse background” allows her to work on “projects and programs of broad scope and complexity spanning fields as varied as innovation, environment and geopolitics.”

Among the listed “Partner Projects” on the website are “Nelkhael Jewels”, “Ars”, “16 Minutes of Fame” and “Nos Morilles Sauvages de la Patagonie Argentine”, without giving much detail.

The address listed on the company’s website is “Szonyi ut 33/A” in Budapest, which appears to be a private residence according to online maps and video footage.

No company officials returned Anadolu’s phone calls or emails. Later on Wednesday afternoon, the company’s website became inaccessible.

The mass explosion of pagers came amid an exchange of cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israel against the backdrop of a brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 41,200 people, mostly women and children, following a Hamas attack last October.

Kill switch: How Israel managed to explode devices in attack on Hezbollah

Experts discuss the possible ways Israeli operatives could have intercepted the devices en route to Lebanon and booby-trapped them for the shock attacks.

Murat Sofuoglu

SOURCE: TRT World

September 18, 2024

People gather outside the American University hospital after the arrival of several men who were wounded by exploded handheld pagers, in Beirut, Lebanon.

An unprecedented strike on Hezbollah that saw hundreds of paging devices used by the Lebanon-based armed group exploding and killing at least 12 people has set the cat among the pigeons over the alleged involvement of Israel in the apparent cyber attack.

At least two of those killed are children, while the number of injured is estimated to be around 2,800, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said on Wednesday.

Barely a few hours later, hundreds of walkie-talkies began exploding across Lebanon, killing at least 20 people and injuring 450 more people according to Lebanese authorities.

Though there is no official word from Israel on the two incidents, in line with its policy of total silence on such controversial events, Hezbollah has squarely blamed Tel Aviv for the attack on its cadres.

An Israeli news website claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the kill.

Western media analysts have used words like “incredible”, “extraordinary”, and “never been anything like this” to describe what happened in Lebanon but refrained from discussing Israel’s involvement or the inherent message in the attack, not only to Tel Aviv’s archenemy Hezbollah but also to other opponents.

Experts, however, point to the fact that many top tech companies are run by former employees of Israel’s notorious 8200 cyber unit and feel that the pager attack might be a chilling message that Tel Aviv is breathing down the neck of those with anti-Zionist views.

Israel has a long history of targeting its opponents through remote operations, ranging from intricate cyberattacks to remote-controlled machine guns targeting leaders in drive-by shootings.

Interception theory

Dr Alper Ozbilen, an academic of electronic engineering and the chairman of InterProbe Information Technology, an Ankara-based company specialising in cyber security, has different theories to explain how Israel might have simultaneously launched the attack, which “contains many firsts in its context”.

“Among different possibilities, I believe the most probable theory is that an intelligence unit, which is most likely part of the Israeli state, had received an espionage input on a shipment of pagers routed to Lebanon for Hezbollah members,” Ozbilen tells TRT World.

“Israelis apparently wanted to turn this espionage input into an opportunity to manipulate these devices.”

Onur Aktas, the former head of the Turkish National Cyber Security Center and founder of the cyber security company S4E, concurs.

“This seems to be a supply chain attack,” Aktas tells TRT World, referring to possible Israeli interception of the shipment to Hezbollah.

According to media reports, the compromised pagers were made by Gold Apollo, a Taiwanese company. Taiwan has not been largely recognised as a state across the globe.


Hsu Ching-kuang, chairman of Gold Apollo, talks about the Taiwan company's communication products at the headquarters in New Taipei City, Taiwan Sept. 18, 2024. Photo: Johnson Lai

The company’s founder and chairperson, Hsu Ching-kuang, however, denied that the AR-924 model pagers were made in Taiwan, claiming that they were designed and made by a Budapest-based distributor called BAC Consulting KFT.

If the pagers came from Hungary, they were shipped through numerous ports in different countries along the Mediterranean coast and kept in different depots until reaching their final destination in Lebanon.

Both Ozbilen and Aktas say that Israeli operatives might have intervened in this transportation process to place explosive devices inside the pagers.

According to Ozbilen, Israelis most likely placed a very small amount of RDX and C4 explosives inside these devices.

“Then, possibly, the tasked unit set up a detonating mechanism inside these devices that could explode when triggered by a central system,” he adds.

In some sense, the mode of attack on the pagers is similar to the 1996 explosion of a booby-trapped mobile phone used by Yahya Ayyash, Hamas’s then-chief bombmaker and the leader of the Qassam Brigades’s West Bank branch, according to Ozbilen. Ayyash was killed in Gaza.


AP Archive
A Palestinian boy holds up posters of Yahya Ayyash at a memorial rally for the Hamas master bomb-maker January 9. Ayyash, also known as The Engineer and who had been hiding from Israeli forces, was killed when a booby-trapped cellular phone exploded in his Gaza hideout.

Since losing some leading members due to mobile phone tracking and explosions, both Hamas and Hezbollah stopped using smartphones and turned to older technologies like pagers, which do not allow pinpointing their exact location, says Ozbilen.

“But they were still hunted by Israel,” he adds.

Ozbilen does not also rule out the possibility of placing not only a software-activated bomb device with a battery inside the pagers, but also a virtual private server (VPS) and pinpoint location finder.

Aktas also says that “no one really knows what was inside these devices”.

“There could even be cameras inside”, and Israeli operatives might have used these to track Hezbollah fighters.

Such remote attacks usually involve what is known as the ‘kill switch’ – a pre-installed mechanism that allows switching off or remote detonation of multiple devices.


TRT World

Hezbollah had brought in the pagers just months ago. A relatively outdated technology, the pager device is more secure than cellular phones, which can be easily tracked.

Exploding battery theory

Another possible explanation for the beeper attack is a battery explosion theory, according to both Ozbilen and Aktas.

“Israelis might have heated up the batteries of the pagers using a software to trigger the explosions,” Aktas tells TRT World.

“But the batteries of the pagers are too small, which can not really lead to the size of explosions we have seen in different video records,” he adds.

According to a Hezbollah official, some Lebanese users said that their pagers heated up and as a result, they disposed of the devices prior to their explosions.

Both Aktas and Ozbilen are unsure about the feasibility of such a scenario.

“...When I checked the videos of the explosions…I came to the conclusion that the size of these batteries can not produce such big bursts,” says Aktas.

They, however, agree that the attacks are unprecedented in scale, intended to “corner people in a psychological deadlock”, according to Ozliben.

“This is an attack that intimidates not only the people it [Israel] fights on the ground but also its critics and activists who oppose Israel's actions in the international arena.”

Aktas also sees a similar message.

“If Israel can do this to the pagers, people around the world might start wondering what Israel can do to their trains, planes, phones and cars,” he adds.

Murat Sofuoglu is a staff writer at TRT World.