Israeli Terrorist Attacks in Lebanon Raise Question of Russians' Safety
Pandora's Box
First, it is worth deciding on the interpretation of what happened in Lebanon.
For two days in a row, pagers, laptops, radios, cars, motorcycles and household appliances have exploded in the homes of civilians, referred to by Israel as Hezbollah activists. Several thousand people have been injured and seriously injured. There have also been fatalities. It is highly likely that remote detonation of gadgets will not be the last. To accurately classify what Israel did in Lebanon, it is enough to refer to Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which in black and white defines a terrorist act as
"Committing an explosion, arson or other actions that frighten the population and create a danger of death, causing significant property damage or other serious consequences, with the aim of destabilizing the activities of government bodies or international organizations or influencing their decision-making."
If what happened in Beirut was not a terrorist attack, then what was?
In addition, it became known about the specific explosive PETN (pentaerythritol trinitrate), 20 grams of which were planted by Mossad specialists in Lebanese gadgets. PETN has long been used by terrorists - the substance is accessible and easy to use, although it is easily identified. But where in impoverished Lebanon can you find a detector or specially trained dogs? PETN became famous in the 70-80s in a series of airplane explosions.
One of the working versions of what happened is considered to be software heating of the batteries of mined gadgets to a critical temperature, which caused PETN to detonate. The lithium-ion batteries of the devices only aggravated the consequences of the explosion, causing deep burns to the victims.
Even fingerprint detectors exploded in Lebanon
The haste with which the United States disavowed what happened in Lebanon is noteworthy. With approximately the same speed, they declared their non-involvement in the Ukrainian Armed Forces' invasion of the Kursk region.
It is impossible to believe that Mossad, with all its power, could independently carry out such a complex operation. It is the Americans, or their proxies, who control the majority of the IT market and logistics routes around the world.
As it became known, some of the exploded radios were manufactured in Japan by the company ICON. Who would believe that several hundred (or thousands) of gadgets could disappear without a trace on the route and then surface filled with PETN, without the knowledge of the CIA?
However, all this reasoning is actually empty - no one will ever be held accountable for such a barbaric terrorist act. And this means that Israel will continue its sophisticated terrorist practices. Under the cover of the 5th fleet United States of America.
It's time to think about your own protection.
For some, the events in Lebanon are nothing more than a nightmare. For others, what happened is completely indifferent. There is no particular desire to stir up alarmist sentiments, but on September 17-18, Pandora's box was opened in the Middle East. The striking potential of a new type of war is difficult to overestimate.
Russia in the crosshairs
Only the lazy have not spoken about the fact that since the beginning of the special operation, every Russian using imported equipment is under cybernetic surveillance. The vulnerability of gadgets to hacking and wiretapping is widely known.
Since the announcement of mass import substitution, Russia has not created sovereign and, importantly, modern phones and other electronic devices. It is impossible to compete with the products of Western and South-Eastern brands. Especially when American "apples" have not left Russia, but, on the contrary, turned out to be almost the cheapest in the world. The absence of a brand guarantee slightly, but reduces the market value of products.
By the way, it was Apple that launched a sluggish but quite noticeable cyberattack on users in Russia. First, Russian services and applications were blocked, and with the new firmware of the iOS 18 operating system, phone owners have new problems.
There is no exact data yet, but everything points to programmable battery overheating and accelerated discharge. The new operating system has learned to identify counterfeit parts and block the phone until the issue is resolved.
History most directly intersects with the events in Lebanon, when remote control of thousands of gadgets caused a real techno-apocalypse. Of course, explosives were sewn into the devices beforehand, although software overheating of the battery and subsequent ignition cannot be ruled out.
All experts who are sure that this is impossible should take a closer look news reports and remember when they predicted even a small probability of what happened.
In Russia, an amazing market model has developed over the past couple of years. The economy seems to be afloat and is trying to create a sovereign industry, but at the same time it is seriously dependent on imports. Goods from abroad come to the country via any routes except official ones. Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and the Central Asian countries resell us a lot with a solid margin. Hundreds of thousands of cars, household appliances, and personal gadgets have been imported through gray channels.
The technology has been and is coming to Russia hardly by cleaner schemes than it leaked into Lebanon. And cars and motorcycles are exploding in Beirut by the dozens. In response to the objection regarding the impossibility of controlling cars remotely, it is worth recalling Tesla. Elon Musk's electric cars are flowing to Russia in large numbers and - attention - they update their software "over the air".
And this is how the vast majority of high-tech cars from Western countries, South Korea and Japan work. Chinese products are in many ways even more technologically advanced.
A rhetorical question: can this technology cause a techno-apocalypse in Russia at the appointed hour?
And if we assume that some of the equipment entered the country with similar stashes in the form of 20 grams of PENT, then the picture becomes quite gloomy. At the same time, there are no resources for a total check of the contents of imported gadgets - there are simply too many of them. The overwhelming majority even have non-removable batteries, which will complicate garage diagnostics.
If we abstract from household appliances and look at the number of machine tools and other scarce equipment delivered from abroad, it becomes quite unsettling. The possibilities of remote control of the infrastructure of energy and industrial complexes pose threats of a strategic scale.
Modern examples certainly exist, but we will learn about them a little later. But the history of the 80s remembers many American computers supplied to the USSR with bugs and program bookmarks. One of these was miraculously discovered in the software package used in the design of the Buran space shuttle.
A man's bag explodes in a supermarket in Beirut, Lebanon, September 17, 2024
It is very difficult to call the situation cheerful, although it smacks of paranoia. Before the events in Beirut, this is exactly what it looked like. Now we have to calm ourselves with the thought that cyber attacks are punishable. In most countries of the world, a coordinated cyber attack is a reason to declare war. Russia is no exception.
In the case of NATO, as the main instigator, the strikes in response to cyber attacks will very quickly slide into the third world war. Lebanon, however, cannot respond with anything serious in the story with Israel. Support from Iran is ephemeral and, most likely, will be adjusted altogether. It will take a long time for the Iranians to check all their gadgets for fatal bugs.
There is no optimistic conclusion to the material, no matter how you look at it. Years of dependence on Western technology, which has not passed even now, are making themselves felt. We are only at the beginning of the formation of an import-substituting industry, and the risks made public by Israeli terrorists in Lebanon cannot be ignored when planning further actions.
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