In this episode, we talk about how Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, managed to get Hezbollah to hand over a bunch of pagers, and then use them to carry out an attack that destroyed their communication network and crippled their ability to fight.
00:00:00.000Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be talking about an interesting topic which actually transformed the way that we personally think about things like looking for jobs, attracting press, and attracting donors, which was how Mossad, that's Israel's intelligence agency, pulled off the pager strike on Hezbollah.
00:00:24.440And a lot more information has come out about this over time, so I'm going to try to paint a full picture, including a lot of things that I'm pretty sure that even you didn't know, Simone.
00:00:33.820Here's, for example, an interesting one I didn't know. Did you know about the security feature thing on this, where to decode a message with the pager that they had sold to Hezbollah, you needed to have both hands on the device?
00:00:52.260The way it worked is they built a security feature where you could only decode an encoded Hezbollah message if you had both of your hands on the device, like holding it in different locations, which ensured when they sent out the initial thing to make the devices explode, it only exploded when people were answering this specific coded message.
00:01:15.880So they had to have both of their hands on the device when it exploded, which ensured that both of their proximity, like someone didn't have a pager sitting on their nightstand and it just went off.
00:01:27.760Well, no, so there were two different instances of the explosion. The first instance was they sent out a coded message, and then anybody who hadn't answered that message, their pagers then later exploded like the next day or something all at once.
00:01:39.780But the important thing about the message is it removed these people from fighter capabilities. If you don't have your two hands, whatever other injuries you have, you can't shoot a gun.
00:01:51.440And so the goal there was to remove them from fighter capabilities. There's all sorts of cool stuff like that that you will learn. And I just like to, as we go into this, I am not going to give my standard Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah rant this time. So just I'm sort of leaving morality at the door.
00:02:10.380What we're talking about here is the tactical process that went into Mossad's actions, which for those who have been living in a cave, they managed to get, that is to say Mossad, Israel's intelligence apparatus, managed to get a hostile entity to purchase a bunch of pagers that it had created that were embedded bombs that were used for monitoring.
00:02:37.560And this was done for years. And then recently, this year, this detonated them, maiming quite a few people. Basically a huge devastating attack, not just in terms of one sort of violent strike that took place on one day, but also sort of dismantling their communication infrastructure.
00:02:57.340So this was a very impressive feat. We're not talking about what was right or wrong morally. What we're talking about is how they got to do this and what in terms of operating tactically as humans, businesses, nonprofits, advocates.
00:03:14.200So again, just leaving all of the morality out of this, all of the, well, they killed this many people. Well, they killed this many people. That's not the point of this particular talk.
00:03:22.720And if you want to see us go on and on about Israel, Palestine, the moral weight of the equation, we do that in plenty of other episodes.
00:03:28.780In this particular episode, we are going to focus on how this was accomplished.
00:03:34.020So the gist, the pagers went off around 3.30 p.m. All in all, this particular attack injured around 3,000 individuals.
00:03:43.260And keep in mind that for most of those individuals, it was losing both their hands. So it disabled them in terms of being fighters.
00:03:49.600Didn't like completely lose their hands. Like I just, I never really heard that much about what actually happened.
00:03:54.880Yes, lost their hands. As I said, they had to have both hands on it for it to go off.
00:03:59.020Wow. Well, I mean, but that like, were their hands just burned or were they literally blown off?
00:04:07.02030. Now, now some of them were in the second round of the attack, but it seems like the vast majority were in this initial round because they, it went around.
00:04:14.000Don't touch them after that. Get them away from you.
00:04:15.780So 37 died in total. And that included, at least if we are to believe the governments that were in league with Hezbollah, two children, one eight-year-old and one 11-year-old.
00:04:29.800Sad, but again, I'm always a little skeptical of the governments that are involved in this stuff.
00:04:34.820So let's go and talk through how the plan actually worked.
00:04:39.800The, and I will note, it's actually kind of remarkable how targeted this attack was when you consider broad attack operations that it didn't just mostly target individuals just in Hezbollah, but specifically high level command and operation individuals who would have had access to these.
00:04:58.660And then it was followed up almost immediately afterwards, a few days afterwards with an explosion of a second booby trap device that many of them had, which was their walkie talkies, which had actually not just been booby trapped, but booby trapped in a completely separate instance of booby trapping, which we'll get to.
00:05:16.120And I'd been transmitting everything Hezbollah had been saying over them to Mossad for the past 10 years.
00:05:21.320This is like a level of spy craft that I feel is, is, is cinematic.
00:05:26.520It is unbelievable in the sophistication.
00:05:32.140Specifically with the walkie talkies, the first part of this involved rigging the walkie talkies was oversized batteries that concealed explosives, allowing Mossad to eavesdrop on Hezbollah communications for nearly a decade.
00:05:43.820The walkie talkies were distributed as early as 2015, giving Israel full access to Hezbollah's communication network while lying dormant as potential bombs, ready to be detonated at a moment's notice.
00:05:55.880One interesting fact that we can now ferret out is that it does appear that Hamas did keep the January 7th attacks secret from Hezbollah, because if Hezbollah had known, Israel would have done.
00:06:11.540Right. And you've kept saying, like, how could it possibly be that Mossad had this level of infiltration in Hezbollah when Hamas was planning all this and they didn't know that Hamas was planning for October 7th.
00:06:24.600But theoretically, it could be really nailing it in, you know, statistics and just bomb history like it happens. Right.
00:06:34.720So, yeah. So, in 2022, a new opportunity arose, leading Hamas to focus on a more innovative device, the AR924 Pager.
00:06:45.220Now, I will note, actually, with the walkie talkie device, one of the things that was actually, and a lot of people consider this pretty bad form that this was done, is because they went off so soon after the first device,
00:06:56.940many of them ended up going off at the funerals of the first round of victims, which is generally considered very bad form in conflict, but it was incredibly effective.
00:07:07.920And we'll get to this at the end here, but Hezbollah has basically been almost entirely dismantled at its network level and upper levels,
00:07:15.480to the extent that people are calling this the best, both intelligence and counter-terrorism operation run in the past century.
00:07:23.580And that it was, like, better than anything that was done during World War II, better than anything that was done during the Cold War,
00:07:30.760in terms of its effectiveness, and just completely taking this down.
00:07:35.880Because they were also putting upon, basically, well, you can't use email, you can't use cell phones,
00:07:42.220you can't use any modern form of technology, because other intelligence forces, including Mossad, are monitoring those.
00:07:51.260And so, ultimately, it's like Mossad, through its...
00:07:55.540So many levels pushed Hezbollah to these devices.
00:07:59.780It's not like they want to just use pagers and walkie talkies.
00:08:02.420They were doing that, because already, Mossad's prowess in cyber warfare was so strong.
00:08:08.200So there's, like, attacks on all sides.
00:08:10.420Yes. And one of my favorite memes that came out of this with a Babylon Bee article,
00:08:15.540Rashid Taleb uninjured after her pager mysteriously explodes.
00:08:19.160This is a very pro-Palestine American politician.
00:08:22.660But anyway, to continue here, let's start with the construction of the pagers themselves.
00:08:27.140The explosive component pentothrital tetrine, otherwise known as PETN, did the most damage.
00:08:34.980Mossad technicians found a way to insert a very thin square sheet of PETN between two battery cells and a strip of highly flammable material to act as the detonator.
00:08:47.140The entire package was placed in a plastic sleeve, which was encapsulated in a metal case, roughly the size of a matchbox.
00:08:54.140When the command was given, the flammable strip generated a spark to light the detonator and trigger the PNTN to explode.
00:09:02.300The explosives took away some of the battery's power, which Hezbollah noticed when the battery would drain faster than expected.
00:09:08.860However, they never put two and two together and continued use of the device.
00:09:12.180Now, this is really fascinating because it meant that these devices could not be detected in an x-ray and they could not be detected even if the devices were dismantled.
00:09:24.140Because they did not use the things that you're typically searching for, which is traditional explosives or a wick.
00:09:31.480So there wasn't anything to look for, which is kind of a bad thing because it means if any of them didn't explode,
00:09:37.800now Hezbollah has plans for a device that can easily get through airport security,
00:09:43.320which they almost certainly did when they got these devices.
00:09:47.600They almost certainly scanned them through x-rays, dismantled them, looked through them.
00:09:51.200You would not have been able to turn this even as an explosive expert.
00:09:55.020And I note here that the point of putting it between the two batteries wasn't just to hide it,
00:09:59.080but it was also to amplify the explosion using the power of the batteries.
00:10:02.920Oh, that makes sense because I was thinking, how could you possibly have something as small as a pager blow off someone's hands
00:10:11.160when the explosive device is such a thin film of material?
00:10:15.620But that makes sense because there are plenty of concerns.
00:10:18.580I mean, anyone who's flown recently has been asked if they're checking luggage,
00:10:21.800if there are any batteries in their bag, because batteries can be quite explosive.
00:10:50.660The PETN battery packet that Mossad constructed had a label on it, LIBT783.
00:10:56.640This was an issue because that specific battery did not exist.
00:10:59.900Mossad started by creating a custom model for the entire pager, AR924.
00:11:05.780They approached a renowned Taiwanese brand, Gold Apollo, to add it to their catalog.
00:11:12.120Hui Ching Kwan, the chairman of Gold Apollo, was approached by a former employee and her new boss named, quote unquote, Tom, to inquire about adding the model.
00:11:22.780Ching Kwan said that while he wasn't impressed with the AR924 when he saw it,
00:11:28.520he agreed to grant a license under the brand and add photos and description of the product to his company's website, thus unknowingly establishing the legitimacy of the Mossad pager.
00:11:39.700Oh, by the way, I should note here, I am reading an unrolled tweet here, and I'll add in post who it's by.
00:11:46.400In September 2023, a website came online with the AR924 listed as a product.
00:11:53.300This site was tied to a Hong Kong-based company, Apollo Systems HK, of which no record exists today.
00:11:59.220In late 2023, two additional states came online with the LIBT783 battery listed in their product list, amongst other legitimate units.
00:12:10.140The sales pitch came from a trusted source.
00:12:12.700A marketing official was linked to the Apollo brand.
00:12:15.160This individual, a former Middle Eastern sale representative of the Taiwanese company that manufactured the pagers, had no knowledge of Mossad's involvement.
00:12:22.320She established her own company, obtained a license to sell a product, and unknowingly facilitated the sale to Hezbollah, according to Israeli officials familiar with the operation.
00:12:32.540She convinced Hezbollah leaders that the AR924 pager was perfect for their needs.
00:12:37.860Quote, she was the one in touch with Hezbollah and explained to them why the bigger pager with a larger battery was better than the original model, end quote, said an Israeli official.
00:12:48.420So this is the thing that's really interesting about how all of this was laid out.
00:12:53.820They had no one implanted within Hezbollah in order to get them to buy these.
00:13:00.280In other words, they set the gears in place for Hezbollah to independently decide that this was the best decision.
00:13:11.400So there's a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the protagonist's mother talks about how you have to, as a wife, get your husband to come to decide that it was all his idea in the beginning.
00:13:26.980And she just lays the ideas and he sort of incepts his mind with ultimately the right course of action.
00:13:34.340But it all has to be his decision in the end.
00:13:37.000We must let Costa think this was his idea that he came up with.
00:14:10.220Israel, or Mossad in this case, Greek mothered Hezbollah into deciding for itself that it was going to purchase these pagers.
00:14:19.060I feel like a knuckles is they're good people.
00:14:20.500Good people, they're Greeks, and Greeks are just Jews without money.
00:14:25.460It was a total inception moment, and I find that really fascinating.
00:14:30.260And I also think that it's a very relevant way for things to happen in an age in which we have new ways, I think, of deciding whether something is true, whether a product is worth buying.
00:14:46.680Like, we don't, these days, I mean, okay, a lot of people are really gullible, and they just, like, buy something immediately on TikTok shop.
00:14:53.100But I think when most people are seriously deciding on a product, they're not going to believe ads.
00:14:57.920They're not going to believe website copy.
00:14:59.800They're going to, like, Google around, look at forums, see what people are saying on Reddit, and based on the breadcrumbs that they find online through sources they trust, through sources they think are legitimate because they don't look polished or they don't look promotional, then they're going to buy it.
00:15:15.600And that is what's so interesting to me, makes me think, okay, well, if we want people to make bets on us, or to decide that we are good partners, or friends, or sources of help, because we do want to be helpful to people, how can we show up in places where people trust?
00:15:34.980Businesses and people used to invest in things like publicists, and PR agencies, and things like that, so that the New York Times would write about you.
00:15:43.120But now, if the New York Times is shilling about someone, no one's going to, like, that means nothing.
00:15:49.120You know, it just means that you've played a particular pool or spent a certain amount of money with someone.
00:15:57.240Yeah, it is fascinating, and it's something where we personally, you know, before we go further with this, think for yourself, how can you turn yourself into the pager here?
00:16:07.800How can you ensure that you astroturf an online environment so that an intent-driven buyer, whether it's an employer, like in our case, like maybe the Trump administration, when they are looking for a specific type of thing, they will find us?
00:16:23.900And this is something we've been paying a lot of attention to recently.
00:16:26.700How do we get our, because right now, the way a lot of people do searches is AIs.
00:16:32.500How do we get our content into AI training data?
00:16:35.320And I actually had a big breakthrough on that today, Simone.