Comment by einszwei

Comment by einszwei 10 months ago

801 replies | 3 pages

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From Israel's perspective, this supply chain attack was undoubtedly a clever move, but I can't help but wonder about its long-term consequences.

Although it was aimed at harming Israel's adversaries, third-party countries may now hesitate to involve Israel in their supply chains. There's also the risk that other major producers could replicate this tactic, potentially leading to further escalation in the region or beyond.

In the short term, it's a smart strategy for Israel, but they've likely opened Pandora's box in the process.

tomp 10 months ago

Do you think Hezbollah was buying stuff from Israel, or otherwise using Israeli supply chains?

I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli) supply chain they were using.

So this can happen regardless of whether you're using Israeli supply chains or not.

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  • anigbrowl 10 months ago

    I think the point is that if you're not Hezbollah or any kind of political actor, but just a customer for Israeli technology (public or private), would you really want to keep buying it? Leave aside boycotts over Israeli policy, you might be opening yourself to becoming an Israeli attack vector and either find your own interests compromised or become a target of Israel's enemies if they thought you were complicit.

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    • tomp 10 months ago

      What are you gonna buy? Chinese tech? Iranian tech? Russian tech?

      Who do you want to be able to spy on you and compromise your hardware?

      Unless you can spin up your own fab (hint: you can't) you're dependent on a hegemon. US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.

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      • frmersdog 10 months ago

        I know that this is rhetorical, but I'm sure an analysis of which country is least likely to leave you exposed to the issues mentioned above could be done. I suppose it also depends on who "you" are, and the threat of communications compromise vs drawing the ire of whoever Israel decides to attack through you. I'm sure there are plenty of countries that would rather be bugged by the Chinese or Iranians than be complicit in a way that opens them to actual armed conflict.

        This is another danger of letting Israel swing its sword around without any sort of real condemnation from the US/West: the rationale for geopolitical multi-polarity increases in legitimacy. Pax Americana ends because allying with us doesn't save you from being used as a tool for ends like this. If speculation is correct that Taiwan is involved... Woof.

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      • seydor 10 months ago

        > Who do you want to be able to spy on you

        I buy chinese IP cameras. China cannot block my bank account / employment / communications.

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      • troad 10 months ago

        > US/EU/Israel

        A bit of a false bundle there.

        The two groups are more like US+Europe+China on one hand and 'misc' on the other. Most people get by without depending on the technology from the 'misc' group at all.

        This kind of incident will hurt the Israeli tech sector individually, not some imagined US/EU/Israel tech grouping.

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      • nradov 10 months ago

        Exactly. Our concept of sovereign states has become outdated by advances in technology. Up until maybe 1990 even second-tier countries could make just about anything indigenously. It might be a little worse and a little more expensive, but still good enough. Today only China and the USA are fully sovereign in terms of having the capability to build the full spectrum of electronic, communications, and military equipment. (We might outsource some of that to save money but the latent capability and capital reserves are there.) Even with nuclear weapons, India, Russia, UK, and France are only partially sovereign. Other countries can barely even pretend anymore, and their freedom of action will continue to evaporate barring some drastic realignment of the geopolitical order.

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      • paganel 10 months ago

        We’re all buying Chinese tech one way or the other.

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      • sam1r 10 months ago

        >> Unless you can spin up your own fab (hint: you can't) you're dependent on a hegemon. US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.

        It's much easier to spin up your fab tech more so now -- than ever before.

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      • thiagoharry 10 months ago

        I am not aware of chinese or iranian devices exploding and killing people. Spying is not worse than spying and killing. I do not get how do you get the conclusion that US/EU/Israel is as good as it gets if you are a random citizen not from any of these mentioned countries.

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        • [removed] 10 months ago
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      • gizajob 10 months ago

        Yeah but if you’re dealing with hardware with any kind of Israeli involvement, do you really want to open every single customer unit to make sure one of the capacitors hasn’t been swapped for C4? I think that’s what the poster was indicating. At first I thought yesterday’s action was deviously impressive. Now I’m starting to think it’s actually shortsighted and bizarre. It’s a declaration of war on Lebanon, and obviously a declaration of a war they think they can win, but no good can come of this action.

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      • [removed] 10 months ago
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      • lukan 10 months ago

        "US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets."

        I really hope you are wrong about the conclusion.

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        • lukan 10 months ago

          To clarify, obviously I rather live in the EU than in china, but if this system is as good as it gets, then I am quite sceptical for humanities long term survival.

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      • foobarian 10 months ago

        > Unless you can spin up your own fab

        Huh, which fabs does Israel have?

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        • toast0 10 months ago

          Intel's fabs 28, 28a, and 38 are in Israel. They also do some assembly in Israel.

          Tower Semiconductor is based in Israel and runs two fabs there as well.

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      • RantyDave 10 months ago

        There's a big difference between spinning up your own fab and unscrewing the back of the pager to see if there's a bomb in it.

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      • [removed] 10 months ago
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      • darby_nine 10 months ago

        > US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.

        I imagine China is just as good in pretty much every way.

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      • ummonk 10 months ago

        China is the one major power that doesn't seem to engage in extraterritorial assassinations, so by default I'm more inclined to at least trust that the Chinese state won't ever decide to activate a kill switch against me.

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      • computerex 10 months ago

        > US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.

        EU maybe, but US/Israel are as good as it gets? PRISM? Literally China/Russia are more trustworthy.

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    • bratbag 10 months ago

      If they used their own products to do this then yes. If not then no.

      Is that what happened?

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    • underdeserver 10 months ago

      Why not? When was anything Israeli-made involved in any funny business? I mean officially Israeli-made, not... this.

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  • joe_the_user 10 months ago

    Do you think Hezbollah was buying stuff from Israel, or otherwise using Israeli supply chains?

    The modern supply chain is vastly deep. Iran can buy something from (IDK) India which might use software or hardware from Israel. As a further example, unless there's viable phone OS I don't know about, even Hezbollah will be using Android or iOS (and so buying from the US). etc.

    I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli)

    Maybe that is more likely. But I don't think my or your guesses matter so much as public perception. IE, it would change the situation that a given customer may look skeptically at an Israeli software or hardware product. Or they may not given that price and features trumps security and quality for nearly everything these days.

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  • ignoramous 10 months ago

    > So this can happen regardless of whether you're using Israeli supply chains or not.

    The point is, would allies trust if it were China that pulled this off? Huawei/TikTok were thrown under the bus for way less.

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  • XorNot 10 months ago

    It was pointed out to me that you shouldn't overthink it: the most likely thing which happened is Israel had someone inside Hezbollah procurement and used them to take delivery (I'd put much lower odds on this guy being in on the plan, it's doubtful he even knew he was working for Israel directly).

    You've got to remember that as internet people, we want everything to have a clever storyline to it. Intelligence services exploit that exact expectation though: the first thing you attack is trust within the organization itself, since it gives you more access, more easily and once people have talked themselves into "supply chain threat" there's a real danger they've ignored "actually the guy signing off on the paperwork is taking a payoff to ignore some delivery irregularities".

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  • tivert 10 months ago

    > I think it's far more likely that Mossad has infiltrated whatever foreign (non-Israeli) supply chain they were using.

    Yeah. Wasn't there something in the Snowden leaks about the CIA intercepting servers in-transit to install implants on them? I'm sure Israel is doing something similar.

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  • KeplerBoy 10 months ago

    meh, the most probable explanation is that israel infiltrated hezbollah and whoever was in charge of ordering and distributing those devices knowingly distributed the tampered devices.

    That guy got a deal and was evacuated with his family before events unfolded. Seems way easier than alternative plans.

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