Comment by tomp 3 days 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.
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.
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.
> Who do you want to be able to spy on you
I buy chinese IP cameras. China cannot block my bank account / employment / communications.
Agreed.
All this fearmongering about telegram and tiktok is weird.
China can decide what it wants from me- I have no plans to visit or engage with regime; however my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting.
So, the less I give to US companies, the better.
Especially as, being a non-US citizen I have no right to privacy afforded to me in the constitution, and US companies can be forced to comply with the government in secret- much in the same way we consider that China does it to even part-owned China based companies.
Swiss sounds reliable, but a Swiss communications company was also bought and compromised by the CIA since the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Not arguing, but I think China still relies on Russia for jet engines - though it’s making great efforts to become self-sufficient there.
(Edit: high performance / high technology jet engines)
The USA has extensive rare earth mineral deposits and mining is expanding.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/14/rare-earth...
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.
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.
Israel and Hezbollah have been at war since October 8, when Hezbollah started firing guided rockets at Israel.
> It’s a declaration of war on Lebanon
A few observations:
1. This is an attack against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. The two entities are tightly coupled, but they are not the same.
2. Israel and Hezbollah are already at war. 60,000 Israelis have been displaced because of Hezbollah ongoing rocket and missile attacks. Israel has retaliated in various ways.
TLDR: you can argue that this is an act of war against Hezbollah. But it is not a declaration of war, and it is not against Lebanon.
> 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.
How does a Bay Area tech site, when Bay Area tech has sooo many individuals who originally came to the USA as students but then couldn't go home due to tiananmen, have this kind of 'enlightened thought' on China, day in and day out?
Unless you are a slave there, or from Tibet, or say anything wrong.
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.
Isn't China the one country that actively sets up their own police forces all over the world? Aren't there numerous Canadians of chinese origin that China has abducted? I see news articles of Canadians being arrested for assisting China in these abductions fairly often lately.
Not accurate: https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-...
Examples of Extraterritorial killings and abuses listed (edited for more relevant source)
I'm sorry, but this is definitely not true. Have you heard about Chinese police overseas or China prosecuting "their" citizens outside of China?
> 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.
> Literally China/Russia are more trustworthy.
Only in the sense that, as a US citizen who has no desire to travel to China or Russia, I don't feel all that worried that either country is going to do anything bad to me directly.
But if I lived in either one of those places... whooooa boy. I'd have to be a different person to not get in trouble. And I wouldn't call myself much of an activist or pot-stirrer, really. I feel bad for people who want to show public dissent of their government in China or Russia but can't (or do, and end up in jail), and for people in marginalized groups that the government doesn't like.
I mean, CIA had similar blowback in the past for vaccines: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vacci...
Why not? When was anything Israeli-made involved in any funny business? I mean officially Israeli-made, not... this.
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.
> 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.
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".
> 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.
Photos of an NSA “upgrade” factory show Cisco router getting implant https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...
During the cold war, Russia intercepted typewriters and teleprinters going to the US and other embassies and inserted implants in them. https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/
And the US CIA ran the "Swiss" firm Crypto AG, which sold cable-encryption (as in telegraphic / telex coms) equipment with pre-installed back-doors:
<https://www.npr.org/2020/03/05/812499752/uncovering-the-cias...>
It was Cisco routers that made the headlines. Not sure of other gear: https://www.engadget.com/2014-05-16-nsa-bugged-cisco-routers...
Yes there was. @48:48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NFrjHmI35w&t=48m48s
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.
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.