Comment by myth_drannon

5 days ago

One of the most sucessful integelligence operations ever, absolutely brilliant. And the brilliance in my opinion is that the targeting was not your regular Hizbollah terrorists but only higher ranking members the one who were given the beepers. So basically cutting the head of the snake.

I doubt Palantir had any involvement, just trying to get some credit. The operation to attack the supply chain was started long before Palantir had grown and could offer something.

21 comments

myth_drannon

Reply
giraffe_lady  5 days ago

The brilliance in the targeting was in doing pagers, which are disproportionately carried by doctors and other medical workers. One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.

  • apical_dendrite  5 days ago

    You seem to be under the impression that they targeted pagers that were distributed through civilian channels. These were pagers that were purchased BY Hezbollah to be used on Hezbollah's private, secure network, not on a public network. These were not pagers used by a hospital for normal healthcare work. Healthcare workers were carrying these pagers because Hezbollah effectively serves as a shadow state in Lebanon. So if a healthcare worker had one of these pagers, it was because they were part of that hierarchy.

    • giraffe_lady  5 days ago

      Again, so what? You aren't off the hook because of the actions of your enemies. It was obvious these would be going off around civilians, in homes and public spaces, including hospitals, and they chose to go through with the attack knowing this. That the civilians who would be around them would have no particular reason to fear or suspect this attack, because the vector was a common daily object.

      It was an attack on civilians in pursuit of a non-military political goal. Terrorism. I think it was pretty successful on the terms of the people who carried it out but call it what it is.

      13 replies →

  • tptacek  5 days ago

    The pagers that were targeted were exclusively used by Hezbollah combatants, procured by Hezbollah, linked to an encrypted military network Hezbollah fought a civil war in Lebanon to established, triggered by a message encrypted to that network. The bombs consisted of 6 grams of PETN, yielding a 35kJ blast, approximately the size of 5-10 cherry bombs, or 2% of the raw explosive yield of an M67 grenade --- with the key difference that the pagers were just pagers, with no metal parts introduced (deliberately, to avoid detection by Hezbollah), unlike fragmentation grenades, whose lethality (at 5m) stems from the hardened steel shrapnel they project.

    (The device and procurement details here are from Reuters).

    So no, I don't think your point about doctors and medical workers is well taken.

  • hearsathought  5 days ago

    > One of the most effective acts of terrorism in history.

    It's what "israel" specializes in. When you read the history of "israel", it's literally a series of acts of terrorism.