This week we talk about interdiction, the NSA, and Mossad.We also discuss exploding pagers, targeted strikes, and paramilitary organizations.Recommended Book: Uncertainty in Games by Greg CostikyanTranscriptIn the world of technology, and especially computers—or anything with microchips and thus, some computing capabilities—a “backdoor” is a bit of code or piece of hardware that allows someone (or a group of someones) to get inside that computer or compute-capable device after it’s been delivered and put into use.At times the installation of backdoors is done beneficently, allowing tech support to tap into a computer after it’s been sold so they can help the end-user with problems they encounter.But in most cases, this term is applied to the surreptitious installation of this kind of hardware or software, and generally it’s meant to allow those doing the installing to surveil the activities of whomever is using the product in question, or maybe even to lock them out and/or hijack its use at some point in the future, should they so desire.There are potential downsides to the use of backdoors even when they’re installed with the best of intentions, as they can allow malicious actors, like hackers, working independently or for agencies or nation states, to tap into these devices or networks or whatever else with less effort than would have otherwise been required; in theory such a backdoor would give them one target to work on, rather than a bunch of them, which would mean attempting to access each and every device individually; a backdoor in an operating system would allow hackers who hacked that backdoor system access to every device that uses said OS, for instance.Backdoor efforts undertaken by the US National Security Agency, the NSA, were famously divulged by whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealing all sorts of—to many people outside the intelligence world, at least—unsavory activities being conducted by this agency, among them efforts to install backdoors in software like Linux, but also hardware like routers and servers, at times opening these devices up and installing what’s called a Cottonmouth, which allows the NSA to gain remote access to anything plugged into that device.This sort of interdiction, which is basically the interception of something before it reaches its intended destination—so intercepting a modem that’s been ordered by a big company, opening it up, installing a backdoor, then repackaging it and sending it on its way to the company that ordered it as if nothing has happened—is not uncommon in the intelligence world, but the scope of the NSA’s activities in this regard were alarming to pretty much everyone when they were divulged, with leaks and reporting showing, basically, that the NSA had figured out ways to put hardware and software backdoors in just about everything, in some cases resulting in the mass collection of data from American citizens, which goes beyond their legal remit, but also the surveillance of American allies, like the chancellor of Germany.What I’d like to talk about today is another, recent high-visibility example of an intelligence agency messing with devices ordered by a surveillance target, and what consequences we might expect to see now that this manipulation has come to light.—In the world of covert operations—spy stuff, basically—a “hand of God” operation is one that is almost immaculately targeted to the point where it might almost seem as if those who are struck did something to piss off a deity; those who the targeters want to hit are hit, and everyone else is safe or relatively safe.In 2020, a hand of God operation was launched against an Iranian general named Qassem Solaimani while he was near the Baghdad airport, an American Reaper drone hitting Solaimani and his escorts’ cars with several missiles, killing the general and nine other people who were with him, but leaving everyone else in the area largely unscathed—not an easy thing to do.Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in July of 2024 by Israel, which blew up his bedroom in a military-run guesthouse in Iran’s capital city, Tehran, either using a well-targeted missile or a bomb that they somehow managed to hide in that room ahead of time—either way, it was a very precise attack that made use of a lot of intelligence data and assets in order to hit the target and just the target, avoiding other casualties as much as possible—which again, can make this sort of strike, though still massively destructive, seem like an act of god because of how highly specific it is.On September 17 of 2024, at around 3:30 in the afternoon, local time, thousands of pagers, which were purchased and used by the militant group Hezbollah, which governs the southern part of Lebanon, and which is locked in a seemingly perpetual tit-for-tat with Israel, mostly using rockets and drones across their shared border, these pagers began to buzz, indicating there...
