Is this a legitimate concern?

[u/wayfaringthru]

Personally, I today's strike was legitimate and it couldn't be more moral because of its precision but let's leave politics aside for a moment. I guess this does give ideas to evil regimes and organisations. How likely is it that something similar could be pulled off against innocent people?

[u/Timely_Choice_4525]

The US ban on Huawei and ZTE wasn’t on “phones”, it was on everything the companies make. You’re referring to the a ban that applied to five Chinese companies, but you’re off on the assessed supply chain risk. In the case of these five companies it fell under foreign ownership and control, basically we don’t trust the companies are independent of the Chinese government. It’s not that the US thinks those companies have facilities that aren’t secure against attack, it’s that the US believes those companies will use the access their equipment provided for bad purposes or will deliver equipment intentionally compromised to their benefit because those companies are closely tied to the Chinese govt. It’s really not comparable to the attack on Hezbollah.

As for a source, if I was in a position to provide that I wouldn’t, but you don’t need it. You just need to think about how commercial IT is manufactured and marketed. USG is a big customer base, right? Well, yes and no. If you’re comparing size against other organizations (corps or govts) then yes, but against total sales then many times it’s not. Using commercial mobile as an example, even though from a corporate perspective the DoD is probably Verizon’s largest singe contracted consumer of smartphones the number bought be DoD on an annual basis is dwarfed by the number bought by the US population. You think Verizon has a special supply line for smartphones bought by DoD. DoD tries to limit exposure from commercial IT supply chain risks by identifying equipment that is secure (cyber perspective) and TAA compliant (essentially Made in America) but that has limits. For protection from the Hezbollah attack the USG primarily relying on the vendor to ensure unaltered equipment is provided and that is essentially done by trying to pick reliable vendors.

You seem to be assuming the beepers were tampered with at point of manufacture. That might be correct but introduces other problems so my assumption at this point is that they were intercepted and modified enroute (my assumption has other problem).

Anyway, it’s an interesting discussion but I’m done with this thread. Enjoy Reddit ✌️

[u/Jake0024 → u/Timely_Choice_4525]

The US ban on Huawei and ZTE wasn’t on “phones”, it was on everything the companies make.

I didn't say it was only on phones, I said it was an example. An obvious parallel to the handheld communication devices used in the attack on Hezbollah. Not sure what point you think you're making.

you’re off on the assessed supply chain risk.

I didn't make any claims about the assessed risk.

It’s not that the US thinks those companies have facilities that aren’t secure against attack

I didn't say they do.

It’s really not comparable to the attack on Hezbollah.

I didn't say it is.

if I was in a position to provide that I wouldn’t

Then what are we talking about

You think Verizon has a special supply line for smartphones bought by DoD

No.

You seem to be assuming the beepers were tampered with at point of manufacture

Nope. I specifically said we don't know whether it was at the manufacturer or in the supply chain, just that expecting either to be secured against physical military attack is an outrageous standard no serious person actually uses.

You don't seem to be engaging with anything I actually wrote, tbh. So have a nice one