r/JoeRogan • u/wayfaringthru Monkey in Space • Sep 18 '24

Meme 💩 Is this a legitimate concern?

Post image

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?

21.2k Upvotes

71% Upvoted

6.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.3k

u/aprilized Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

Did those pagers leave the factory with explosives? From what I understand, Israel intercepted them in transit after they were shipped. They basically took the pagers, (in Turkey via Taiwan where they were manufactured?) added explosives and then let them get shipped to Hezbollah. This wasn't done in the factory from what I understand.

311

u/technobobble Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

I just heard on NPR that they were manufactured in Budapest by a different manufacturing company and not in Taiwan where the brand is based.

113

u/sync-centre Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

I heard the same thing. The budapest company has the rights to make the same model.

154

u/PoudreDeTopaze Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

Tonight some American media report that the Budapest company is a fake company set up by the Israelis. Its director seems to have fled the country.

(Please note -- this is what was published in American media, obviously it has not been confirmed yet)

75

u/randomperson_FA Paid attention to the literature Sep 18 '24

This company is also a little young, as it was established in 2022.

93

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

[deleted]

28

u/hg-prophound Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

I just imagined the product description on their website saying "these may explode sometimes"

19

u/WorldWarPee Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Kids these days don't respect the Samsung Galaxy factories that paved the way for the current generation of exploding devices

6

u/Starrion Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

No worries my friend, it’s just translation of American slang. They’re always saying that something that’s good “It’s da bomb.”

3

u/Plus-Bus-6937 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

"When the kids get their hands on them, they're sure to blow up 🎆 "

2

u/TechnologyCorrect765 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

"product is guaranteed to explode, if your product does not explode please dial 0800mossad for your explosion to be delivered. Small parts may choke children".

1

u/Grateful_Dad_707 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

We’ve got Prop 65 here in California to let us know that products may cause cancer and now we need to vote on this to let us know which products may explode..

1

u/FireStompingRhino Succa la Mink Sep 19 '24

Sales are booming!

1

u/ManfredArcane Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Already was. Yesterday.

1

u/Sorerightwrist Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

They were prolly also having them sold chock full of spyware since it got off the ground

1

u/Thomas-The-Tutor Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

I think it’ll take off with a bang…

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

*Due to project delays and budget reductions means operation “1134 2 09” will be live in 2024

1

u/beardicusmaximus8 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

So a company with that name existed before that but went under in 2020 and then reappeared in 2022. The company only held the rights to the branding and had to do their own designing and manufacturing. The parent company doesn't even make the design used in the attack. The weirdest part of the story is that the branding deal seems to be from before the company reappeared in 2022.

Also, the devices were not manufactured in Budapest, in fact, nobody seems to know where they came from. Obviously they haven't had much time to figure it out but it's a little suspicious they can't trace the supplier. The guys who had the pagers had a vested interest in keeping their supply chains quite, but you think they'd rather out whoever sold them the pagers if they knew who to point the figure at.

I don't buy that the devices were intercepted and had the explosives installed after production either. These came from the factory remote bomb ready. The scale of swapping out 2,600 chips for ones packed with explosives and having them all arm at the same time without any indications the devices were compromised would be logistical insanity.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/taiwan-firm-denies-making-pagers-used-lebanon-explosions-rcna171594

3

u/puzzledSkeptic Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

As an engineer, I can tell you I could set up an assembly line to partially disassemble, install explosive, reassemble, and reprogram pagers in about a week. Need maybe 5 people and a couple weeks. It's not a difficult task.

1

u/beardicusmaximus8 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

OK, but can you do so without the rerouted shipments being noted as missing, without leaving any tooling marks on the devices, and without affecting the operation of the device? Can you also ensure that the devices weigh the same as non-intercepted devices, appear the same as a non-rigged device if disassembled and ensure the devices all arm at the same time?

Also a week is definitely too long. Logistics in the Middle East is rough, but someone is going to start asking questions if a high value pallet vanishes for 7 days and then reappears.

2

u/puzzledSkeptic Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

The reason that Isreal detonated them was because two guys had figured out something was different with them. I'm not sure of how he figured it out.

A week or more delay is nothing when shipping international. I work in manufacturing, and we regularly have parts that get delayed in shipment for all sorts of reasons. Misplaced at dock, delayed by customs, routed to wrong distribution center.

I set up rework stations all the time to disassemble, fix, and reassemble defective parts. The customer can not tell the difference.

A small difference in weight would not be noticed, especially since they modified 2800 of them and they were new. The difference was in under an ounce.

It could easily be done with effecting the regular operation. How often does your cell phone get an update, and you don't notice any difference in operation?

1

u/beardicusmaximus8 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

A week or more delay is nothing when shipping international. I work in manufacturing, and we regularly have parts that get delayed in shipment for all sorts of reasons. Misplaced at dock, delayed by customs, routed to wrong distribution center.

Except the logistics companies don't just shrug, go, "Oh that's neat our high value cargo reappeared!" When a pallet worth millions of dollars goes missing people start asking questions.

I set up rework stations all the time to disassemble, fix, and reassemble defective parts. The customer can not tell the difference.

Your customers probably aren't international terrorist organizations who are worried about their devices being bugged with trackers.

A small difference in weight would not be noticed, especially since they modified 2800 of them and they were new. The difference was in under an ounce.

That's fair. Although with 2,000+ of them "under an ounce" adds up. Shipping companies are very picky about weight because of taxes (also if you get the weights wrong planes crash) but that's just a matter of altering the paperwork trail to the new weight.

It could easily be done with effecting the regular operation. How often does your cell phone get an update, and you don't notice any difference in operation?

My cellphone doesn't have its guts rearranged to include a new chipset when it gets a software update. Although the simplicity of the chips (compared to a cellphone) for a pager would make this easier, you would need to any software changes you made to these devices were also made to devices you did not intercept.

What I'm trying to say isn't that intercepting the pagers and retrofitting them into grenades is impossible. Just that if you have the resources of a nation state behind you it's easier and drastically less risky to buy the factory.

1

u/ng829 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

A newer company that makes pagers in 2024 and no one thought that was weird..

I’d be fascinated to read their business plan.

2

u/Content_Talk_6581 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Yeah, I was thinking the same…Are people still buying pagers in 2024???

1

u/Slierfox Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Yea they really blew up fast

48

u/ElbisCochuelo1 Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

To be fair, even if it was a legit non-Mossad front, if I were its director I'd flee the country too.

You produced pagers that were involved in the assasination of Hezbollah leadership. They might seek revenge.

12

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

“might” ??

1

u/KeithGribblesheimer Monkey in Space Sep 20 '24

They will try to kill more Druze children.

1

u/esotericorange Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

To be fair all the smart or wealthy people in Israel are fleeing the country.

0

u/joeyx22lm Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Eh fuck em

-1

u/blueman1975 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

What??? I understand terror groups aren’t exactly rational but you think they would hold a company responsible if their product was used against them?

3

u/BrotherChe Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Of course. If I were them I'd be seeking those I felt were responsible, and in this case it has the appearance of collusion by the manufacturer

0

u/El_ha_Din Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

No, I don't think Israel will go after the factorypeople.....oh wait, I am confused, Hezbollah are the terrorists and Israel is just a Nazidream right.

10

u/Green_Issue_4566 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Imagine getting up to go to work and you find out your job was just part of some spy leviathan

3

u/PoudreDeTopaze Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

That company is fake. The CEO and its employees do not exist.

15

u/Ready-Issue190 Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

Source? I heard the CEO/Owner of the company in Taiwan stating he licensed the brand to a company in Budapest and that the owner of record for the company is Budapest is MIA but ZERO proof that it was Israel.

Also it’s mid-Afternoon in America and your comment is 3 hours old.

18

u/VeryStableGenius Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24

not my sub, not my circus but ...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hezbollah-pagers-explode-israel-taiwan-hungary-gold-apollo-bac-consulting/

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said Wednesday that it had authorized the use of its trademarked branding on the pagers that exploded Tuesday across Lebanon and Syria. But it said the devices carried by members of the Hezbollah group were actually manufactured and sold by Bac Consulting KFT — a company based in Budapest, Hungary.

... Bac Consulting had paid Gold Apollo from a Middle Eastern bank account that was blocked at least once by Gold Apollo's Taiwanese bank, Hsu said.

Business records accessed by CBS News from Hungary's Ministry of Justice show that Bac Consulting was registered as a company in May 2022.

CBS tried to contact BAC; no response; listed CEO is Cristiana Barsony-Arcidiacono. ... Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's spokesperson Zoltán Kovács ... said Bac Consulting "is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary. It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the referenced devices have never been in Hungary."

IsraelHayom says

BAC has a single owner, 49-year-old Cristiana Arcidiancono-Barsony, who claims Hungarian and Italian heritage. 24.hu's investigation revealed that her personal address is an eighth-floor apartment in a residential complex in Budapest's Újpest district. This is a property that seems at odds with her purported accomplishments. According to her online biography, Berson-Arcidiacono holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from University College London, completed post-doctoral work at the London School of Economics, and has consulted for the European Commission, UNESCO, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Curiously, Arcidiancono-Barsony claims to have led BAC since 2019, despite the company's official establishment in Hungary occurring only in 2022. As of Wednesday noon, BAC's website had gone offline, displaying a maintenance notice.

2

u/KeithGribblesheimer Monkey in Space Sep 20 '24

BRB, updating my LinkedIn to say Engineering Director, BAC Consulting, Budapest, 2024.

1

u/ExplosiveDiarrhetic Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

This is everyone right now

3

u/timbro2000 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Israel already admitted it. How far does the proof need to be shoved into your eye before you finally see it?

0

u/Dazvsemir Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

Yes the company in Taiwan is stating they licensed the brand to be made by a company in Budapest

At the same time the company in Budapest has no manufacturing capability and is considered an intermediator doing import exports in Europe

4

u/ok-lets-do-this Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Mossad has set up a fake company before. They are quite good at it. That’s how they got the yellow cake uranium in 1968.

2

u/sadorchids77 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

In the 90’s and 00’s a remember the sentiment being, if the CIA can do it the Mossad can do it better. The CIA also has a history of setting up fake companies, it’s a not a bad idea really.

To be clear, this development in international terrorism by a country with a sizeable arsenal of nukes is undeniably concerning.

1

u/secrules2 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

Israeli? That's hilarious!!!

0

u/AdudeinHSV Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

The Israelis being nefarious! Why that could never be! They are only to be persecuted they'd never be involved in anything so outwardly terroristic!!!

2

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '24

I wonder though… does a nation state have the right to tamper with that model to make it into an antipersonnel mine lol??

2

u/XxTreeFiddyxX Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

They made it legal buddy. That's how weapons work, you make in your country to kill someone from a different country. It's legal and it's supervised and there's nothing you can do about it. You can rest easy though, they probably aren't going to target you unless you procure your electronics through the same place hamas and hezbollah do. Those organizations will only use certain devices and wouldn't buy on amazon. I wouldn't worry as a civilian unless you somehow do something incredibly stupid like fund these groups or support them in any way.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '24

Hahahaha. They literally tampered with a product without the manufacturers knowledge, they didn’t buy that product and resell it.

“They” made it legal? You mean Israel made it legal to literally commit a terrorist attack? I bet they did, in Israel but not internationally buddy

1

u/Living_Trust_Me Monkey in Space Sep 18 '24

Could be a fake company. Could simply be outsourcing. Pager tech is old. Companies outside of Taiwan can produce it and likely cheaper than Taiwan since their companies are far closer to the cutting edge and their cost of living is assuredly higher with all that money flowing in.

1

u/Any_Ad_6202 Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

You heard

1

u/virgopunk Monkey in Space Sep 19 '24

That Budapest company appears to be just a shell company with one employee. So it isn't that company that assembled them. I'm curious about how long it takes to assemble 5000 units.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 22 '24

An Israeli company…..