The article seems careful to say "manipulated equipment", which sounds more like snowden style eavesdropping devices than bombs. That would be more believable to me, as sneaking exploding devices into countries they are not at war with seems implausibly diplomatically stupid. It also mostly worked for hezbollah because they were a non state group that didnt have the budget to do supply chain security. I could see targeted spy devices being plausible, but hezbollah style exploding pagers doesnt seem all that plausible or even desirable against real countries.
Consider me doubtful.
If it was really true, i'm pretty sure they would STFU about it.
As far as USA goes - countries dont have friends they have shared interests. They are allies because their interests largely align, but they are very far away from perfectly aligning. I think people believe the propaganda that Israel is a vassal of USA too much - that isn't the case; Israel has more than enough power to plot their own foreign policy and they dont hesitate to do so when it suits their interests, just like any other country does when they have the ability.
Ever wondered how much Israel uses their 8200 alumni it has embedded in all major tech corporations? Maybe this is part of it. Embedding backdoors, and plausibly deniable bugs, or giving access directly, exfiltrating data, whatever.
For the hezbollah attack, it wasnt detectable because they used a very small amount and they used PTEN which is harder to detect than other explosives. Even still there is a lot of speculation online that they might have detonated earlier than planned due to being discovered
Supply Chain attack as a service.
Why wouldn't you claim that you have this kind of capability? It only is beneficial to you especially when you're Mossad.
It is a very weird thing to say though, given that the pagers targeted a very specific group doing very specific things with very specific processes using very specific tools (the pagers).
The logistics of that don't check out. That's not something that just lurks "everywhere".
So Devices "like" the pagers.. what does that mean?
I suppose cyber implants (for the lack of a better word) would be plausible, but also stretching the whole "like" comparison.
Yes, these agencies have implants in tech. All of them do. Where's the news?
I find this pretty strange, as the last thing an intelligence officer would do is go public about their work, even if they're retired or even defected. This is like a really early or really late April Fools.
Anyway consider this. If you were Israel, where would you put more effort in:
1) fighting off a militia that is in no case a match for a country armed with F35s and nuclear weapons;
2) keep benefiting from the "unwavering" support of the West (and, by a lesser extent, the flow of money from the US)- which both grants you a state-of-the-art army and weapons, and a full diplomatic cover and support in any circumstance, from the most important actors in the world.
Now consider the amount of effort and ingenuity they put in 1), and infer the amount of effort and ingenuity they must be putting in 2).
If it targets others, it is. Some countries have ideas like that only non-state entities can commit terrorism, but that is nonsense. My own country's laws don't distinguish between state and non-state acts in its terrorism legislation, for example.
War is not terrorism.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/pms-office-confirms-netanyahu-...
After the 'exploding pagers', every government was inspecting and scanning their devices.
It's in Mossad's favor to keep everyone second-guessing.