Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
Speaker 3: our super producer Andrew Trey Force Howard. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Tonight, folks, we are
Speaker 3: following up on a conversation we had in a recent
Speaker 3: Strange News program. As we have been discussing, and perhaps
Speaker 3: you have been discussing, attacks in the ongoing conflict between
Speaker 3: Hisbola and Israel have escalated as we record. Guys, I'm
Speaker 3: sure we all saw this. Did you hear that the
Speaker 3: Israeli military recently breached airport signals in Beirut just over
Speaker 3: the weekend?
Speaker 4: Yeah, just just that you know the headline of it.
Speaker 4: But I'm sure that has implications beyond what's occurring to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there was a whole other large missile attack
Speaker 2: that took out several high ranking members as well as
Speaker 2: high ranking members of other organizations. That Israel sees as
Speaker 2: an enemy.
Speaker 3: As well as civilians. Yeah, and we are recording. We'll
Speaker 3: talk about this in listener mail and strange news, but
Speaker 3: we are recording amid a crisis level chlorine gas disaster
Speaker 3: here in the Atlanta metro area.
Speaker 5: Is that what you'd call an airborne toxic event? Isn't
Speaker 5: that what that is?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, Okay, the air is bad. It actually is
Speaker 2: sour and weirdly enough, guys, last time we were recording,
Speaker 2: there was a hurricane bearing down on us. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: now there's like a statewide chemical fire.
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, an ill wind blows and I have to
Speaker 3: stop texting you guys that sentence in group chat, but
Speaker 3: I keep doing it.
Speaker 4: The ill winds definitely did blow. We'll get into some
Speaker 4: of the specifics of that in a bit.
Speaker 2: That's what I say just before freaking wind.
Speaker 3: I love you man. The pattern here with the Middle East,
Speaker 3: a lot of people in the West only learn about
Speaker 3: it through headlines or social media. However, make no mistake,
Speaker 3: there is a larger escalation. It has sparked fears of
Speaker 3: a wider conflict, leading some members of the public to
Speaker 3: wonder whether we are yet again on the precipice of
Speaker 3: a third World war, which is technically a question that
Speaker 3: is on our minds and maybe a question for another evening,
Speaker 3: because tonight we're exploring something that a lot of our
Speaker 3: fellow conspiracy realists contacted us about in the wake of
Speaker 3: the pager and walkie talkie attacks? Can you remotely explode
Speaker 3: a mobile device? Did you guys get people writing to
Speaker 3: you about this?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Since we did the segment on Strange News, it's certainly
Speaker 4: been on my mind and on the minds of a
Speaker 4: lot of folks that I've just been talking with in general,
Speaker 4: and we've certainly seen some listeners writing in about it.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think a lot of the questions that
Speaker 4: we posed during that segment are going to be answered today,
Speaker 4: which was fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: Sure the I think the biggest thing that we've all
Speaker 2: seen is just people feeling hesitant about their own devices, right.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, yes? Am I safe? Is it okay for
Speaker 3: me to listen to this show on my phone?
Speaker 4: Should I maybe not listen to podcasts with my phone
Speaker 4: under my pillow?
Speaker 3: And we kid we did, but also check your battery
Speaker 3: before continuing. This is our cold open. Here are the
Speaker 3: facts all right, what's the providence of Hesbela in Israel?
Speaker 3: Maybe we catch up on this. We mentioned it a
Speaker 3: little bit in our Strange News program. We talked about
Speaker 3: earlier precedents, but we didn't really talk about Hesbela as
Speaker 3: an entity. And I want to give credit where it's due. Matt.
Speaker 3: You made the very important point that Western society considers
Speaker 3: Hesbela a terrorist organization and Middle Eastern society does not,
Speaker 3: except for one country.
Speaker 4: I mean, most people in that part of the world
Speaker 4: consider it a political a very powerful political party, right,
Speaker 4: or like a political faction.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And it finds its origins in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: And and hesbal in particular grew from a fairly large,
Speaker 2: a sizable population of Chiite Muslims that were existing there
Speaker 2: in what the nineteen forties in Lebanon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Historians still do not agree on exactly when
Speaker 3: his Beelah became a distinct entity, but like you said,
Speaker 3: somewhere in the nineteen eighties, think nineteen eighty two to
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five. And this happens because back in November
Speaker 3: of nineteen forty three, Lebanon gained its independence quote unquote,
Speaker 3: regained its independence from French colonial forces, and those forces
Speaker 3: withdrew from the country in nineteen forty six. Lebanon is
Speaker 3: a diverse country. It is not monolithic, and there is
Speaker 3: a large proportion, a little north of thirty percent of
Speaker 3: the population that identify as Chiite Muslims, and Hesbola originates
Speaker 3: from that population. Look, we always hear in these history textbooks,
Speaker 3: these very short and pat sentences about independence, right, oh,
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy six, and the US was great from then
Speaker 3: on or whatever. The nineteen forty three independence of Lebanon
Speaker 3: triggered chaos. A lot of people in the Chiai population
Speaker 3: are impoverished, they're forcibly relocated. There's a civil war in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, which I guarantee you most people in
Speaker 3: the US don't learn about in public school. And then
Speaker 3: there's assassinations, disappearances. These are inarguably evil things. They radicalize people.
Speaker 3: And then you know other stuff happened as well.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Just thinking about some context, guys, in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, when Lebanon gained its independence from France.
Speaker 2: In nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty that's when France,
Speaker 2: like Paris, is under attack by the Nazis. That's when
Speaker 2: basically all the French forces are being pulled back to
Speaker 2: its own country. And that's one of the main reasons, well,
Speaker 2: it's one of a series of reasons that Lebanon ends
Speaker 2: up getting its independence, which is just interesting to me
Speaker 2: thinking about those larger movements right when there are large
Speaker 2: swaths of the land at war with each other, but
Speaker 2: maybe with different factions, kind of what we're seeing right
Speaker 2: now with Hesbela Hamas with stuff going on right now
Speaker 2: in Ethiopia. Just all of these places all over the world,
Speaker 2: and it ends up being some of the same main
Speaker 2: players that actually have troops or a military presence in
Speaker 2: various parts of the world, and then they have to
Speaker 2: pull back to move somewhere else ooo.
Speaker 3: And then Iran has a revolution because they don't care
Speaker 3: for the despotic Western back and then there's the Iran
Speaker 3: Iraq War, and then there's the invasion of Lebanon by
Speaker 3: Israel in nineteen eighty two. This all lends further gas
Speaker 3: to the fire, and I love what you're saying. Nothing
Speaker 3: occurs in a vacuum. We do know that the formation
Speaker 3: of Isbela was publicly announced in nineteen eighty five by
Speaker 3: a guy named Shikh Subito Fali, and this guy became
Speaker 3: the first secretary general of the organization. Hebela is a
Speaker 3: proxy of Iran functionally, and it is birthed by chaos,
Speaker 3: and it shares many of the same goals as the
Speaker 3: theocracy that funds at arms it.
Speaker 4: Right, the eradication of Israel being first and foremost among
Speaker 4: those goals. So with that in mind, Iran Hesbela and
Speaker 4: Hamas are often seen as kind of fingers on the
Speaker 4: same hand, tentacles of the same great Cuthulhu asque kind
Speaker 4: of creature.
Speaker 5: They have tentacles.
Speaker 4: But before we go on, I think it's really important
Speaker 4: to make an important note here that folks living in Iran, Israel,
Speaker 4: and Palestine and Lebanon, many of whom are ideologically politically unconnected.
Speaker 5: To these struggles.
Speaker 4: These are innocent civilians on the ground and all of
Speaker 4: these places who have struggled innumerable horrors in the wake
Speaker 4: of all of the the elephants fighting, you know, crushing
Speaker 4: the grass and all of that. Ben, I got to
Speaker 4: throw it to you, because I mean, I think you
Speaker 4: wrote such a beautiful summation of the kind of empathy
Speaker 4: that we should exercise in not feeling the need to.
Speaker 5: Create some sort of false equivalency here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the reason we are so fun at parties.
Speaker 3: We point out unpleasant truths whenever you hear a reporter,
Speaker 3: a politician, or demagogue talking about these places that you
Speaker 3: have never visited as the So everyone in there is
Speaker 3: marching lockstep with some ideology or some attack or some
Speaker 3: wackado idea. It's time to pause and take a breath.
Speaker 3: We have to remember these people are people just like you.
Speaker 3: They want peace, they want their kids to do better
Speaker 3: than they did. You know, they want food, they want shelter,
Speaker 3: they want water, they want a safe place to poop like.
Speaker 3: Humans are not super complicated. Humans in general are good,
Speaker 3: and nations and terrorist groups are composed of people, but
Speaker 3: the decisions of those organizations often do not reflect the
Speaker 3: desires of the people living under the rule or the
Speaker 3: auspice of those organizations. And you nailed it. No, the
Speaker 3: old proverb is true. When elephants make war, it is
Speaker 3: the grass that suffers. The innocent people tragically bear the
Speaker 3: consequences of decisions, attacks, conflicts, and wars far beyond their control.
Speaker 3: Let's go to it. We talked about a lot off air.
Speaker 3: But in October twenty twenty three, Hamas launched a devastating
Speaker 3: attack on the nation of Israel.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you've heard about that. That was in the news.
Speaker 2: That was where there were many many Israeli hostages that
Speaker 2: were taken at a music festival as well as other
Speaker 2: places there in Israel, and it just sparked this thing
Speaker 2: that has been happening now since that day, where there's
Speaker 2: retaliation occurring endless.
Speaker 5: I mean it's yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2: Even know how many people actually died, but the number
Speaker 2: of let's say, Palestinians who have lost their homes and
Speaker 2: been killed, especially just civilians, you can read about those numbers.
Speaker 2: You can read about just the devastation that this one
Speaker 2: attack on that day in October, what it's wrought.
Speaker 4: Well, speaking of not dralling false equivalencies, I mean, at
Speaker 4: this point, the number of Palestinian dead far out weigh
Speaker 4: the number of Israeli dead.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And Hesbela as an organization, saw that and made the
Speaker 2: political move and you know, raised a flag and said, hey,
Speaker 2: we are in solidarity with the Palestinians, and they began
Speaker 2: firing on Israeli outposts where they were operating, where Hesbela
Speaker 2: was operating, so it all kind of sparked in that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Which isn't to say that there wasn't a huge past
Speaker 2: of fighting between all of these groups, right, especially with
Speaker 2: Israeli forces in Hesbela and Hamas and you know all
Speaker 2: over varying places on the globe.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, the beefs are in the Bible, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, It goes back a little while.
Speaker 3: This is an excellent summation. Hisbela joins with as you said,
Speaker 3: solidarity with the Palestinians by attacking military outposts in the
Speaker 3: Golden Height in Suba farms, which are both under Israeli occupation.
Speaker 3: Since then, there have been cross border military exchanges. If
Speaker 3: you want to put a tie on it, make it
Speaker 3: sound okay for the UN cross border military exchanges. They
Speaker 3: have displaced entire communities of innocent people. The buildings are
Speaker 3: wrecked in these towns, they are bombed out. The land
Speaker 3: has been sown with salt. You can't grow stuff there.
Speaker 3: There are ninety six thousand people in Israel, one hundred
Speaker 3: and eleven thousand in Lebanon at the very least that
Speaker 3: are documented being forcibly displaced as a result, and in
Speaker 3: February of this year, twenty twenty four's we record, the
Speaker 3: then secretary General of Hesbola Hassan Zala, instructed old members
Speaker 3: of the organization to use dedicated pagers in place of
Speaker 3: cell phones. He believed the calm structure of Hesbluff was compromised,
Speaker 3: and he was correct, just not the way he had hoped.
Speaker 3: He is dead as of September twenty seventh. Real monkey
Speaker 3: past finger curls.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, and just for a tiny bit of
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to get more context here, guys, but just
Speaker 2: for a tiny bit more. If you're looking at the map,
Speaker 2: the reason why we're talking about those cross border conflicts,
Speaker 2: it's because Elebanon is just to the north along the Mediterranean,
Speaker 2: see the coast there to Israel. So when we're talking about,
Speaker 2: you know, being able to fire weapons across a border,
Speaker 2: that is what's occurring.
Speaker 3: That's a very important point, agreed. It's much closer of
Speaker 3: a border than people might imagine. If you're from say
Speaker 3: the United States, right mm hm our God forbid Canada,
Speaker 3: shout out to our Canucks in the crowd. But most
Speaker 3: people have smaller countries than you, guys.
Speaker 5: True.
Speaker 4: So now With all of that context behind us, let's
Speaker 4: get to the kind of inciting event surrounding today's discussion.
Speaker 4: On September seventeenth, thousands of people were injured and at
Speaker 4: least nine individuals killed in Lebanon and Syria around two
Speaker 4: thirty pm local time, when thousands of pagers held by
Speaker 4: Hasbela members exploded nearly simultaneously in their pockets, in their hands,
Speaker 4: and their bags. We've seen a lot of descriptions of
Speaker 4: injuries to people's faces and eyes because they were like
Speaker 4: looking at the pager, as we know, a little screen
Speaker 4: on it when a message comes through. Pretty devastating and
Speaker 4: scary stuff that yields a whole lot of questions. The
Speaker 4: first question that it raised is who is to blame?
Speaker 4: And of course has blood. Lebanon looked at the most
Speaker 4: obvious candidate, which would be Israel. Very next day, on
Speaker 4: September eighteenth, hundreds of like two way radios walkie talking.
Speaker 3: Walkie talkie is a silly name.
Speaker 5: It is. It's a fun thing to say, though. It's
Speaker 5: a fun thing to say.
Speaker 4: It's I guess it means you can do walk and
Speaker 4: talk with I don't see, I don't see how they're
Speaker 4: any different than a cell phone though, but they were
Speaker 4: a pretty cell phone, you know.
Speaker 3: Two way radio is probably the more buttoned up.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a really great album by the French kind
Speaker 4: of chill wave band Air called Talkie Walkie, which I
Speaker 4: think is fun flippity flippity doda of.
Speaker 3: That they've got in our supply chain.
Speaker 5: First, Oh dude, we're getting there.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so we go from pagers, there's two kinds
Speaker 4: of you know, old school, more low tech devices, to
Speaker 4: walkie talkies that also exploded, also in use by members
Speaker 4: of Hesbela across Lebanon and Syria. So between these two attacks,
Speaker 4: we are now dealing with forty two deaths, possibly more
Speaker 4: to come as people succumb to horrific injuries, you know,
Speaker 4: as a result of maybe looking at those pages as
Speaker 4: they exploded whole lean those walkie talkies to their faces.
Speaker 4: Not instant death, but horrific burns, injuries that they may
Speaker 4: never recover from. At least twelve of the dead were civilians, unrelated,
Speaker 4: unconnected to the actual runnings, the actual operations of Hespola
Speaker 4: that includes children.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a lot of it had to do with
Speaker 2: proximity to the exploding pager and whoever was carrying it
Speaker 2: or just wherever it was laid down. Right, And we've
Speaker 2: seen the video of a lot of these incidents, or
Speaker 2: at least several of these incidents where the explosion occurs
Speaker 2: in a very crowded place with a bunch of just
Speaker 2: other people going about their day, let's say, getting groceries
Speaker 2: or something, or at a market. A pretty horrifying way
Speaker 2: to strike at an enemy.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, this will be portrayed by supporters as a breakthrough
Speaker 3: and targeted assassination, but it comes with heavy collateral damage.
Speaker 3: Hebella vowed to an exact revenge. Iran has stayed largely
Speaker 3: silent in the public sphere, which is interesting and disturbing.
Speaker 3: But when Hesbelah declared it would pursue retaliation, it raised
Speaker 3: very serious worries about a full scale war in the
Speaker 3: Middle East, just like the war between Israel and Hamas
Speaker 3: continues in Gaza. As we discussed in our weekly Strange
Speaker 3: News program, one of the immediate questions we received from
Speaker 3: many of our fellow conspiracy realist was this, Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: could my phone, slash, pager, slash, iPad, slash etc.
Speaker 5: Be next dude in the Strange News segment. I mean
Speaker 5: that was the first question that I had.
Speaker 4: I mean, as you were kind of wrapping our heads around,
Speaker 4: how is this even possible? Like, there's so many questions,
Speaker 4: because if I'm not mistaken, I mean, this is the
Speaker 4: sort of first of its kind attack, at least on
Speaker 4: this scale, with this level of reporting around it.
Speaker 3: Right, we established the precedent back in the nineties, but
Speaker 3: now it's a question of scale. Can you remotely explode
Speaker 3: a mobile device? Will pause for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Let's rip the band aid off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can do it. You can remotely explode a mobile device,
Speaker 3: but maybe not in the way people initially assumed.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's the thing that was kind of
Speaker 4: perplexing all of us, is that we know that cell phones,
Speaker 4: laptops that are powered by like these you know, chemically
Speaker 4: derived sources of power can over time get distended and
Speaker 4: have all kinds of problems and you know, create fires.
Speaker 5: We'll get to some specific examples of that.
Speaker 4: But the question then becomes, is this something that can
Speaker 4: be triggered remotely? Can someone inject a piece of malicious
Speaker 4: code into my iPhone that will cause the battery to
Speaker 4: overheat and then melt my flesh in my pocket.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thought. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 2: have seen any of the videos recently of Tesla's hanging
Speaker 2: out in garages with all the flooding that's been happening,
Speaker 2: and then they're just catching fire and burning down houses,
Speaker 2: And it's because they've got super powerful batteries in there
Speaker 2: and electrical systems that get some water in there, and
Speaker 2: you've got problems.
Speaker 4: What about those home batteries that people you know, I'm
Speaker 4: talking about those Tesla home batteries. With a full flooding situation,
Speaker 4: I could imagine that would cause devastation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we've also seen videos of people who are
Speaker 2: using like a vape pen or something right, and it
Speaker 2: for some reason gets stuck on and the user is unaware,
Speaker 2: and that battery just heats and heats and heats and
Speaker 2: heats until it's untenable and causes a mild explosion. But
Speaker 2: how the heck do you do that to one of
Speaker 2: these devices?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a concern a lot of people initially
Speaker 3: fretted over, and I don't mean to diminish it. It
Speaker 3: is a real concern. They were saying, well, what if
Speaker 3: an intelligence agency leveraged an attack entirely through software, right,
Speaker 3: what if a line of malicious code could overclock or
Speaker 3: overheat a battery or a device or series of devices
Speaker 3: such that they cause fire and explosion. Thankfully that part
Speaker 3: is incorrect, but we do have to be again the
Speaker 3: fun guys at the party, the fungi at the party.
Speaker 3: Batteries can catch fire. How soon we forget the Samsung
Speaker 3: debacle just a few years back, Remember that the Galaxy
Speaker 3: Note seven in twenty sixteen just pop and smoke.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and usually that results it in serious burns. You know.
Speaker 4: It wasn't like an explosion in that sense like that
Speaker 4: would kill somebody. It would, you know, maybe overheat in
Speaker 4: their pocket and cause like a significant third third degree burns.
Speaker 4: But I just wanted to point out too, it's not
Speaker 4: to say that attacks can't happen via software alone. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, you can certainly infiltrate a network and perhaps
Speaker 4: overclock a computer in a way that would cause it
Speaker 4: to shut down or tweak out. But the level of
Speaker 4: control that would be required that was exhibited here, that's
Speaker 4: not I don't think within the realm of possibility for
Speaker 4: someone to actually manipulate devices in such a way that
Speaker 4: would cause this kind of explosion in and of itself.
Speaker 5: But you can reak havoc remotely for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, and even some of these devices just are slightly
Speaker 2: defective in their manufacturing to where this condition can happen
Speaker 2: more often. Do you guys remember iPhone fifteen pros iPhone
Speaker 2: thirteen's They were also heating, like overheating and catching fire
Speaker 2: simply because of their the way they were manufactured.
Speaker 4: Can we talk a little bit about how those lithium
Speaker 4: I own batteries work and what could lead to such
Speaker 4: a situation that we're describing here.
Speaker 3: Ah, yes, let's put on our house stuff works, question
Speaker 3: mark shaped hat. Yeah, there we go. Let's gather around.
Speaker 3: Let's gather around that ridiculous question mark shaped table.
Speaker 4: It was literally like a removable rollaway ends table.
Speaker 3: That's a truth.
Speaker 2: I'm Marshall Brain, and that's how lithium I own batteries work.
Speaker 5: That floated.
Speaker 3: Oh he needs to get that PhD. I'm so tired
Speaker 3: of call him mister brain instead of doctor brain. Marshall
Speaker 3: Brain would be good. Professor brain be great. If you
Speaker 3: get a PhD, you can be professor Bray. Also, this
Speaker 3: guy's just the best, and he taught us a lot.
Speaker 3: This is our martial brain how stuff works moment. Lithium
Speaker 3: ion batteries, all right, they use a chemical reaction to
Speaker 3: generate power. We don't have to get in the weeds
Speaker 3: on this, but what you do need to know is
Speaker 3: that chemical reactions are often, like intelligence, perishable. So as
Speaker 3: a battery ages, the chemical cycle that it engages with
Speaker 3: to create energy becomes imperfect. It's not running the same
Speaker 3: sprint at the same speed. Sometimes it's not finishing the race.
Speaker 3: When it doesn't do this correctly, when that reaction does
Speaker 3: not complete, it can create gas. This is something the
Speaker 3: Boften's call out gassing and Matt Nolan triforce and I
Speaker 3: call battery far.
Speaker 2: An ill wind this way plumes indeed something super wicked.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and woo betide the odor of a battery,
Speaker 3: a lithium ion battery that may encounter this. You will
Speaker 3: see it. You may have seen it in your personal life.
Speaker 3: There is an indication that things are not on the level.
Speaker 3: The battery itself will physically swell because of the gas,
Speaker 3: and if the internal layers of these lithium ion batteries
Speaker 3: are not separated due to damage, or a manufacturing defect.
Speaker 3: Then boom, you get the outcass, you get the swelling,
Speaker 3: you get the fire. But you see the signs well
Speaker 3: before the disaster occurs.
Speaker 2: Typically, Yeah, full disclosure. My last work machine, we would
Speaker 2: always joke off air, and I think we even talked
Speaker 2: about it on here a couple of times. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: large battery panel beneath my MacBook Pro was so distended
Speaker 2: and a swelling so much, and my machine was overheating
Speaker 2: so much with a fan we were trying to record it.
Speaker 2: It's just like, I don't know if that's.
Speaker 5: I think I can I think I give up.
Speaker 2: Well, I had no idea how dangerous a situation that
Speaker 2: was until I looked on some forums and just realized, oh,
Speaker 2: my house could just burn up because of my work machine.
Speaker 3: So yeah, especially if you leave it alone and plugged in, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And this is this is a valid concern. And I
Speaker 3: do remember, I do remember when we were God, look
Speaker 3: at us, you guys, we were joking about Matt's laptop.
Speaker 3: All I know, Well, we matrix dodged that. But it's
Speaker 3: a valid concern because it leads us to our second point.
Speaker 3: These fires that are caused by these lithium ion batteries.
Speaker 3: They do not generate near the explosive force that we
Speaker 3: see in the pager attacks.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, I mean a lot of the lawsuits surrounding
Speaker 4: the Samsung case that we talked about were because of.
Speaker 5: Like serious burns.
Speaker 4: Yep, because where do you keep those things, you know,
Speaker 4: in your pocket or like God forbid it happens while
Speaker 4: you're using it, but God forbid you actually make phone
Speaker 4: calls and hold that monstrosity to your face.
Speaker 5: Who are these people?
Speaker 4: But no, it was certainly no kind of significant explosion
Speaker 4: that would generate the kind of force that we saw
Speaker 4: in these attacks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and as we mentioned earlier, you can see live
Speaker 3: video of some of these pager detonations. They indicate a
Speaker 3: much higher explosive force, a fatal explosive force. And in
Speaker 3: this footage we witness terrifying moments someone with an affected pager.
Speaker 3: They get a vibration notifying them of a message they take,
Speaker 3: like you were saying, no, they take the pager from
Speaker 3: their pocket, they look at the screen, and this is
Speaker 3: a terrifying thing because another point we have to raise
Speaker 3: here to the idea of malicious code. Pagers are low tech,
Speaker 3: like we're saying earlier this is radio technology, this is
Speaker 3: not cloud connected. There is not a way to send
Speaker 3: malware necessarily.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when we were talking about too, like this being
Speaker 4: unprecedented whatever this scale, And of course in the Strangers
Speaker 4: episode you mentioned Ben the precedent for this, it was
Speaker 4: a cell phone attack back in the nineties, right, Yes,
Speaker 4: But I gotta say this is also the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that you'll certainly see in you know, spy movies
Speaker 4: or in like espionage type situations where someone will wire
Speaker 4: a bomb and there will be a transmitter on it
Speaker 4: that is a cell phone, and like someone will dial
Speaker 4: a number and that is what triggers the bomb.
Speaker 5: So this is just kind of taking it a step further.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, that makes sense, right, because the
Speaker 2: cell phone receiver that's a part of the detonation device
Speaker 2: just needs to send an electrical signal to that device
Speaker 2: to explode it. Right. But in this case, we're trying
Speaker 2: to figure out if we can actually blow up the
Speaker 2: you know, the manufactured device that everybody else has, and
Speaker 2: if everybody you know, if you've got twenty people with
Speaker 2: one of these devices and you can explode one of them,
Speaker 2: what's the difference between that one and the other nineteen.
Speaker 2: Because I want to get back to just this, this
Speaker 2: low tech idea, because it's one of the primary reasons
Speaker 2: has Blow was using these devices, right, they were low
Speaker 2: tech because theoretically communications between these low tech devices would
Speaker 2: be much harder to intercept by somebody who's watching them,
Speaker 2: and they would be much harder to track somebody carrying
Speaker 2: one of these low tech devices. Right.
Speaker 5: You can clone them though, right.
Speaker 4: Cloning a pager is a thing where you literally have
Speaker 4: like a duplicate so when the original one gets a ping,
Speaker 4: then you're cloned.
Speaker 5: Duplicate gets it as well. Just just saying it's not
Speaker 5: like impossible.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, but it's not the same as being
Speaker 2: able to turn a microphone on on a smartphone, right, or,
Speaker 2: as you said, Ben, inject malicious code of some sort
Speaker 2: into a smart machine that can then track somebody's location.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Back to our emperor of how stuff works, Marshall.
Speaker 3: Brain taught us that a pager is a small radio receiver. Right,
Speaker 3: you carry it around your pocket. It's basically a radio.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work the way most people imagine. Your device
Speaker 3: has a personal number, a personal identifier of some sort.
Speaker 3: Call it a code. Call it a phone number. Anyone
Speaker 3: who wants to send you a message dials that code
Speaker 3: and they have their message attached, you know, three eleven
Speaker 3: nine to one one eight zero zero eight five boobs. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so this this, that's a reference earlier, I thinks,
Speaker 3: oh boobs though, right, folks, I know, right, Just so this, uh,
Speaker 3: this puts when people dial that, it puts the message
Speaker 3: they are sending the signal they're sending through a switchboard
Speaker 3: at a kind of centralized broadcast opportunity. And that broadcast
Speaker 3: opportunity back in the day it might have been a person.
Speaker 3: It's probably a machine or an algorithm. Now it sends
Speaker 3: out that message just in a wide swath with all
Speaker 3: the other messages. It is received just like a normal
Speaker 3: radio broadcast, and it uses antennas to transmit the message. Further,
Speaker 3: all of the pagers, all of these handheld radio devices
Speaker 3: are constantly picking up every single radio message they receive.
Speaker 3: You're only finding out about this that gets to you
Speaker 3: because there's something in your device that says, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: this one's for you know, triforce. Uh, here you go, boobs,
Speaker 3: my guy boobs. And so it ignores all the other stuff.
Speaker 3: But all the other stuff is happening is reaching that receiver,
Speaker 3: and all of this can happen. To our earlier point,
Speaker 3: all of this happens without an Internet connection. You need
Speaker 3: no Wi Fi, you only need the radio. And this
Speaker 3: leads us to conclude that battery malfunctions alone cannot explain
Speaker 3: what happened. The explosive force, the nature of the technology,
Speaker 3: the other factors at play, the social engineering, the opset compromise.
Speaker 3: These demonstrate another conspiracy in the game.
Speaker 4: Yea, if I remember correctly, if my brief stints as
Speaker 4: a pager user, they take double A batteries. Most of
Speaker 4: them they don't even have lithium ion batteries.
Speaker 2: I believe the newer versions, the AR well, we'll get
Speaker 2: to it, the AR.
Speaker 5: Nine.
Speaker 2: That version I believe did have a lithium ion battery
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 4: Because I remember the one I had the motorola, the
Speaker 4: kind of clear one where you can see through it.
Speaker 5: I think. Yet you literally had to change the batteries
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 3: It does have a lithium ion minus crank powered.
Speaker 5: Nice. It's good in a jam, good in a jam.
Speaker 3: So what did happen?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: And Noel, you raise a tremendous point not all pagers
Speaker 3: have the same power sources. The pagers in question were
Speaker 3: made by a Taiwanese based company, or they were licensed
Speaker 3: by a Taiwanese based company. You see the organization responsible
Speaker 3: for the paige explosions, which is Israel. Let's just say
Speaker 3: the quiet part out loud. They had to physically interact
Speaker 3: with these devices at some point in the supply chain
Speaker 3: before those pagers and those walkie talkies again, silly name
Speaker 3: reached Hezbolah. Let's talk a little bit about the pagers specifically.
Speaker 3: Gold Apollo is the company out of Taiwan, right, and
Speaker 3: they licensed the manufacture of a model of pager called
Speaker 3: AAR nine two four, And all of the pagers that
Speaker 3: exploded in Lebanon and Syria were a R nine two
Speaker 3: four models.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but gold Apollo, because they were in this deal
Speaker 2: licensing out their name their pager to another company, has
Speaker 2: basically said, well, hey, it wasn't us. Those actually aren't
Speaker 2: our pagers has our name on it, but we did
Speaker 2: not manufacture them. Somebody else is at play here.
Speaker 5: I did not know that was a thing.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm I'm naive or something, but like, does that
Speaker 4: absolve you if you've you've you've licensed out or rented
Speaker 4: out your name, your low, your your design, your trademark
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 3: I mean, it depends if it's a manufacturing defect.
Speaker 5: Because of the design that you've thesis made.
Speaker 3: You're still culpable for. But licensing the thing is a
Speaker 3: lot like tag and base, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's a lot like saying not it. And if we
Speaker 3: go we mentioned this in Strange News, But if you
Speaker 3: want to find, if you want to find the company
Speaker 3: that is on the hook for providing these AR nine
Speaker 3: two four model pagers licensed via gold Apollo in Taiwan,
Speaker 3: you will find a fascinating will outfit called b AC
Speaker 3: Consulting based out of Budapest, and they had a licensing
Speaker 3: agreement with gold Apollo dating back to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this company makes alarm bells go off. And
Speaker 2: then once you go through all of the information on it,
Speaker 2: you can see it right in the face exactly what
Speaker 2: this thing is. Should we go through it a little bit?
Speaker 3: Oh yes we should, we must. Let's also give a
Speaker 3: shout out to the founder of gold Apollo, su Chin
Speaker 3: Kwan who later is it it's Wacket who's in some
Speaker 3: interviews and says, Hey, you know, we didn't do this.
Speaker 3: We just licensed this to this company that I've never
Speaker 3: heard of. But they're out of Budapest.
Speaker 5: And you know now that you ask me.
Speaker 3: The weird thing is the money for the licensing agreement
Speaker 3: originated in the Middle East, and then Taiwanese government officials
Speaker 3: came through and said, yeah, hashtag not it, not us.
Speaker 3: These pages were not made in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: It's very weird. His quote to Ruters was quote, the
Speaker 2: remittance was very strange, but.
Speaker 5: We didn't like do anything of that, you know it
Speaker 5: like take the cash. It's fine, what what are we
Speaker 5: gonna do? Not take the money, of.
Speaker 2: Course, But you know, seriously, credit to him as you're saying, Ben,
Speaker 2: because he also said, we may not be a large company,
Speaker 2: but we are a responsible one. This is very embarrassing,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna like they are as a company trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what exactly went down.
Speaker 5: This is like the meme like that. I think you
Speaker 5: should leave meme with the hot dog costume, like we've
Speaker 5: got to find out who did this. Yes, I mean
Speaker 5: this situation in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed, that's a perfect comparison. Talk about a game
Speaker 3: of hot potato do you guys remember hot potato? Did
Speaker 3: you ever play hot potato.
Speaker 5: With an actual hot potato?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: It was really it was pretty dangerous. Actually a lot
Speaker 5: of serious burns.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about like we were saying, let's talk
Speaker 3: about speaking to serious burns. Let's talk about our friends
Speaker 3: in Budapeste b AC. They have a conulting CEO, not
Speaker 3: a standing or urban it CEO.
Speaker 2: Well, it is a consulting firm. It's BAC Consulting.
Speaker 3: Right, But how do you have a consulting CEO for
Speaker 3: a consulting firm.
Speaker 2: It's just what It's just what they do.
Speaker 4: They just that's their thing, is consulting that potatoes to
Speaker 4: consult to get to consultants.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you, guys that potato is hot.
Speaker 5: It's potato, especially when they're wrapped in like saran boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about this, that consulting CEO. Then
Speaker 2: you found an amazing article called the Mystery Woman whose
Speaker 2: company BAC Consulting is linked to exploding pagers. You can
Speaker 2: find it right now. This consulting CEO's name is Christiana
Speaker 2: barsonat Arcidiacono. I'm not how to say it. This person,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna put it out here. The the article you
Speaker 2: linked to uh cites her as a forty nine year
Speaker 2: old Italian Hungarian.
Speaker 3: Person like that selfie though, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, Selfie's fantastic. But what I really like is the
Speaker 2: new vocabulary word that I am armed with because the
Speaker 2: writer of this article used it. Perry pathetic.
Speaker 5: Yes, oh, she is kind of fetching.
Speaker 2: Perry pathetic, which means traveling from place to place, in particular,
Speaker 2: working or based in various places for relatively short periods.
Speaker 5: It's like nomadic.
Speaker 3: Dare we say consulting.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, interesting, Okay, this is all matching up. Sounds good.
Speaker 2: But what's so weird about this person?
Speaker 3: Well? I guess it's the fact that this person and
Speaker 3: on behalf of BAC denied all culpability with Eddie involvement
Speaker 3: on the pager side, specifically in manufacturing BAC. And it's consulting.
Speaker 3: CEO described themselves as trading intermediaries, as fixers, as licensers.
Speaker 3: So you buy the license from Tawan, You buy the
Speaker 3: license from Taiwan or Tawan, whatever you wish, and then
Speaker 3: you sell the license somewhere else. The Hungarian government, interestingly enough,
Speaker 3: comes in with cover fire and they say, look, this company,
Speaker 3: they just trade stuff. They don't manufacture anything in Hungary.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the spider man pointing at to one. Another meme
Speaker 4: also comes telling me that potato is molten.
Speaker 2: Guys, I'm gonna go back to the article. This is
Speaker 2: why I find Christiana the consulting CEO so strange. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read a couple of quotes, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 2: watch your face in particular Ben because and no offense, nol,
Speaker 2: but watching Ben's face because of our discussions about front
Speaker 2: companies and how intelligence agencies pick people up out of college.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna we're gonna start here. Quote. In the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, she earned her PhD in physics at
Speaker 2: Universe Diversity College, London, but she appears to have left
Speaker 2: without pursuing a scientific career. Okay, that's that's one. That's
Speaker 2: count one for me. That's first. Next a resume she
Speaker 2: used to get the job working for this other place
Speaker 2: she worked for previously, references other postgraduate degrees in politics
Speaker 2: and development MMM from the London School of Economics. Okay,
Speaker 2: and then she goes on to describe in that CV
Speaker 2: working for various NGOs throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, this checks out, yeah fully, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It feels like somebody that you would you would pluck
Speaker 2: early on in their scientific pursuit career, especially if they're
Speaker 2: interested in any way in politics, and let's say nation building.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, the people must be free, must they?
Speaker 2: M hmm?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we also look, it's super shady. BAC
Speaker 3: is super sketchy, and it turns out that it gets
Speaker 3: curiouser and curiouser the further we go into the rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: We also have to remember, look, we were talking about
Speaker 3: this off air. It's obviously kind of a shell company.
Speaker 3: We'll get to it, but the hand is often hidden.
Speaker 3: The International Criminal Court does prosecute some post colonial societies,
Speaker 3: but they have not once, not never gone after a
Speaker 3: colonial society, nor held it accountable for actions that would
Speaker 3: be described as terrorism if conducted by any post colonial
Speaker 3: nation state. I yield by time. Let's talk about the
Speaker 3: walkie talkies. God, what a silly name. Walkee talk What
Speaker 3: do you call it? What's the better name? Two way radio?
Speaker 5: Two way radio is good?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's poor grown up.
Speaker 2: What was the phone that was? It was a very
Speaker 2: popular phone that had the two Way radio Motorola two.
Speaker 5: I'm quoting Jay z Okay, I know the one you're
Speaker 5: talking about. It looked kind of like a sports radio
Speaker 5: or something like that. Yeah, you get to take to
Speaker 5: the beach.
Speaker 2: You get the little chirp and a little little rubber
Speaker 2: bumpers on the side.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, because your because of your actions.
Speaker 2: Right, Uh, this is diddy. What did you say? More oil?
Speaker 4: No problem, guys, I went a cost Co run this weekend.
Speaker 4: Can confirm cost cod does not carry baby oil.
Speaker 3: I looked everywhere, Dude, you have to go to you know,
Speaker 3: you have to go to the sketchy places. Now I
Speaker 3: get a good price. Yeah yeah, oh cvs? Yeah, are
Speaker 3: they like what is their business model? Are they like
Speaker 3: a front for printing receipts?
Speaker 5: Massive?
Speaker 3: Why are they so long?
Speaker 5: So much? Actually? What is all that extra text? Guys?
Speaker 4: Really quickly though, if you want to be classy at
Speaker 4: your freak out parties, freak parties, whatever, freak offs, why
Speaker 4: is it a freak cough they call it? Yeah, Costco
Speaker 4: has got some excellent deals on olive oil and bulk.
Speaker 4: Can use it for your slip and slide situation and
Speaker 4: then dip your bread in it when you're done.
Speaker 2: May I recommend coconut oil?
Speaker 3: M this guy finds.
Speaker 2: So let's get back to the walkie talkies. We are
Speaker 2: taking tangents galore today, guys, And I blame myself.
Speaker 5: Matthew, No, no blame to be distributed, my friend, it's
Speaker 5: a podcast.
Speaker 2: Well, let's get back to the walkie talkies. Around five
Speaker 2: pm local time on September eighteenth, that is, again, can't
Speaker 2: stress this enough. The day after there was a huge
Speaker 2: pager explosion across Lebanon and throughout the halls of Hesbola
Speaker 2: and just in you know places where everybody else is.
Speaker 2: There was another round of explosions. And these explosions again
Speaker 2: had one thing in common. A single device, same manufacturer,
Speaker 2: same make.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense, Yes, the icom Ic V eight
Speaker 3: two VHF walkie talkie or two way radio. And what's
Speaker 3: fascinating here is that the company Icon that made these
Speaker 3: waukee talkies they stopped manufacturing them back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, so somebody had a stockpile.
Speaker 5: I guess is this what should call it? Like new
Speaker 5: old stock?
Speaker 2: Well, that's the interesting thing, right, Maybe they were in
Speaker 2: a warehouse somewhere that's for a long time and then
Speaker 2: they were you know, just distributed, you know, to HESBELA
Speaker 2: members because somebody got a hold of a bunch of them.
Speaker 2: The other option is somebody made these, like manufactured them
Speaker 2: well after the company officially stopped doing it.
Speaker 4: And is my understanding that this device was the company's
Speaker 4: most counterfeited device, which is, like, you know something, the
Speaker 4: results from industrial espionas so the model, according to an
Speaker 4: official statement for I Believe, an internal memo indicated pay
Speaker 4: it special attention to counterfeit ICV eighty, IC seven eighteen,
Speaker 4: and ic V eighty two copies of these models are
Speaker 4: floating in the market.
Speaker 2: Right, So theoretically it wasn't It wasn't necessarily somebody got
Speaker 2: a hold of the official models and then modified them.
Speaker 2: Somebody may have manufactured their own versions of this particular model, because.
Speaker 4: I mean, geez, they're already licensing out their plans and
Speaker 4: branding to the highest bidder. I mean, when you think
Speaker 4: about it, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that
Speaker 4: those plans would just kind of end up floating around
Speaker 4: and available to be sold off.
Speaker 3: Well, the good news is, as of September thirtieth, when
Speaker 3: we're recorded government officials from Japan assure us they are
Speaker 3: investigating the case. Cool, that's so believe for them.
Speaker 5: We got got our top guys on it. They're working
Speaker 5: in shift.
Speaker 2: We're gonna find these shell companies.
Speaker 5: Said the guy in the hot toxuites.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So that's a let's go to an app break, because
Speaker 3: we have to come back and talk about implications. We
Speaker 3: have returned the most dangerous implication here orbits around not
Speaker 3: malicious code, but around the idea of supply chain. If
Speaker 3: you are listening to tonight's show, statistically you're probably listening
Speaker 3: on a phone. It is also extremely likely that you
Speaker 3: are not the target of asymmetric warfare. But again to
Speaker 3: our earlier example about Matt's laptop and honestly our buddy
Speaker 3: Dylan's laptop as well. If your phone battery is getting
Speaker 3: out of shape, if your phone or your device is
Speaker 3: physically distending, get it away from your family and your
Speaker 3: life ones even the cat you don't like, Get it
Speaker 3: away from the cat.
Speaker 4: And it's happened to just about every Apple laptop I've
Speaker 4: ever had. And you can actually get ahead of it
Speaker 4: by right clicking or clicking in the kind of toolbar
Speaker 4: up top and looking at your battery and it has
Speaker 4: like a kind of a performance gauge, sort of a
Speaker 4: plotted kind of graph, and you can see if you're
Speaker 4: if your battery is getting a little long in the tooth.
Speaker 4: And it's a bummer because so many of these companies,
Speaker 4: the battery is like glued in. It's not like you
Speaker 4: can just buy a new battery, which I think leads
Speaker 4: a lot of people to kind of put it off.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. And you can also, Yeah, the check
Speaker 2: in your battery health is not a bad idea. You
Speaker 2: should definitely do that right now. Actually, while while you're
Speaker 2: thinking about it, just.
Speaker 4: Check it out, just yeah, just for fun, just check
Speaker 4: it out, especially if you notice it like not holding
Speaker 4: charge anymore or as long as it used to. Things
Speaker 4: like that are a good indication that you might be
Speaker 4: able to nip it in the bud. And oftentimes they
Speaker 4: are kind of covered by warranty. I don't know, I
Speaker 4: forget it depends.
Speaker 2: Well, if you have an Apple device, they'll just encourage
Speaker 2: you to buy the new.
Speaker 4: Model, because true, that's called planned obso lessons. It's a
Speaker 4: different kind of time bomb.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I took a sandboxed laptop to an Apple store because
Speaker 3: I'm a genius, and I met the other geniuses at
Speaker 3: the Mac store and they told me they don't take
Speaker 3: care of quote unquote vintage hardware.
Speaker 5: Yeah, suck my.
Speaker 3: Well, I you know, you have to work your way
Speaker 3: up to that, you know. I was still doing the
Speaker 3: small talk. Sorry about the warranty.
Speaker 5: First, as an Apple fan and not a fanboy, I
Speaker 5: like Apple products.
Speaker 3: You got to start it with like first, ask them
Speaker 3: what's coming by the warrant.
Speaker 4: I just I don't like them too part of their
Speaker 4: I don't like that part of their business model at all.
Speaker 4: And it's not exclusive to Apple, but they just they
Speaker 4: seem to be one of the most egregious offenders.
Speaker 3: All right, YEA, check out our episode on Planned Ops Lessons,
Speaker 3: which is a very real conspiracy affecting everyone who buys
Speaker 3: a thing in the case of pagers and walkie talkies
Speaker 3: and asymmetric warfare. The implication remains, if we know it
Speaker 3: is the supply chain, could it be possible to infiltrate
Speaker 3: a supply chain of radio capable devices on mass If so,
Speaker 3: why would you do it to what end? You know?
Speaker 3: We could give you stats on how many people own
Speaker 3: mobile phones across the globe We could give you even
Speaker 3: some rough numbers on pagers, but those numbers are kind
Speaker 3: of academic, because what you're really asking, the reason we're
Speaker 3: listening together tonight is because we want to know whether
Speaker 3: our loved ones are safe. We want to know if
Speaker 3: the phone is going to blow up while we're listening
Speaker 3: to the show.
Speaker 4: You should be concerned, yeah, but not like so concerned
Speaker 4: that you're like losing sleepover, because if you're listening to
Speaker 4: this show, this is probably not something that is being
Speaker 4: targeted at you.
Speaker 5: YESU directly, right.
Speaker 3: You specifically? Yeah, I mean, let's go to a great
Speaker 3: article in the New York Times by Shira Frankel, ronen
Speaker 3: Bergman and Wada Sad. They argue what we've been talking
Speaker 3: about a little bit here. They argue that Israel ran
Speaker 3: that consulting company out of Budapest as a front company,
Speaker 3: and it was one of three shell outfits entirely created
Speaker 3: to obfuscate, right, to hide the hand of intelligence agencies.
Speaker 3: And to be fair, BAC did manufacture and sell ordinary,
Speaker 3: non explosive pagers.
Speaker 4: This is the consultants consultant, right as what we're talking
Speaker 4: about the consultist of consultants.
Speaker 5: Oh yes, amorphis of companies, like what do they do? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Great? Note sorry, according to the government of Hungary, they
Speaker 3: did not manufacture anything, right, they just license.
Speaker 5: We don't really know what they do.
Speaker 2: In fact, the money just goes from the Middle East
Speaker 2: through that company back to the Middle East somewhere I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where, and then it comes back but we
Speaker 2: all get paid.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, are you happy? I mean, like, like you
Speaker 3: were saying, the the legitimate business is extant, there are
Speaker 3: records of it. You have to have it though, You
Speaker 3: have to have some sort of legitimate business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean think about that. If your target is Hesbola,
Speaker 2: they're not going to come to some unknown company that
Speaker 2: you know, just popped up out of nowhere and say, oh, sure,
Speaker 2: we'll buy thousands of pagers from you, no problem. They're
Speaker 2: going to look for a company to source that stuff
Speaker 2: from that can be trusted, right, or theoretically trusted, which
Speaker 2: it means it has to be a very long game,
Speaker 2: a very patient, long game of infiltration.
Speaker 4: And does it involve a mole, Like, does it involve
Speaker 4: an insider that tipped off? How how I get the
Speaker 4: middle man of it all? But like it's mind boggling.
Speaker 5: The long game of it. Like you said, Matt, it's
Speaker 5: kind of exciting and like messed up.
Speaker 3: It's messed up. I mean, we talked about this a
Speaker 3: little bit in the past. Some of the best businesses
Speaker 3: in your neighborhood, folks, especially all right, especially in the US,
Speaker 3: I'll say it, some of the best businesses in your
Speaker 3: neck of the woods are gonna be front companies. You
Speaker 3: walk into the abandoned pizza place, they're surprised that you're there.
Speaker 3: They're astounded you're ordering a pizza. They take forever to
Speaker 3: make it, and it's the best pizza you've had in
Speaker 3: your life. Welcome to New Jersey, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like the front company thing is real. Like an example
Speaker 3: would be, let's say you go to a dry cleaner,
Speaker 3: and this dry cleaner gives you great deals all the time,
Speaker 3: no questions asked. Is that cranberry? Is that blood? They
Speaker 3: don't care. They'll just clean it and you return a
Speaker 3: few items. They never raise a mess, they never make
Speaker 3: a fuss about giving you a refund. And at some
Speaker 3: point you ask, who are these guys making money? And
Speaker 3: that's the question Hesbela should have asked about bac Whoops.
Speaker 3: They start shipping these pages to Lebanon around the summer
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two in small batches. But after, as we mentioned,
Speaker 3: after the Secretary General of HESBOLA identifies cell phones as
Speaker 3: opsect breach, they order more and more. All in all,
Speaker 3: we're looking at something like five thousand separate pagers. And
Speaker 3: as we described earlier just a few moments ago, this
Speaker 3: teaches us that whomever was poisoning the well, they waited,
Speaker 3: They let them get out there, and they could have
Speaker 3: pushed the button at any time.
Speaker 4: That's the thing though, I mean, it's like, you can
Speaker 4: only really do this once, right before new security measures
Speaker 4: get put in place, Before you know, the HESBLA leadership
Speaker 4: is wise. They were already clearly very paranoid about the
Speaker 4: types of communication devices they use, which is capitalized on.
Speaker 4: But now the cats out of the bag and now
Speaker 4: they're you can't really do it again. So do you
Speaker 4: think they triggered it out of timing, like like because
Speaker 4: they were ready, or do you think they were worried
Speaker 4: about being exposed and they were just like, well, we
Speaker 4: might as well get maximum impact for our investments.
Speaker 5: In this operation. Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 4: Otherwise they would have done individuals maybe, and they wouldn't
Speaker 4: have it wouldn't have let on, I don't think that.
Speaker 3: Has all at once.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's the only way it works.
Speaker 2: It's a super compelling strategy to strike at an enemy
Speaker 2: who is already using this technology on purpose, because this
Speaker 2: group is so paranoid about a single cell phone in
Speaker 2: a big meeting or communicating any any information across a
Speaker 2: cell phone, because there's an awareness within that organization that
Speaker 2: any of that information can be tapped, and you have
Speaker 2: to assume it is tapped. So they move to this
Speaker 2: low tech stuff. And now you've made that group completely, fully,
Speaker 2: rightfully paranoid about the low tech that they can use
Speaker 2: to communicate. So how the heck does that group communicate then,
Speaker 2: to let's say, organize fighters to a particular location or
Speaker 2: strategize about what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's also let's also consider well, let's step back here,
Speaker 3: because there are a couple of things.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: First, we have to say, yes, each of these devices
Speaker 3: functioned as a two way radio or as a pager.
Speaker 3: The two important differences, going to the AOSH example of
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties are these. First, the pagers and the
Speaker 3: walkie talkies they were monitored and then second at least
Speaker 3: in the pagers. Each of these guys, jeez, little pager
Speaker 3: guys had an extra bit of spice to the battery,
Speaker 3: about three grams of an explosive called pente rythpertol tetra
Speaker 3: nitrate street name pet in.
Speaker 5: Some heavy pettin.
Speaker 4: This is like it would almost look like an adhesive, right.
Speaker 4: It can be applied like a in a thin band
Speaker 4: almost right.
Speaker 3: M hmm, yeah, you're absolutely right. It makes it very
Speaker 3: difficult to detect. And if you want to be fun
Speaker 3: at parties, you can tell your friends that pettin is
Speaker 3: one of the prime to ingredients in something called semtex.
Speaker 3: To be fair, pettin also can be used to treat
Speaker 3: medical conditions.
Speaker 2: I know semtex from my video game days where you
Speaker 2: throw a sticky grenade right.
Speaker 4: In, like like a splinter cell or Rainbow six or
Speaker 4: the be Lops type games. But now the question that
Speaker 4: I have though, is, Okay, so we've got this supply
Speaker 4: chain interception and we've got this explosive material, how is
Speaker 4: the detonation Like they still would have had to add
Speaker 4: extra bits in order to control the detonation. It does
Speaker 4: make me still wonder is there a way to remotely
Speaker 4: overheat the battery that then causes the detonation because the
Speaker 4: explosive stuff is on the battery, Like, maybe that's just
Speaker 4: a catalysts.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I see what we're saying, and we don't have specific mechanics.
Speaker 3: But what we can say is that a radio signal
Speaker 3: goes out and the radio signal somehow triggers or ignites
Speaker 3: the explosive And I know that's not quite answering the
Speaker 3: question at this point. It would be difficult to answer that.
Speaker 3: And perhaps you, fellow conspiracy realist, can help us in
Speaker 3: that regard.
Speaker 4: Would you, though, Ben, say that maybe we don't rule
Speaker 4: out that someone could remotely overheat the battery, that then
Speaker 4: that is the catalyst that causes the explosive strip to
Speaker 4: go boom.
Speaker 3: The issue with remotely overheating the battery is an issue
Speaker 3: of timing, just like we referenced with THEE right right,
Speaker 3: not near, not with the simultaneous nature that we're seeing here.
Speaker 3: So someone compromised trojan horse the supply chain. We don't
Speaker 3: know when it happened. We don't know when the batteries
Speaker 3: got spicy, but we do know it'd be interesting to
Speaker 3: look deeper into this and trace the manufacturers.
Speaker 2: I just want to add this. I'm just seeing this
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 5: Guys.
Speaker 2: It's saying pet N can be initiated by a laser.
Speaker 2: That's very specific pulse from a laser. But there's no
Speaker 2: way they got a laser into this.
Speaker 4: That's my question was, like you know that you mentioned
Speaker 4: how inconspicuous this explosive material is a page are small?
Speaker 4: How are they going to get They got to fit
Speaker 4: more stuff in there? If it's if there's a detonator.
Speaker 4: I'm not an expert obviously and explosives or anything, but
Speaker 4: typically a detonator device isn't like, isn't microscopic. It would
Speaker 4: have to be extra stuff, extra guts put into the device.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But also when you got your even your sea
Speaker 3: through Motorola pager, did you open it up and look
Speaker 3: at you You.
Speaker 5: Don't know what those wires are? It just looks like, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's technology, you know. Yeah, it's a good point.
Speaker 4: It could be something as simple as a couple extra
Speaker 4: jumpers of some kind.
Speaker 5: Like you're you're right, it could be something there.
Speaker 3: I mean laser also to that point, is focused light,
Speaker 3: so how would you how would you put a beam
Speaker 3: that tight on everything at once.
Speaker 2: It would have to be an electrical charge that's like
Speaker 2: run from the battery to that thing in a specific way,
Speaker 2: that only gets activated when that particular signal gets sent.
Speaker 3: Right, Because you would you would need it to work
Speaker 3: for time, right, you would you? So what what they
Speaker 3: called it for a while in termsly was the button?
Speaker 3: And intelligence would ask or you know, they would crow
Speaker 3: a little bit about it, like when are we going
Speaker 3: to push the button? And I think they pushed the
Speaker 3: button because they got compromised or because they knew they
Speaker 3: were in a limited time window.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: And I love what you're saying about the specificity of
Speaker 3: the signal that was transmitted. It had to be programmed in.
Speaker 3: It's like back when people figured out how to hack cars,
Speaker 3: you had to plug into the physical device at some point.
Speaker 3: Right now, cars these days, unfortunately, can be compromised with
Speaker 3: malicious code. But these pagers, again, it wasn't software. We
Speaker 3: don't know exactly where the supply chain intervention occurred. We
Speaker 3: got to look at the batteries. We have to see
Speaker 3: the involvement of the manufacturers. I guarantee you their people
Speaker 3: and entities tracing supply chains now, and they probably already
Speaker 3: know the answer. We'll see if it goes public. But
Speaker 3: all this together means that, yes, depending on how intelligence
Speaker 3: agencies consider you, there is a non zero possibility that
Speaker 3: your phone, iPad, pager, or radio might have something dangerous.
Speaker 3: We're not being alarmist. There are billions and billions of
Speaker 3: mobile devices all over the world. Most of them are
Speaker 3: servitors for various functions. If there was a way to
Speaker 3: sabotage the entire world, especially with code, it would be
Speaker 3: insufficient in reach and capability. Like you could theoretically make
Speaker 3: some bad you know, sail by Night software that overclocks
Speaker 3: a battery or overheats it, but you wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to make those devices explode, and you wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to make them explode at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just as a counterpoint, guys, imagine you're in one
Speaker 2: of these factories that is producing let's say iPhone fifteens,
Speaker 2: and there is adhesive used in the process to connect
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is, whatever components to whatever other components,
Speaker 2: and somebody high up who has connections to a government
Speaker 2: decides to replace some of that adhesive with this other substance,
Speaker 2: and everyone who's actually putting together those phones has no
Speaker 2: idea that they are adding pettent or one of these
Speaker 2: other explosives to the devices, to all of them. And then,
Speaker 2: because we are our devices now in so many ways,
Speaker 2: unless you're extremely careful, you could have a list of
Speaker 2: people that you wanted to assassinate that are potentially political enemies.
Speaker 2: If they are you know, you're putting this in the
Speaker 2: highest level, like the most expensive phones, right, the ones
Speaker 2: that are the most secure or something. Oh then yeah,
Speaker 2: well yeah, well but what I mean is you could
Speaker 2: like the possib there, which is just creepy to me.
Speaker 5: I mean to that point, Matt. You know, in terms
Speaker 5: of you know, everyone being so tied to their phones.
Speaker 4: We know about assassination plots of political figures in the past,
Speaker 4: like what was it, Ben, I think it was Fidel Castro.
Speaker 4: There's like an exploding cigar, like there was you know,
Speaker 4: I mean, now, this is like the ultimate exploding cigar
Speaker 4: for everybody you know.
Speaker 3: And shout out to our friends at act me.
Speaker 4: Well, it seems silly, but the point of that was
Speaker 4: it was an object that you knew Fidel Castro was
Speaker 4: going to have close to him, such that if it
Speaker 4: were to explode, it would devastatingly injure him.
Speaker 5: Now we have these devices that no matter who you are,
Speaker 5: you're going to have one. Everyone relies on it.
Speaker 4: So it's like the diligence has got to just go
Speaker 4: up through the roof in terms of security protocols to
Speaker 4: monitor these. And I'm sure, like you know, presidents and
Speaker 4: loitical figures, they've got offline devices that are monitored by
Speaker 4: certain types of protocols. And you know about how you
Speaker 4: gotta wonder, like are they taking them apart? Are they
Speaker 4: like this seems new, I don't know.
Speaker 3: They are being taken apart in a lot of Western
Speaker 3: regimes and a lot of despotic regimes as well.
Speaker 5: Maybe more so because they're like more paranoid or I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also, you know, North Koreas way fewer phones.
Speaker 3: It's just easier to check all of them. That's true,
Speaker 3: which sounds cold, but is true. That the example about
Speaker 3: infiltrating the supply chain to that earlier point, it is
Speaker 3: theoretically possible. The question is why and to what end? Right, Quibono,
Speaker 3: who does it benefit? You know the world is waiting
Speaker 3: right now thermo barrack bombs are being deployed in the
Speaker 3: Middle East, and just on a high level, folks, thermobaric
Speaker 3: bomb is sort of like if the if nuclear weaponry
Speaker 3: detonating is home run. This stuff is second base running
Speaker 3: towards shortstop. It's nasty, and they have been deployed.
Speaker 4: And you also have to wonder, I do at least
Speaker 4: like in order to get the actual Hesbula folks who
Speaker 4: are actually operating, running, you know, playing significant roles in
Speaker 4: that organization, how many quote unquote Hesbela adjacent people you know,
Speaker 4: got these devices as well, who actually had nothing to
Speaker 4: do with the organization, but just we're kind of swept
Speaker 4: up in the net of like we got to you know,
Speaker 4: break a lot of eggs to make.
Speaker 5: An omelet or whatever.
Speaker 2: I think it would be wrong if you thought these
Speaker 2: pagers in this long attack over this many, like to
Speaker 2: over two years, if there wasn't also on the ground
Speaker 2: surveillance of individuals, like on an individual level, of human
Speaker 2: beings entering and exiting locations and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 2: like that where people are gathering where these devices end up,
Speaker 2: you know, at certain times of day. I think this
Speaker 2: is a combination of a lot of surveillance and a
Speaker 2: targeted attack.
Speaker 3: So while we have some ability to separate fact from fiction,
Speaker 3: we don't have all the answers. But we hope we
Speaker 3: are exploring the correct questions right the beginning of the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. Folks, this is an active story. There is
Speaker 3: currently no happy ever after in the Middle East, nor
Speaker 3: in Europe, nor in Africa, nor in the Americas, so
Speaker 3: long as the same entities built to guarantee safety engage
Speaker 3: in the same tactics as terrorists and during the course
Speaker 3: of our lives. Now, it's only going to become increasingly
Speaker 3: important to question what happily ever after means for nation states,
Speaker 3: for terrorist organizations, for moneyed interest, and what it happily
Speaker 3: ever after means for people on the ground. We can
Speaker 3: promise you this, We'll be here with you so long
Speaker 3: as there is stuff they don't want you to know,
Speaker 3: and we cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Guys, my
Speaker 3: spidery sense is going off. We've got some people who
Speaker 3: have been with us the entirety of tonight's episode and
Speaker 3: cannot wait to break down some theoretical hypothetical ways to
Speaker 3: trigger explosions through radio signals. How do they find us.
Speaker 4: No, Oh jeez, you can find us all over the internet.
Speaker 4: By by the way, this stuff is just such red
Speaker 4: meat because it's real, it's clear, and it's in the news,
Speaker 4: and we don't know all the facts yet, so it's like, well,
Speaker 4: our job here on the show is to report what
Speaker 4: we do know. There's so much room for conjecture and
Speaker 4: so much room for like, what's the next version of this?
Speaker 4: What is the escalation of this? Sorry, I just I'm
Speaker 4: blown away by guy. That's a horrible expression in this case,
Speaker 4: but it's mind boggling, and you can, in fact share
Speaker 4: your perspective on this, your ideas for what's next with
Speaker 4: us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Speaker 4: x FKA, Twitter, on YouTube where we have video content
Speaker 4: for you to peruse and enjoy, as well as on Facebook.
Speaker 4: We have a Facebook group here's where it gets crazy,
Speaker 4: on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2: Hey, are you a federal agent that's infiltrated somebody's personal
Speaker 2: device by intercepting it before it got to them and
Speaker 2: putting some stuff in it? Call us and tell us
Speaker 2: how you did it. We'd love to know. Call one
Speaker 2: eight three three std WYTK. When you call in, give
Speaker 2: yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
Speaker 2: can use your name and message on the air. We
Speaker 2: don't have to use it. You can tell us don't
Speaker 2: use it, and we still want to hear from you.
Speaker 2: If you've got more to say than can fit in
Speaker 2: that message, why not instead send us a good old
Speaker 2: fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
Speaker 3: writes back, join us out here in the dark conspiracy
Speaker 3: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.