I was listening to Matt Bracken on Rumble, and Matt brought up point I had not considered.
Israel just demonstrated a capability that should make all of us pay attention: the state use of wireless devices to execute a mass time on target attack.
What if, in the future, someone does this to cell phones of MAGA voters? Or, to get at Elon Musk, they do this to Tesla cars?
Mossad is one of the best intelligence agencies in the world, in part because they play for fucking keeps. America has done some absolutely insane stuff, but we are still generally more limited in what we can do.
A very typical Mossad operation involvings entrapping agents. For example, target a wealthy Egyptian businessman with a lucrative business deal using shell companies. Set up a meeting somewhere public. Have the businessman meet with someone--could be a male prostitute, a known Jew/Israeli, someone with Iranian ties, whatever, someone this person would not want to be associated with. Show them signing documents, shaking hands, exchanging money, whatever, and record and get photographs of the whole thing.
What, this rich Egyptian dude doesn't want his pictures meeting with a male prostitute made public? He doesn't want pictures shaking hand with an Israeli government agent shared with the Egyptian government? etc.
Now he's controllable, and every single thing you get him to do, you record, and you gain even more leverage over him.
This is really the typical method of operations for all intel agencies, but Mossad is particularly good at it.
CIA, KGB, everyone has, for many decades, intercepted shipments of electronics and other products. The French intelligence agency bugged all of the business class seats of all Air France airplanes so they could spy on international businessmen discussing deals and then share that information with French corporations. (And when I say intercept, this can be done at any time from production to delivery.)
That's exactly what the CIA did to the Iranian centrifuges. That was a multi-country operations involving multiple levels of companies that were controlled or infiltrated by intelligence services.
Blowing up thousands of pagers and walkie talkies remotely is one of the more audacious things I've ever heard about it. I personally feel like it was pretty fair. Hezbollah considers themselves fighters, so I think they're a fair target.
Epstein island was a US operation just like the one you described, but worse.
You underestimate how evil our government is.
I really don't! And yes, I agree about Epstein island. If not CIA, Israel was certainly involved.