Can you remotely blow up a mobile device?

On September 17th, 2024 thousands of pagers intended for use by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon and Syria. The next, hundred of walkie-talkies detonated in the same manner. This operation was precedented in design, but not in scale -- and across the planet, people began to wonder: Is my own equipment safe? Can you really remotely blow up a mobile device?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Andrew Trey Force Howard. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Tonight, folks, we are
following up on a conversation we had in a recent
Strange News program. As we have been discussing, and perhaps

(00:56):
you have been discussing, attacks in the ongoing conflict between
Hisbola and Israel have escalated as we record. Guys, I'm
sure we all saw this. Did you hear that the
Israeli military recently breached airport signals in Beirut just over
the weekend?

Speaker 4 (01:15):
Yeah, just just that you know the headline of it.
But I'm sure that has implications beyond what's occurring to me.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, And there was a whole other large missile attack
that took out several high ranking members as well as
high ranking members of other organizations. That Israel sees as
an enemy.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
As well as civilians. Yeah, and we are recording. We'll
talk about this in listener mail and strange news, but
we are recording amid a crisis level chlorine gas disaster
here in the Atlanta metro area.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
Is that what you'd call an airborne toxic event? Isn't
that what that is?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Sure? Yeah, Okay, the air is bad. It actually is
sour and weirdly enough, guys, last time we were recording,
there was a hurricane bearing down on us. Yeah, and
now there's like a statewide chemical fire.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yes. Yeah, an ill wind blows and I have to
stop texting you guys that sentence in group chat, but
I keep doing it.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
The ill winds definitely did blow. We'll get into some
of the specifics of that in a bit.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
That's what I say just before freaking wind.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
I love you man. The pattern here with the Middle East,
a lot of people in the West only learn about
it through headlines or social media. However, make no mistake,
there is a larger escalation. It has sparked fears of
a wider conflict, leading some members of the public to
wonder whether we are yet again on the precipice of

(02:52):
a third World war, which is technically a question that
is on our minds and maybe a question for another evening,
because tonight we're exploring something that a lot of our
fellow conspiracy realists contacted us about in the wake of
the pager and walkie talkie attacks? Can you remotely explode

(03:14):
a mobile device? Did you guys get people writing to
you about this?

Speaker 5 (03:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Since we did the segment on Strange News, it's certainly
been on my mind and on the minds of a
lot of folks that I've just been talking with in general,
and we've certainly seen some listeners writing in about it.
I mean, I think a lot of the questions that
we posed during that segment are going to be answered today,
which was fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Sure the I think the biggest thing that we've all
seen is just people feeling hesitant about their own devices, right.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
Mm hmmm, yes? Am I safe? Is it okay for
me to listen to this show on my phone?

Speaker 4 (03:54):
Should I maybe not listen to podcasts with my phone
under my pillow?

Speaker 3 (03:58):
And we kid we did, but also check your battery
before continuing. This is our cold open. Here are the
facts all right, what's the providence of Hesbela in Israel?
Maybe we catch up on this. We mentioned it a

(04:19):
little bit in our Strange News program. We talked about
earlier precedents, but we didn't really talk about Hesbela as
an entity. And I want to give credit where it's due. Matt.
You made the very important point that Western society considers
Hesbela a terrorist organization and Middle Eastern society does not,

(04:46):
except for one country.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
I mean, most people in that part of the world
consider it a political a very powerful political party, right,
or like a political faction.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Oh yeah, And it finds its origins in the nineteen eighties.
And and hesbal in particular grew from a fairly large,
a sizable population of Chiite Muslims that were existing there
in what the nineteen forties in Lebanon.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah. Yeah, Historians still do not agree on exactly when
his Beelah became a distinct entity, but like you said,
somewhere in the nineteen eighties, think nineteen eighty two to
nineteen eighty five. And this happens because back in November
of nineteen forty three, Lebanon gained its independence quote unquote,

(05:37):
regained its independence from French colonial forces, and those forces
withdrew from the country in nineteen forty six. Lebanon is
a diverse country. It is not monolithic, and there is
a large proportion, a little north of thirty percent of
the population that identify as Chiite Muslims, and Hesbola originates

(06:02):
from that population. Look, we always hear in these history textbooks,
these very short and pat sentences about independence, right, oh,
seventeen seventy six, and the US was great from then
on or whatever. The nineteen forty three independence of Lebanon

(06:24):
triggered chaos. A lot of people in the Chiai population
are impoverished, they're forcibly relocated. There's a civil war in
the nineteen seventies, which I guarantee you most people in
the US don't learn about in public school. And then
there's assassinations, disappearances. These are inarguably evil things. They radicalize people.

(06:50):
And then you know other stuff happened as well.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
Oh for sure. Just thinking about some context, guys, in
nineteen forty three, when Lebanon gained its independence from France.
In nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty that's when France,
like Paris, is under attack by the Nazis. That's when
basically all the French forces are being pulled back to
its own country. And that's one of the main reasons, well,

(07:16):
it's one of a series of reasons that Lebanon ends
up getting its independence, which is just interesting to me
thinking about those larger movements right when there are large
swaths of the land at war with each other, but
maybe with different factions, kind of what we're seeing right
now with Hesbela Hamas with stuff going on right now

(07:36):
in Ethiopia. Just all of these places all over the world,
and it ends up being some of the same main
players that actually have troops or a military presence in
various parts of the world, and then they have to
pull back to move somewhere else ooo.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
And then Iran has a revolution because they don't care
for the despotic Western back and then there's the Iran
Iraq War, and then there's the invasion of Lebanon by
Israel in nineteen eighty two. This all lends further gas
to the fire, and I love what you're saying. Nothing
occurs in a vacuum. We do know that the formation

(08:16):
of Isbela was publicly announced in nineteen eighty five by
a guy named Shikh Subito Fali, and this guy became
the first secretary general of the organization. Hebela is a
proxy of Iran functionally, and it is birthed by chaos,
and it shares many of the same goals as the

(08:40):
theocracy that funds at arms it.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
Right, the eradication of Israel being first and foremost among
those goals. So with that in mind, Iran Hesbela and
Hamas are often seen as kind of fingers on the
same hand, tentacles of the same great Cuthulhu asque kind
of creature.

Speaker 5 (09:02):
They have tentacles.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
But before we go on, I think it's really important
to make an important note here that folks living in Iran, Israel,
and Palestine and Lebanon, many of whom are ideologically politically unconnected.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
To these struggles.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
These are innocent civilians on the ground and all of
these places who have struggled innumerable horrors in the wake
of all of the the elephants fighting, you know, crushing
the grass and all of that. Ben, I got to
throw it to you, because I mean, I think you
wrote such a beautiful summation of the kind of empathy
that we should exercise in not feeling the need to.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
Create some sort of false equivalency here.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, this is the reason we are so fun at parties.
We point out unpleasant truths whenever you hear a reporter,
a politician, or demagogue talking about these places that you
have never visited as the So everyone in there is
marching lockstep with some ideology or some attack or some

(10:07):
wackado idea. It's time to pause and take a breath.
We have to remember these people are people just like you.
They want peace, they want their kids to do better
than they did. You know, they want food, they want shelter,
they want water, they want a safe place to poop like.

(10:27):
Humans are not super complicated. Humans in general are good,
and nations and terrorist groups are composed of people, but
the decisions of those organizations often do not reflect the
desires of the people living under the rule or the

(10:48):
auspice of those organizations. And you nailed it. No, the
old proverb is true. When elephants make war, it is
the grass that suffers. The innocent people tragically bear the
consequences of decisions, attacks, conflicts, and wars far beyond their control.
Let's go to it. We talked about a lot off air.

(11:10):
But in October twenty twenty three, Hamas launched a devastating
attack on the nation of Israel.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yes, and you've heard about that. That was in the news.
That was where there were many many Israeli hostages that
were taken at a music festival as well as other
places there in Israel, and it just sparked this thing
that has been happening now since that day, where there's
retaliation occurring endless.

Speaker 5 (11:38):
I mean it's yeah, I don't.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Even know how many people actually died, but the number
of let's say, Palestinians who have lost their homes and
been killed, especially just civilians, you can read about those numbers.
You can read about just the devastation that this one
attack on that day in October, what it's wrought.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Well, speaking of not dralling false equivalencies, I mean, at
this point, the number of Palestinian dead far out weigh
the number of Israeli dead.

Speaker 5 (12:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
And Hesbela as an organization, saw that and made the
political move and you know, raised a flag and said, hey,
we are in solidarity with the Palestinians, and they began
firing on Israeli outposts where they were operating, where Hesbela
was operating, so it all kind of sparked in that moment. Yeah,

(12:28):
Which isn't to say that there wasn't a huge past
of fighting between all of these groups, right, especially with
Israeli forces in Hesbela and Hamas and you know all
over varying places on the globe.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
Oh my gosh, the beefs are in the Bible, you
know what I mean, It goes back a little while.
This is an excellent summation. Hisbela joins with as you said,
solidarity with the Palestinians by attacking military outposts in the
Golden Height in Suba farms, which are both under Israeli occupation.

(13:05):
Since then, there have been cross border military exchanges. If
you want to put a tie on it, make it
sound okay for the UN cross border military exchanges. They
have displaced entire communities of innocent people. The buildings are
wrecked in these towns, they are bombed out. The land

(13:25):
has been sown with salt. You can't grow stuff there.
There are ninety six thousand people in Israel, one hundred
and eleven thousand in Lebanon at the very least that
are documented being forcibly displaced as a result, and in
February of this year, twenty twenty four's we record, the

(13:47):
then secretary General of Hesbola Hassan Zala, instructed old members
of the organization to use dedicated pagers in place of
cell phones. He believed the calm structure of Hesbluff was compromised,
and he was correct, just not the way he had hoped.

(14:08):
He is dead as of September twenty seventh. Real monkey
past finger curls.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
Oh for sure, and just for a tiny bit of
I'm sorry to get more context here, guys, but just
for a tiny bit more. If you're looking at the map,
the reason why we're talking about those cross border conflicts,
it's because Elebanon is just to the north along the Mediterranean,
see the coast there to Israel. So when we're talking about,
you know, being able to fire weapons across a border,

(14:37):
that is what's occurring.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
That's a very important point, agreed. It's much closer of
a border than people might imagine. If you're from say
the United States, right mm hm our God forbid Canada,
shout out to our Canucks in the crowd. But most
people have smaller countries than you, guys.

Speaker 5 (14:59):
True.

Speaker 4 (15:00):
So now With all of that context behind us, let's
get to the kind of inciting event surrounding today's discussion.
On September seventeenth, thousands of people were injured and at
least nine individuals killed in Lebanon and Syria around two
thirty pm local time, when thousands of pagers held by

(15:21):
Hasbela members exploded nearly simultaneously in their pockets, in their hands,
and their bags. We've seen a lot of descriptions of
injuries to people's faces and eyes because they were like
looking at the pager, as we know, a little screen
on it when a message comes through. Pretty devastating and
scary stuff that yields a whole lot of questions. The

(15:45):
first question that it raised is who is to blame?
And of course has blood. Lebanon looked at the most
obvious candidate, which would be Israel. Very next day, on
September eighteenth, hundreds of like two way radios walkie talking.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Walkie talkie is a silly name.

Speaker 5 (16:02):
It is. It's a fun thing to say, though. It's
a fun thing to say.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
It's I guess it means you can do walk and
talk with I don't see, I don't see how they're
any different than a cell phone though, but they were
a pretty cell phone, you know.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Two way radio is probably the more buttoned up.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
Well, there's a really great album by the French kind
of chill wave band Air called Talkie Walkie, which I
think is fun flippity flippity doda of.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
That they've got in our supply chain.

Speaker 5 (16:29):
First, Oh dude, we're getting there.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
But yeah, so we go from pagers, there's two kinds
of you know, old school, more low tech devices, to
walkie talkies that also exploded, also in use by members
of Hesbela across Lebanon and Syria. So between these two attacks,
we are now dealing with forty two deaths, possibly more

(16:52):
to come as people succumb to horrific injuries, you know,
as a result of maybe looking at those pages as
they exploded whole lean those walkie talkies to their faces.
Not instant death, but horrific burns, injuries that they may
never recover from. At least twelve of the dead were civilians, unrelated,

(17:12):
unconnected to the actual runnings, the actual operations of Hespola
that includes children.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Well, yeah, a lot of it had to do with
proximity to the exploding pager and whoever was carrying it
or just wherever it was laid down. Right, And we've
seen the video of a lot of these incidents, or
at least several of these incidents where the explosion occurs
in a very crowded place with a bunch of just
other people going about their day, let's say, getting groceries
or something, or at a market. A pretty horrifying way

(17:43):
to strike at an enemy.

Speaker 5 (17:46):
Right.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes, this will be portrayed by supporters as a breakthrough
and targeted assassination, but it comes with heavy collateral damage.
Hebella vowed to an exact revenge. Iran has stayed largely
silent in the public sphere, which is interesting and disturbing.

(18:10):
But when Hesbelah declared it would pursue retaliation, it raised
very serious worries about a full scale war in the
Middle East, just like the war between Israel and Hamas
continues in Gaza. As we discussed in our weekly Strange

(18:30):
News program, one of the immediate questions we received from
many of our fellow conspiracy realist was this, Hey, guys,
could my phone, slash, pager, slash, iPad, slash etc.

Speaker 5 (18:44):
Be next dude in the Strange News segment. I mean
that was the first question that I had.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
I mean, as you were kind of wrapping our heads around,
how is this even possible? Like, there's so many questions,
because if I'm not mistaken, I mean, this is the
sort of first of its kind attack, at least on
this scale, with this level of reporting around it.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
Right, we established the precedent back in the nineties, but
now it's a question of scale. Can you remotely explode
a mobile device? Will pause for a word from our sponsors.

(19:28):
Here's where it gets crazy. Let's rip the band aid off. Yeah,
you can do it. You can remotely explode a mobile device,
but maybe not in the way people initially assumed.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Well, I think that's the thing that was kind of
perplexing all of us, is that we know that cell phones,
laptops that are powered by like these you know, chemically
derived sources of power can over time get distended and
have all kinds of problems and you know, create fires.

Speaker 5 (20:01):
We'll get to some specific examples of that.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
But the question then becomes, is this something that can
be triggered remotely? Can someone inject a piece of malicious
code into my iPhone that will cause the battery to
overheat and then melt my flesh in my pocket.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Well, that's the thought. I don't know if you guys
have seen any of the videos recently of Tesla's hanging
out in garages with all the flooding that's been happening,
and then they're just catching fire and burning down houses,
And it's because they've got super powerful batteries in there
and electrical systems that get some water in there, and
you've got problems.

Speaker 4 (20:38):
What about those home batteries that people you know, I'm
talking about those Tesla home batteries. With a full flooding situation,
I could imagine that would cause devastation.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, and we've also seen videos of people who are
using like a vape pen or something right, and it
for some reason gets stuck on and the user is unaware,
and that battery just heats and heats and heats and
heats until it's untenable and causes a mild explosion. But
how the heck do you do that to one of
these devices?

Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, this is a concern a lot of people initially
fretted over, and I don't mean to diminish it. It
is a real concern. They were saying, well, what if
an intelligence agency leveraged an attack entirely through software, right,

(21:30):
what if a line of malicious code could overclock or
overheat a battery or a device or series of devices
such that they cause fire and explosion. Thankfully that part
is incorrect, but we do have to be again the
fun guys at the party, the fungi at the party.

(21:52):
Batteries can catch fire. How soon we forget the Samsung
debacle just a few years back, Remember that the Galaxy
Note seven in twenty sixteen just pop and smoke.

Speaker 5 (22:05):
Yeah, and usually that results it in serious burns. You know.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
It wasn't like an explosion in that sense like that
would kill somebody. It would, you know, maybe overheat in
their pocket and cause like a significant third third degree burns.
But I just wanted to point out too, it's not
to say that attacks can't happen via software alone. Yeah,
I mean, you can certainly infiltrate a network and perhaps

(22:29):
overclock a computer in a way that would cause it
to shut down or tweak out. But the level of
control that would be required that was exhibited here, that's
not I don't think within the realm of possibility for
someone to actually manipulate devices in such a way that
would cause this kind of explosion in and of itself.

Speaker 5 (22:50):
But you can reak havoc remotely for sure.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, and even some of these devices just are slightly
defective in their manufacturing to where this condition can happen
more often. Do you guys remember iPhone fifteen pros iPhone
thirteen's They were also heating, like overheating and catching fire
simply because of their the way they were manufactured.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Can we talk a little bit about how those lithium
I own batteries work and what could lead to such
a situation that we're describing here.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Ah, yes, let's put on our house stuff works, question
mark shaped hat. Yeah, there we go. Let's gather around.
Let's gather around that ridiculous question mark shaped table.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
It was literally like a removable rollaway ends table.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
That's a truth.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I'm Marshall Brain, and that's how lithium I own batteries work.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
That floated.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Oh he needs to get that PhD. I'm so tired
of call him mister brain instead of doctor brain. Marshall
Brain would be good. Professor brain be great. If you
get a PhD, you can be professor Bray. Also, this
guy's just the best, and he taught us a lot.
This is our martial brain how stuff works moment. Lithium

(24:13):
ion batteries, all right, they use a chemical reaction to
generate power. We don't have to get in the weeds
on this, but what you do need to know is
that chemical reactions are often, like intelligence, perishable. So as
a battery ages, the chemical cycle that it engages with

(24:35):
to create energy becomes imperfect. It's not running the same
sprint at the same speed. Sometimes it's not finishing the race.
When it doesn't do this correctly, when that reaction does
not complete, it can create gas. This is something the
Boften's call out gassing and Matt Nolan triforce and I

(24:58):
call battery far.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
An ill wind this way plumes indeed something super wicked.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Yes, yes, and woo betide the odor of a battery,
a lithium ion battery that may encounter this. You will
see it. You may have seen it in your personal life.
There is an indication that things are not on the level.
The battery itself will physically swell because of the gas,

(25:26):
and if the internal layers of these lithium ion batteries
are not separated due to damage, or a manufacturing defect.
Then boom, you get the outcass, you get the swelling,
you get the fire. But you see the signs well
before the disaster occurs.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Typically, Yeah, full disclosure. My last work machine, we would
always joke off air, and I think we even talked
about it on here a couple of times. Yeah, the
large battery panel beneath my MacBook Pro was so distended
and a swelling so much, and my machine was overheating
so much with a fan we were trying to record it.
It's just like, I don't know if that's.

Speaker 5 (26:13):
I think I can I think I give up.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Well, I had no idea how dangerous a situation that
was until I looked on some forums and just realized, oh,
my house could just burn up because of my work machine.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
So yeah, especially if you leave it alone and plugged in, right, Yeah, yeah,
And this is this is a valid concern. And I
do remember, I do remember when we were God, look
at us, you guys, we were joking about Matt's laptop.
All I know, Well, we matrix dodged that. But it's

(26:50):
a valid concern because it leads us to our second point.
These fires that are caused by these lithium ion batteries.
They do not generate near the explosive force that we
see in the pager attacks.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
No, yeah, I mean a lot of the lawsuits surrounding
the Samsung case that we talked about were because of.

Speaker 5 (27:10):
Like serious burns.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Yep, because where do you keep those things, you know,
in your pocket or like God forbid it happens while
you're using it, but God forbid you actually make phone
calls and hold that monstrosity to your face.

Speaker 5 (27:22):
Who are these people?

Speaker 4 (27:23):
But no, it was certainly no kind of significant explosion
that would generate the kind of force that we saw
in these attacks.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, and as we mentioned earlier, you can see live
video of some of these pager detonations. They indicate a
much higher explosive force, a fatal explosive force. And in
this footage we witness terrifying moments someone with an affected pager.

(27:54):
They get a vibration notifying them of a message they take,
like you were saying, no, they take the pager from
their pocket, they look at the screen, and this is
a terrifying thing because another point we have to raise
here to the idea of malicious code. Pagers are low tech,

(28:19):
like we're saying earlier this is radio technology, this is
not cloud connected. There is not a way to send
malware necessarily.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Yeah, when we were talking about too, like this being
unprecedented whatever this scale, And of course in the Strangers
episode you mentioned Ben the precedent for this, it was
a cell phone attack back in the nineties, right, Yes,
But I gotta say this is also the kind of
thing that you'll certainly see in you know, spy movies
or in like espionage type situations where someone will wire

(28:52):
a bomb and there will be a transmitter on it
that is a cell phone, and like someone will dial
a number and that is what triggers the bomb.

Speaker 5 (29:00):
So this is just kind of taking it a step further.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Well, I mean, yeah, that makes sense, right, because the
cell phone receiver that's a part of the detonation device
just needs to send an electrical signal to that device
to explode it. Right. But in this case, we're trying
to figure out if we can actually blow up the
you know, the manufactured device that everybody else has, and

(29:25):
if everybody you know, if you've got twenty people with
one of these devices and you can explode one of them,
what's the difference between that one and the other nineteen.
Because I want to get back to just this, this
low tech idea, because it's one of the primary reasons
has Blow was using these devices, right, they were low
tech because theoretically communications between these low tech devices would

(29:48):
be much harder to intercept by somebody who's watching them,
and they would be much harder to track somebody carrying
one of these low tech devices. Right.

Speaker 5 (29:58):
You can clone them though, right.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Cloning a pager is a thing where you literally have
like a duplicate so when the original one gets a ping,
then you're cloned.

Speaker 5 (30:07):
Duplicate gets it as well. Just just saying it's not
like impossible.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
No, you're right, but it's not the same as being
able to turn a microphone on on a smartphone, right, or,
as you said, Ben, inject malicious code of some sort
into a smart machine that can then track somebody's location.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, Back to our emperor of how stuff works, Marshall.
Brain taught us that a pager is a small radio receiver. Right,
you carry it around your pocket. It's basically a radio.
It doesn't work the way most people imagine. Your device
has a personal number, a personal identifier of some sort.

(30:47):
Call it a code. Call it a phone number. Anyone
who wants to send you a message dials that code
and they have their message attached, you know, three eleven
nine to one one eight zero zero eight five boobs. Yeah,
and so this this, that's a reference earlier, I thinks,
oh boobs though, right, folks, I know, right, Just so this, uh,

(31:15):
this puts when people dial that, it puts the message
they are sending the signal they're sending through a switchboard
at a kind of centralized broadcast opportunity. And that broadcast
opportunity back in the day it might have been a person.
It's probably a machine or an algorithm. Now it sends

(31:37):
out that message just in a wide swath with all
the other messages. It is received just like a normal
radio broadcast, and it uses antennas to transmit the message. Further,
all of the pagers, all of these handheld radio devices
are constantly picking up every single radio message they receive.

(32:03):
You're only finding out about this that gets to you
because there's something in your device that says, oh, hey,
this one's for you know, triforce. Uh, here you go, boobs,
my guy boobs. And so it ignores all the other stuff.
But all the other stuff is happening is reaching that receiver,

(32:27):
and all of this can happen. To our earlier point,
all of this happens without an Internet connection. You need
no Wi Fi, you only need the radio. And this
leads us to conclude that battery malfunctions alone cannot explain
what happened. The explosive force, the nature of the technology,

(32:49):
the other factors at play, the social engineering, the opset compromise.
These demonstrate another conspiracy in the game.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yea, if I remember correctly, if my brief stints as
a pager user, they take double A batteries. Most of
them they don't even have lithium ion batteries.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
I believe the newer versions, the AR well, we'll get
to it, the AR.

Speaker 5 (33:16):
Nine.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
That version I believe did have a lithium ion battery
in it.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
Because I remember the one I had the motorola, the
kind of clear one where you can see through it.

Speaker 5 (33:26):
I think. Yet you literally had to change the batteries
on it.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
It does have a lithium ion minus crank powered.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Nice. It's good in a jam, good in a jam.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
So what did happen?

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Right?

Speaker 3 (33:38):
And Noel, you raise a tremendous point not all pagers
have the same power sources. The pagers in question were
made by a Taiwanese based company, or they were licensed
by a Taiwanese based company. You see the organization responsible

(33:59):
for the paige explosions, which is Israel. Let's just say
the quiet part out loud. They had to physically interact
with these devices at some point in the supply chain
before those pagers and those walkie talkies again, silly name
reached Hezbolah. Let's talk a little bit about the pagers specifically.

(34:21):
Gold Apollo is the company out of Taiwan, right, and
they licensed the manufacture of a model of pager called
AAR nine two four, And all of the pagers that
exploded in Lebanon and Syria were a R nine two
four models.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah, but gold Apollo, because they were in this deal
licensing out their name their pager to another company, has
basically said, well, hey, it wasn't us. Those actually aren't
our pagers has our name on it, but we did
not manufacture them. Somebody else is at play here.

Speaker 5 (35:02):
I did not know that was a thing.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Maybe I'm I'm naive or something, but like, does that
absolve you if you've you've you've licensed out or rented
out your name, your low, your your design, your trademark
kind of.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
I mean, it depends if it's a manufacturing defect.

Speaker 5 (35:21):
Because of the design that you've thesis made.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
You're still culpable for. But licensing the thing is a
lot like tag and base, you know what I mean.
It's a lot like saying not it. And if we
go we mentioned this in Strange News, But if you
want to find, if you want to find the company
that is on the hook for providing these AR nine

(35:46):
two four model pagers licensed via gold Apollo in Taiwan,
you will find a fascinating will outfit called b AC
Consulting based out of Budapest, and they had a licensing
agreement with gold Apollo dating back to twenty twenty one.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, and this company makes alarm bells go off. And
then once you go through all of the information on it,
you can see it right in the face exactly what
this thing is. Should we go through it a little bit?

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Oh yes we should, we must. Let's also give a
shout out to the founder of gold Apollo, su Chin
Kwan who later is it it's Wacket who's in some
interviews and says, Hey, you know, we didn't do this.
We just licensed this to this company that I've never
heard of. But they're out of Budapest.

Speaker 5 (36:42):
And you know now that you ask me.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
The weird thing is the money for the licensing agreement
originated in the Middle East, and then Taiwanese government officials
came through and said, yeah, hashtag not it, not us.
These pages were not made in Taiwan.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
It's very weird. His quote to Ruters was quote, the
remittance was very strange, but.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
We didn't like do anything of that, you know it
like take the cash. It's fine, what what are we
gonna do? Not take the money, of.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
Course, But you know, seriously, credit to him as you're saying, Ben,
because he also said, we may not be a large company,
but we are a responsible one. This is very embarrassing,
and they're gonna like they are as a company trying
to figure out what exactly went down.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
This is like the meme like that. I think you
should leave meme with the hot dog costume, like we've
got to find out who did this. Yes, I mean
this situation in general.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
Yeah, agreed, that's a perfect comparison. Talk about a game
of hot potato do you guys remember hot potato? Did
you ever play hot potato.

Speaker 5 (37:44):
With an actual hot potato?

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (37:46):
It was really it was pretty dangerous. Actually a lot
of serious burns.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
So let's talk about like we were saying, let's talk
about speaking to serious burns. Let's talk about our friends
in Budapeste b AC. They have a conulting CEO, not
a standing or urban it CEO.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well, it is a consulting firm. It's BAC Consulting.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Right, But how do you have a consulting CEO for
a consulting firm.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
It's just what It's just what they do.

Speaker 4 (38:14):
They just that's their thing, is consulting that potatoes to
consult to get to consultants.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
I'm just telling you, guys that potato is hot.

Speaker 5 (38:22):
It's potato, especially when they're wrapped in like saran boy.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, so let's talk about this, that consulting CEO. Then
you found an amazing article called the Mystery Woman whose
company BAC Consulting is linked to exploding pagers. You can
find it right now. This consulting CEO's name is Christiana
barsonat Arcidiacono. I'm not how to say it. This person,

(38:53):
I'm gonna put it out here. The the article you
linked to uh cites her as a forty nine year
old Italian Hungarian.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Person like that selfie though, right.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh, Selfie's fantastic. But what I really like is the
new vocabulary word that I am armed with because the
writer of this article used it. Perry pathetic.

Speaker 5 (39:13):
Yes, oh, she is kind of fetching.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Perry pathetic, which means traveling from place to place, in particular,
working or based in various places for relatively short periods.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
It's like nomadic.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Dare we say consulting.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh yes, interesting, Okay, this is all matching up. Sounds good.
But what's so weird about this person?

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Well? I guess it's the fact that this person and
on behalf of BAC denied all culpability with Eddie involvement
on the pager side, specifically in manufacturing BAC. And it's consulting.
CEO described themselves as trading intermediaries, as fixers, as licensers.

(40:05):
So you buy the license from Tawan, You buy the
license from Taiwan or Tawan, whatever you wish, and then
you sell the license somewhere else. The Hungarian government, interestingly enough,
comes in with cover fire and they say, look, this company,
they just trade stuff. They don't manufacture anything in Hungary.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yeah, the spider man pointing at to one. Another meme
also comes telling me that potato is molten.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Guys, I'm gonna go back to the article. This is
why I find Christiana the consulting CEO so strange. I'm
gonna read a couple of quotes, and then I'm gonna
watch your face in particular Ben because and no offense, nol,
but watching Ben's face because of our discussions about front
companies and how intelligence agencies pick people up out of college.
So we're gonna we're gonna start here. Quote. In the

(40:56):
early two thousands, she earned her PhD in physics at
Universe Diversity College, London, but she appears to have left
without pursuing a scientific career. Okay, that's that's one. That's
count one for me. That's first. Next a resume she
used to get the job working for this other place
she worked for previously, references other postgraduate degrees in politics

(41:19):
and development MMM from the London School of Economics. Okay,
and then she goes on to describe in that CV
working for various NGOs throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Oh okay, this checks out, yeah fully, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
It feels like somebody that you would you would pluck
early on in their scientific pursuit career, especially if they're
interested in any way in politics, and let's say nation building.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
Sure, yeah, the people must be free, must they?

Speaker 2 (41:52):
M hmm?

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Yeah, I mean we also look, it's super shady. BAC
is super sketchy, and it turns out that it gets
curiouser and curiouser the further we go into the rabbit hole.
We also have to remember, look, we were talking about
this off air. It's obviously kind of a shell company.

(42:14):
We'll get to it, but the hand is often hidden.
The International Criminal Court does prosecute some post colonial societies,
but they have not once, not never gone after a
colonial society, nor held it accountable for actions that would

(42:35):
be described as terrorism if conducted by any post colonial
nation state. I yield by time. Let's talk about the
walkie talkies. God, what a silly name. Walkee talk What
do you call it? What's the better name? Two way radio?

Speaker 5 (42:51):
Two way radio is good?

Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, that's poor grown up.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
What was the phone that was? It was a very
popular phone that had the two Way radio Motorola two.

Speaker 5 (43:00):
I'm quoting Jay z Okay, I know the one you're
talking about. It looked kind of like a sports radio
or something like that. Yeah, you get to take to
the beach.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
You get the little chirp and a little little rubber
bumpers on the side.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah yeah, yeah, because your because of your actions.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Right, Uh, this is diddy. What did you say? More oil?

Speaker 4 (43:20):
No problem, guys, I went a cost Co run this weekend.
Can confirm cost cod does not carry baby oil.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
I looked everywhere, Dude, you have to go to you know,
you have to go to the sketchy places. Now I
get a good price. Yeah yeah, oh cvs? Yeah, are
they like what is their business model? Are they like
a front for printing receipts?

Speaker 5 (43:47):
Massive?

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Why are they so long?

Speaker 5 (43:49):
So much? Actually? What is all that extra text? Guys?

Speaker 4 (43:52):
Really quickly though, if you want to be classy at
your freak out parties, freak parties, whatever, freak offs, why
is it a freak cough they call it? Yeah, Costco
has got some excellent deals on olive oil and bulk.
Can use it for your slip and slide situation and
then dip your bread in it when you're done.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
May I recommend coconut oil?

Speaker 3 (44:11):
M this guy finds.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
So let's get back to the walkie talkies. We are
taking tangents galore today, guys, And I blame myself.

Speaker 5 (44:22):
Matthew, No, no blame to be distributed, my friend, it's
a podcast.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Well, let's get back to the walkie talkies. Around five
pm local time on September eighteenth, that is, again, can't
stress this enough. The day after there was a huge
pager explosion across Lebanon and throughout the halls of Hesbola
and just in you know places where everybody else is.

(44:48):
There was another round of explosions. And these explosions again
had one thing in common. A single device, same manufacturer,
same make.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
Does that make sense, Yes, the icom Ic V eight
two VHF walkie talkie or two way radio. And what's
fascinating here is that the company Icon that made these
waukee talkies they stopped manufacturing them back in twenty fourteen.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Hmmm, so somebody had a stockpile.

Speaker 5 (45:25):
I guess is this what should call it? Like new
old stock?

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well, that's the interesting thing, right, Maybe they were in
a warehouse somewhere that's for a long time and then
they were you know, just distributed, you know, to HESBELA
members because somebody got a hold of a bunch of them.
The other option is somebody made these, like manufactured them
well after the company officially stopped doing it.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
And is my understanding that this device was the company's
most counterfeited device, which is, like, you know something, the
results from industrial espionas so the model, according to an
official statement for I Believe, an internal memo indicated pay
it special attention to counterfeit ICV eighty, IC seven eighteen,

(46:10):
and ic V eighty two copies of these models are
floating in the market.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Right, So theoretically it wasn't It wasn't necessarily somebody got
a hold of the official models and then modified them.
Somebody may have manufactured their own versions of this particular model, because.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
I mean, geez, they're already licensing out their plans and
branding to the highest bidder. I mean, when you think
about it, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that
those plans would just kind of end up floating around
and available to be sold off.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Well, the good news is, as of September thirtieth, when
we're recorded government officials from Japan assure us they are
investigating the case. Cool, that's so believe for them.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
We got got our top guys on it. They're working
in shift.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
We're gonna find these shell companies.

Speaker 5 (47:03):
Said the guy in the hot toxuites.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Right.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
So that's a let's go to an app break, because
we have to come back and talk about implications. We
have returned the most dangerous implication here orbits around not
malicious code, but around the idea of supply chain. If

(47:29):
you are listening to tonight's show, statistically you're probably listening
on a phone. It is also extremely likely that you
are not the target of asymmetric warfare. But again to
our earlier example about Matt's laptop and honestly our buddy
Dylan's laptop as well. If your phone battery is getting

(47:49):
out of shape, if your phone or your device is
physically distending, get it away from your family and your
life ones even the cat you don't like, Get it
away from the cat.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
And it's happened to just about every Apple laptop I've
ever had. And you can actually get ahead of it
by right clicking or clicking in the kind of toolbar
up top and looking at your battery and it has
like a kind of a performance gauge, sort of a
plotted kind of graph, and you can see if you're
if your battery is getting a little long in the tooth.

(48:24):
And it's a bummer because so many of these companies,
the battery is like glued in. It's not like you
can just buy a new battery, which I think leads
a lot of people to kind of put it off.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Oh for sure. And you can also, Yeah, the check
in your battery health is not a bad idea. You
should definitely do that right now. Actually, while while you're
thinking about it, just.

Speaker 4 (48:42):
Check it out, just yeah, just for fun, just check
it out, especially if you notice it like not holding
charge anymore or as long as it used to. Things
like that are a good indication that you might be
able to nip it in the bud. And oftentimes they
are kind of covered by warranty. I don't know, I
forget it depends.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Well, if you have an Apple device, they'll just encourage
you to buy the new.

Speaker 4 (49:03):
Model, because true, that's called planned obso lessons. It's a
different kind of time bomb.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
I took a sandboxed laptop to an Apple store because
I'm a genius, and I met the other geniuses at
the Mac store and they told me they don't take
care of quote unquote vintage hardware.

Speaker 5 (49:23):
Yeah, suck my.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Well, I you know, you have to work your way
up to that, you know. I was still doing the
small talk. Sorry about the warranty.

Speaker 5 (49:33):
First, as an Apple fan and not a fanboy, I
like Apple products.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
You got to start it with like first, ask them
what's coming by the warrant.

Speaker 4 (49:42):
I just I don't like them too part of their
I don't like that part of their business model at all.
And it's not exclusive to Apple, but they just they
seem to be one of the most egregious offenders.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
All right, YEA, check out our episode on Planned Ops Lessons,
which is a very real conspiracy affecting everyone who buys
a thing in the case of pagers and walkie talkies
and asymmetric warfare. The implication remains, if we know it
is the supply chain, could it be possible to infiltrate

(50:14):
a supply chain of radio capable devices on mass If so,
why would you do it to what end? You know?
We could give you stats on how many people own
mobile phones across the globe We could give you even
some rough numbers on pagers, but those numbers are kind
of academic, because what you're really asking, the reason we're

(50:36):
listening together tonight is because we want to know whether
our loved ones are safe. We want to know if
the phone is going to blow up while we're listening
to the show.

Speaker 4 (50:47):
You should be concerned, yeah, but not like so concerned
that you're like losing sleepover, because if you're listening to
this show, this is probably not something that is being
targeted at you.

Speaker 5 (50:58):
YESU directly, right.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
You specifically? Yeah, I mean, let's go to a great
article in the New York Times by Shira Frankel, ronen
Bergman and Wada Sad. They argue what we've been talking
about a little bit here. They argue that Israel ran
that consulting company out of Budapest as a front company,

(51:22):
and it was one of three shell outfits entirely created
to obfuscate, right, to hide the hand of intelligence agencies.
And to be fair, BAC did manufacture and sell ordinary,
non explosive pagers.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
This is the consultants consultant, right as what we're talking
about the consultist of consultants.

Speaker 5 (51:48):
Oh yes, amorphis of companies, like what do they do? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Great? Note sorry, according to the government of Hungary, they
did not manufacture anything, right, they just license.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
We don't really know what they do.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
In fact, the money just goes from the Middle East
through that company back to the Middle East somewhere I'm
not sure where, and then it comes back but we
all get paid.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
M Yeah, are you happy? I mean, like, like you
were saying, the the legitimate business is extant, there are
records of it. You have to have it though, You
have to have some sort of legitimate business.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
Yeah, I mean think about that. If your target is Hesbola,
they're not going to come to some unknown company that
you know, just popped up out of nowhere and say, oh, sure,
we'll buy thousands of pagers from you, no problem. They're
going to look for a company to source that stuff
from that can be trusted, right, or theoretically trusted, which

(52:49):
it means it has to be a very long game,
a very patient, long game of infiltration.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
And does it involve a mole, Like, does it involve
an insider that tipped off? How how I get the
middle man of it all? But like it's mind boggling.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
The long game of it. Like you said, Matt, it's
kind of exciting and like messed up.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
It's messed up. I mean, we talked about this a
little bit in the past. Some of the best businesses
in your neighborhood, folks, especially all right, especially in the US,
I'll say it, some of the best businesses in your
neck of the woods are gonna be front companies. You
walk into the abandoned pizza place, they're surprised that you're there.

(53:39):
They're astounded you're ordering a pizza. They take forever to
make it, and it's the best pizza you've had in
your life. Welcome to New Jersey, you know what I mean.
Like the front company thing is real. Like an example
would be, let's say you go to a dry cleaner,
and this dry cleaner gives you great deals all the time,

(54:00):
no questions asked. Is that cranberry? Is that blood? They
don't care. They'll just clean it and you return a
few items. They never raise a mess, they never make
a fuss about giving you a refund. And at some
point you ask, who are these guys making money? And
that's the question Hesbela should have asked about bac Whoops.

(54:23):
They start shipping these pages to Lebanon around the summer
twenty twenty two in small batches. But after, as we mentioned,
after the Secretary General of HESBOLA identifies cell phones as
opsect breach, they order more and more. All in all,
we're looking at something like five thousand separate pagers. And

(54:44):
as we described earlier just a few moments ago, this
teaches us that whomever was poisoning the well, they waited,
They let them get out there, and they could have
pushed the button at any time.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
That's the thing though, I mean, it's like, you can
only really do this once, right before new security measures
get put in place, Before you know, the HESBLA leadership
is wise. They were already clearly very paranoid about the
types of communication devices they use, which is capitalized on.
But now the cats out of the bag and now
they're you can't really do it again. So do you

(55:22):
think they triggered it out of timing, like like because
they were ready, or do you think they were worried
about being exposed and they were just like, well, we
might as well get maximum impact for our investments.

Speaker 5 (55:33):
In this operation. Yeah, I think so too.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
Otherwise they would have done individuals maybe, and they wouldn't
have it wouldn't have let on, I don't think that.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Has all at once.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
It's the only way it works.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
It's a super compelling strategy to strike at an enemy
who is already using this technology on purpose, because this
group is so paranoid about a single cell phone in
a big meeting or communicating any any information across a
cell phone, because there's an awareness within that organization that
any of that information can be tapped, and you have

(56:09):
to assume it is tapped. So they move to this
low tech stuff. And now you've made that group completely, fully,
rightfully paranoid about the low tech that they can use
to communicate. So how the heck does that group communicate then,
to let's say, organize fighters to a particular location or

(56:30):
strategize about what's going to happen in the future.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Yeah, let's also let's also consider well, let's step back here,
because there are a couple of things.

Speaker 5 (56:40):
Right.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
First, we have to say, yes, each of these devices
functioned as a two way radio or as a pager.
The two important differences, going to the AOSH example of
the nineteen nineties are these. First, the pagers and the
walkie talkies they were monitored and then second at least

(57:02):
in the pagers. Each of these guys, jeez, little pager
guys had an extra bit of spice to the battery,
about three grams of an explosive called pente rythpertol tetra
nitrate street name pet in.

Speaker 5 (57:17):
Some heavy pettin.

Speaker 4 (57:19):
This is like it would almost look like an adhesive, right.
It can be applied like a in a thin band
almost right.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
M hmm, yeah, you're absolutely right. It makes it very
difficult to detect. And if you want to be fun
at parties, you can tell your friends that pettin is
one of the prime to ingredients in something called semtex.
To be fair, pettin also can be used to treat
medical conditions.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
I know semtex from my video game days where you
throw a sticky grenade right.

Speaker 4 (57:52):
In, like like a splinter cell or Rainbow six or
the be Lops type games. But now the question that
I have though, is, Okay, so we've got this supply
chain interception and we've got this explosive material, how is
the detonation Like they still would have had to add
extra bits in order to control the detonation. It does

(58:13):
make me still wonder is there a way to remotely
overheat the battery that then causes the detonation because the
explosive stuff is on the battery, Like, maybe that's just
a catalysts.

Speaker 5 (58:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
I see what we're saying, and we don't have specific mechanics.
But what we can say is that a radio signal
goes out and the radio signal somehow triggers or ignites
the explosive And I know that's not quite answering the
question at this point. It would be difficult to answer that.

(58:49):
And perhaps you, fellow conspiracy realist, can help us in
that regard.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Would you, though, Ben, say that maybe we don't rule
out that someone could remotely overheat the battery, that then
that is the catalyst that causes the explosive strip to
go boom.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
The issue with remotely overheating the battery is an issue
of timing, just like we referenced with THEE right right,
not near, not with the simultaneous nature that we're seeing here.
So someone compromised trojan horse the supply chain. We don't
know when it happened. We don't know when the batteries

(59:28):
got spicy, but we do know it'd be interesting to
look deeper into this and trace the manufacturers.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
I just want to add this. I'm just seeing this
right now.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
Guys.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
It's saying pet N can be initiated by a laser.
That's very specific pulse from a laser. But there's no
way they got a laser into this.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
That's my question was, like you know that you mentioned
how inconspicuous this explosive material is a page are small?
How are they going to get They got to fit
more stuff in there? If it's if there's a detonator.
I'm not an expert obviously and explosives or anything, but
typically a detonator device isn't like, isn't microscopic. It would

(01:00:09):
have to be extra stuff, extra guts put into the device.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Yeah. But also when you got your even your sea
through Motorola pager, did you open it up and look
at you You.

Speaker 5 (01:00:20):
Don't know what those wires are? It just looks like, yeah,
it's it's technology, you know. Yeah, it's a good point.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
It could be something as simple as a couple extra
jumpers of some kind.

Speaker 5 (01:00:29):
Like you're you're right, it could be something there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
I mean laser also to that point, is focused light,
so how would you how would you put a beam
that tight on everything at once.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
It would have to be an electrical charge that's like
run from the battery to that thing in a specific way,
that only gets activated when that particular signal gets sent.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Right, Because you would you would need it to work
for time, right, you would you? So what what they
called it for a while in termsly was the button?
And intelligence would ask or you know, they would crow
a little bit about it, like when are we going
to push the button? And I think they pushed the

(01:01:11):
button because they got compromised or because they knew they
were in a limited time window.

Speaker 5 (01:01:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
And I love what you're saying about the specificity of
the signal that was transmitted. It had to be programmed in.
It's like back when people figured out how to hack cars,
you had to plug into the physical device at some point.

(01:01:38):
Right now, cars these days, unfortunately, can be compromised with
malicious code. But these pagers, again, it wasn't software. We
don't know exactly where the supply chain intervention occurred. We
got to look at the batteries. We have to see
the involvement of the manufacturers. I guarantee you their people

(01:02:01):
and entities tracing supply chains now, and they probably already
know the answer. We'll see if it goes public. But
all this together means that, yes, depending on how intelligence
agencies consider you, there is a non zero possibility that
your phone, iPad, pager, or radio might have something dangerous.

(01:02:23):
We're not being alarmist. There are billions and billions of
mobile devices all over the world. Most of them are
servitors for various functions. If there was a way to
sabotage the entire world, especially with code, it would be
insufficient in reach and capability. Like you could theoretically make

(01:02:47):
some bad you know, sail by Night software that overclocks
a battery or overheats it, but you wouldn't be able
to make those devices explode, and you wouldn't be able
to make them explode at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Yeah, just as a counterpoint, guys, imagine you're in one
of these factories that is producing let's say iPhone fifteens,
and there is adhesive used in the process to connect
you know, whatever it is, whatever components to whatever other components,
and somebody high up who has connections to a government

(01:03:25):
decides to replace some of that adhesive with this other substance,
and everyone who's actually putting together those phones has no
idea that they are adding pettent or one of these
other explosives to the devices, to all of them. And then,
because we are our devices now in so many ways,
unless you're extremely careful, you could have a list of

(01:03:48):
people that you wanted to assassinate that are potentially political enemies.
If they are you know, you're putting this in the
highest level, like the most expensive phones, right, the ones
that are the most secure or something. Oh then yeah,
well yeah, well but what I mean is you could
like the possib there, which is just creepy to me.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
I mean to that point, Matt. You know, in terms
of you know, everyone being so tied to their phones.

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
We know about assassination plots of political figures in the past,
like what was it, Ben, I think it was Fidel Castro.
There's like an exploding cigar, like there was you know,
I mean, now, this is like the ultimate exploding cigar
for everybody you know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
And shout out to our friends at act me.

Speaker 4 (01:04:33):
Well, it seems silly, but the point of that was
it was an object that you knew Fidel Castro was
going to have close to him, such that if it
were to explode, it would devastatingly injure him.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
Now we have these devices that no matter who you are,
you're going to have one. Everyone relies on it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
So it's like the diligence has got to just go
up through the roof in terms of security protocols to
monitor these. And I'm sure, like you know, presidents and
loitical figures, they've got offline devices that are monitored by
certain types of protocols. And you know about how you
gotta wonder, like are they taking them apart? Are they
like this seems new, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
They are being taken apart in a lot of Western
regimes and a lot of despotic regimes as well.

Speaker 5 (01:05:19):
Maybe more so because they're like more paranoid or I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
Yeah, but also, you know, North Koreas way fewer phones.
It's just easier to check all of them. That's true,
which sounds cold, but is true. That the example about
infiltrating the supply chain to that earlier point, it is
theoretically possible. The question is why and to what end? Right, Quibono,

(01:05:46):
who does it benefit? You know the world is waiting
right now thermo barrack bombs are being deployed in the
Middle East, and just on a high level, folks, thermobaric
bomb is sort of like if the if nuclear weaponry
detonating is home run. This stuff is second base running

(01:06:08):
towards shortstop. It's nasty, and they have been deployed.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
And you also have to wonder, I do at least
like in order to get the actual Hesbula folks who
are actually operating, running, you know, playing significant roles in
that organization, how many quote unquote Hesbela adjacent people you know,
got these devices as well, who actually had nothing to
do with the organization, but just we're kind of swept

(01:06:34):
up in the net of like we got to you know,
break a lot of eggs to make.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
An omelet or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
I think it would be wrong if you thought these
pagers in this long attack over this many, like to
over two years, if there wasn't also on the ground
surveillance of individuals, like on an individual level, of human
beings entering and exiting locations and all kinds of stuff
like that where people are gathering where these devices end up,

(01:07:04):
you know, at certain times of day. I think this
is a combination of a lot of surveillance and a
targeted attack.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
So while we have some ability to separate fact from fiction,
we don't have all the answers. But we hope we
are exploring the correct questions right the beginning of the
rabbit hole. Folks, this is an active story. There is
currently no happy ever after in the Middle East, nor

(01:07:32):
in Europe, nor in Africa, nor in the Americas, so
long as the same entities built to guarantee safety engage
in the same tactics as terrorists and during the course
of our lives. Now, it's only going to become increasingly
important to question what happily ever after means for nation states,

(01:07:54):
for terrorist organizations, for moneyed interest, and what it happily
ever after means for people on the ground. We can
promise you this, We'll be here with you so long
as there is stuff they don't want you to know,
and we cannot wait to hear your thoughts. Guys, my
spidery sense is going off. We've got some people who

(01:08:16):
have been with us the entirety of tonight's episode and
cannot wait to break down some theoretical hypothetical ways to
trigger explosions through radio signals. How do they find us.

Speaker 4 (01:08:30):
No, Oh jeez, you can find us all over the internet.
By by the way, this stuff is just such red
meat because it's real, it's clear, and it's in the news,
and we don't know all the facts yet, so it's like, well,
our job here on the show is to report what
we do know. There's so much room for conjecture and
so much room for like, what's the next version of this?
What is the escalation of this? Sorry, I just I'm

(01:08:52):
blown away by guy. That's a horrible expression in this case,
but it's mind boggling, and you can, in fact share
your perspective on this, your ideas for what's next with
us at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
x FKA, Twitter, on YouTube where we have video content
for you to peruse and enjoy, as well as on Facebook.
We have a Facebook group here's where it gets crazy,

(01:09:14):
on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Hey, are you a federal agent that's infiltrated somebody's personal
device by intercepting it before it got to them and
putting some stuff in it? Call us and tell us
how you did it. We'd love to know. Call one
eight three three std WYTK. When you call in, give
yourself a cool nickname and let us know if we
can use your name and message on the air. We

(01:09:38):
don't have to use it. You can tell us don't
use it, and we still want to hear from you.
If you've got more to say than can fit in
that message, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
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at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
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