A case of exploding pagers

The pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon on two days in mid-September added a new and very scary dimension to the conflict in West Asia.

- DBIANGSHU DATI'A

At least 40 people died, and thousands were injured. It was perhaps a matter of luck that none of the compromised devices were on an aircraft in flight.

According to reports, Hezbollah had started to use pagers and walkie-talkies around February 2024, suspecting that Israeli security agencies were monitoring cell phone networks.

The pagers in question were branded as Made-in-Taiwan, by a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. But they were "manufactured" by another entity, BAC Consulting, which is based in Hungary. Both BAC and the Hungarian government claim the devices were actually made by somebody else and merely marketed by BAC.

The New York Times says an Israeli agency set up a manufacturing unit and inserted plastic explosives into the devices. Gold Apollo says the financial transactions between Hungary and Taiwan pertaining to the pager were routed through financial entities in West Asia.

In this case (and with the walkie-talkies, which have similarly complicated provenance), the supply chain was obviously infiltrated by a malicious actor. But the supply chain and transaction chain is typical of many types of normal transborder arrangements in a globalised economy.