Josh Paul
Former Director, U.S. Department of State.
Senior Advisor at DAWN, (DAWN; Founded by Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, DAWN promotes democracy & human rights in the Middle East and North Africa).
https://dawnmena.org/
Current US policies towards Israel are damaging to our own national security. In addition to the harms our complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza has done (damaging our credibility, destabilizing the Middle East, increasing threats to our security and military forces, undermining of the rules-based international order to name a few), there are new and further risks resulting from Israel’s recent “pager” attacks in Lebanon.
First, physically implanting explosives is much harder than implanting spyware and damaging malware. Given the integration of Israeli and U.S. tech sectors, this is something that should concern us all. To give just one example, as Eye on Surveillance describes, Israeli surveillance technology being integrated into US city and port security systems (eg, in New Orleans) should raise both privacy and national security concerns, even beyond those associated with broader concerns about the surveillance state. At a time when the US Government is focused on concerns about PRC infiltration of US systems and databases (eg TikTok), turning a blind eye to the threat Israel poses is unwise. In fact, I would say it would be appropriate to think of Israel’s leveraging of its tech sector the same way we think of the PRC’s “Military-Civil Fusion” in which the line between government and the private sector is blurred to the point of meaninglessness (Israel’s intervention in lawsuits concerning the supposedly private sector Pegasus spyware provides another datapoint in this space).
Another concern for the US should be the response of consumers around the world. For years the US has been urging countries to avoid integrating PRC technologies and corporations (eg Huawei) into their national security systems and supply chains. Israel’s operation will have significantly increased distrust of Western hardware and software, particularly in the Global South, making US efforts to pitch alternatives to PRC systems that much harder, again to the detriment of US national security.
As others have noted, these attacks violate international law, including Israel’s commitments under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons which prohibits “booby-traps” that could expose civilians to harm. As Lebanon is a party to the ICC, the (bad-faith) arguments the US has been making regarding Palestine’s legitimacy as a party to the Rome Treaty do not apply here, and I hope the Court will investigate these attacks and pursue charges as appropriate. Should they do so, it would be in America’s own interest to distance ourselves from Israel’s manipulation of the tech sector, by endorsing them.
Eye on Surveillance Article on NOLA: https://lnkd.in/eVM2eTYX
CSIS on PRC Military-Civil Fusion: https://lnkd.in/eCKgrsYF
GOI Intervention in Pegasus case: https://lnkd.in/e8cr6Xc9
