It was impossible not to be impressed by Israel’s pager attacks on Hezbollah, the Iranian terrorist proxy based in southern Lebanon. The conception of the plan, the years of coordination, and the final execution of the plan were an intelligence coup. The simultaneous explosions also provided lots of fodder for social media users who call the maneuver “Operation Grim Beeper” and “Operation Below the Belt,” among other things. Call it what you like. It was brilliant. And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group of fellows.
That said, what the Israelis conceived of years ago and brought to fruition last week in Lebanon should serve as a warning. We have vulnerabilities of our own, which expose us to equally terrifying attacks on our supply chain and infrastructure.
Following the attacks, the Washington Examiner’s editorial board sounded the alarm on the risk of sabotage of technical devices from China. They noted:
Key components of almost every iPhone, including the battery, processor, and camera, are made in China. While China does not have access to Apple’s source code, or at least so it is believed, the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance over the country’s private sector affords it great latitude of action.Secretly sabotaging tens of millions of iPhone batteries so they overheat on command may seem far-fetched, but it is doable. The risk of malevolent Chinese action with these devices or other technical goods must be considered a real possibility.China is also a major supplier of broadcasting equipment, computers, and office machine parts. All these products are sabotage threats. Huawei offers an instructive example. Riven with technical “backdoors” that allow vast espionage and sabotage activities, Huawei’s telecommunications network has fortunately been restricted from access to the U.S. market. But the same cannot be said of U.S. allies, such as Hungary.The U.S. has repeatedly detected aggressive Chinese efforts to build backdoors into our infrastructure network. Its “Volt Typhoon” hacking group, for example, has been caught laying traps in American water and power systems in Guam and elsewhere. These traps could be detonated to cut off Americans from critical supplies during a war.
The U.S.’s dependence on China for medications and pharmaceutical ingredients is another area where we are at risk. Last month, Dr. Phil shared the FDA’s list of 100 medications that were in shortage at the time. The list included antibiotics, insulin, and cancer medications. Obviously, this is a problem for patients who can’t get their prescriptions filled.
But, he rightly pointed out that because the majority of these drugs are manufactured in China and India, this is also a national security problem.
Dr. Phil argued that if China stopped exporting drugs to the U.S., it would “upend the entire U.S. health system.”
This issue was raised during the pandemic. I recall lawmakers at the time vowing to bring back pharmaceutical manufacturing to America. Yet, four years later, the U.S. is still reliant on China, our most formidable adversary, for a large portion of our most critical drugs.
But the risk of China suddenly deciding to halt exports to the U.S. is not the only potential problem with trusting an enemy that wants us dead to supply our drugs.
In a Congressional hearing held at the start of the pandemic, Rosemary Gibson, a senior adviser on healthcare issues at the bioethics-focused Hastings Center and co-author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine,” told lawmakers: “Medicines can be used as a weapon of war against the United States. … Medicines can be made with lethal contaminants or sold without any real medicine in them, rendering them ineffective.” [Emphasis added.]
Perhaps the biggest risk we face is a cyberattack on our electric grid.
Keeping our electrical grid secure should be the highest priority for federal government agencies overseeing the energy sector. But alarmingly, the security around U.S. power grids is far less fortified than many assume—a vulnerability of which our geopolitical enemies are surely aware.They can do it from across the world through organized cyberattacks—and have been doing it for years, successfully targeting federal agencies including the Treasury and Commerce departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Homeland Security.With more than 3,000 companies, public and private, making up sections of the U.S. electric grid, there’s no shortage of potential targets to attack. And because each of those targets has some level of connection to the internet, each has countless potential access points for hackers to exploit. Cybersecurity professionals call this the “attack surface.”
A serious cyberattack on our electric grid would bring America to its knees. Considering the dire consequences, preventing an attack should be a top priority for our government. Engle writes, “Public and private energy providers need to be proactively assessing cybersecurity threats that affect them or other entities elsewhere on the grid, then be vigilant in addressing those problems—not just doing the bare minimum required by law.”
The Israeli pager attacks showed the world that technology and ingenuity, combined with just the right amount of plastic explosives, can turn the unthinkable into reality. And you can bet our enemies are paying close attention.
Warfare has changed forever.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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