Israel's devastating strike on Hezbollah's command and control structure, by turning the militants' consumer devices into bombs against them, confirms what many have been suspecting since the war in Ukraine began in 2022: The entire modern world can be turned into a weapon by those who understand it against those who don't. The pager attack maimed thousands of Hezbollah's militants.
To Hezbollah's credit, it foresaw the impending danger posed by Israeli dominance over technology, though in the end was powerless to prevent it. "Cell phones, which can be used to track a user's location, have been banned from the battlefield in favour of more old-fashioned communication means, including pagers and couriers who deliver verbal messages in person [Hezbollah said] ... Today, if anyone is found with their phone on the front, he is kicked out of Hezbollah," said a senior Lebanese source familiar with the group’s operations." In a speech in February, Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah urged Hezbollah members and their families to ditch their mobile phones.
"Shut it off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up," the Hezbollah leader said. "Do it for the sake of security and to protect the blood and dignity of people. The collaborator (with the Israelis) is the cell phone in your hands, and those of your wife and your children. This cell phone is the collaborator and the killer."
But it didn't help Hezbollah. While their paranoia over cellphones drove them to switch to encrypted pagers, that precaution took them, en masse, into the kill zone. In case anyone had the idea of switching to cell phones again, the day after the mass pager attack, other devices like walkie-talkies started exploding. The entire fabric of modern civilization has seemingly turned against them. As I noted on X, there was nowhere to run. "Hurry. Turn on the smartbulb and get our things! Boom. Quick, get in the smart car and drive off! Boom. Quick, withdraw money from the ATM! Kerblam. Pay with the caaard! Ka-blooey. Aiee! 'Tis witchcraft. There's a chip in everything! The only way out is to leave the 21st century."
There was a haven from this assault from the future and even healing available to Hezbollah, but only on the 21st-century's terms. On a day when hundreds of Hezbollah soldiers lost their sight to the pager blasts, Elon Musk ironically announced FDA approval of his Blindsight technology as a breakthrough device. The maimed men could see again someday, but through the technology of the infidel and, worse yet, possibly even the Jew. What a bitter pill.
The Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see. Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time. To set expectations correctly, the vision will be at first be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge.
The truth is that Nasrallah's retreat into low-tech didn't go far enough. He understood that by living inside the environment created by a hostile culture, dependent on the manufacturers of a creed antithetical to Hezbollah's own for the appliances of war, commerce, and indeed daily life, he was somehow placing his whole movement in an irremediably false position. But neither Hezbollah's leader nor his Iranian patrons were radical enough to draw the ultimate conclusion: that fundamentalist Islam was fundamentally playing at an alien game, one it could never hope to win. Culture was not neutral. Seth Mandel's essay on the Bionic Jew obliquely captures the observation that technological civilization is somehow better suited to some cultures than others, though to the super-Jew, you might add the north Asian, the subtle Indian, and various genius Europeans.
This goes beyond space lasers or even weather control: It’s a belief in the existence of the super-sabra. In this fantasy, Israel is a place where Jews go to have their software updated, not to learn to use weapons but to become weapons. After all, if Israel can genetically engineer Egyptian attack sharks and radiation-sniffing Iranian lizards, imagine what can be done with human potential.
Against such as these, no victory is possible for Hezbollah while it remains in the 21st century. But if retreat into the past proves impossible, then the only alternative open to Islamic fundamentalism is to become even higher-tech than the Bionic Jew and other enemies. To beat them at their own game. If that means they have to change their culture and amend their beliefs, it can't be helped. Ever since the Ukraine war broke out, events have suggested that culture, and in particular human capital, is the fundamental resource of technological conflict. If you want to win, be a winning and moral culture. Then, so long as civilization keeps its head, the Stone Age is powerless against it. But that is a big "if."
In an impotent counter against the pager attack, Hezbollah organized a moped parade by its militants in Beirut. The reality is that Israel has the physical capability to annihilate this cavalcade. Hezbollah is pitting the symbols of defiance against the military fact of defeat. How far the IDF chooses to use brutal power is a decision Israel makes, not Iran. This does not mean Israel is unfettered. It is held back by the very real constraints of civilization, politics, and the Law (with a capital L). But it is not fettered by physics. If it drops a JDAM on Beirut, it will work. But the lesson of the pager attack is that what is truly essential is invisible to the eye. Civilization is not just about technology but what it is used for.
There was a tendency in secular culture to regard only physical constraints as real. But as technology advances, people are less and less limited by what they can do and more and more by what they will or won't do. Culture and religion are becoming the only real limits: the source of our strength and the location of our weakness. Yet, like Nasrallah, we have been blind to its implications. Let us grasp it like the serious tool it is. We are in grave danger if all we leave as a shield against evil is the shabby word "inappropriate."
