Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race With China
Israel’s attack against Hezbollah points to the risks and opportunities of an interconnected world.
By Mike Gallagher
Illustration: James SteinbergLet’s call it Operation Chutzpah.
If, as is widely believed, the Mossad detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists, killing dozens and wounding thousands, it will go down as an intelligence operation for the history books.
This strike is the latest in a string of daring operations from the tunnels beneath Gaza to the heart of Tehran.
It also demonstrates how software has ushered in a new phase of warfare.
Remember that Russian soldiers stole $5 million in John Deere equipment in 2022 from occupied Ukraine, only to discover that the internet-connected tractors could be remotely turned into scrap.
Months later, Tesla drivers at the Chinese resort of Beidaihe found their cars banned from the town during a Chinese Communist Party conclave.
The party has since blocked Tesla at other sites, worried that the connected cars’ cameras pose a security risk.
In January the FBIannounced that Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored group, had embedded malware inside America’s critical infrastructure such as “communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors.”
This malware could destroy the systems that keep our homes, businesses and hospitals running.
Look at the damage done by exploding pagers.
Then imagine the chaos caused by haywire power grids, or the economic consequences of frozen ports.
The Biden administration recently warned that Chinese-made port cranes could be “controlled . . . from remote locations.”
European companies found that Chinese groups may have gained access to the systems that control cargo ships.
Billions of endpoints connect to the internet, including sensors and devices that physically interact with critical infrastructure.
Anyone with control over a portion of the technology stack such as semiconductors, cellular modules, or hardware devices, can use it to snoop, incapacitate or kill.
The weaponization of commercial hardware and software will drive a bifurcation in the technology stack between the free world and our totalitarian rivals.
In June, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping declared that “the high-tech field has become the front line and main battlefield of international competition.”
Accordingly, the Communist Party has required that technologies from social-media apps to AI models reflect the party’s socialist values.
China has even used “smart city” systems—networks that govern traffic management and trash collection—as “a digital backbone that facilitates the consistent enforcement of social control programs.”
Mr. Xi is working to remove American technology—iPhones, Intel chips and Microsoft software—from the party’s totalitarian technology stack.
He seeks a future where he could turn off the lights in Green Bay or Geneva knowing we could not do the same in Guangzhou.
To prevent such a disaster, we should first recognize that the Chinese Communist Party isn’t interested in cooperating on AI risks and safety.
This delusion underlies the Biden administration’s diplomatic approach to Beijing.
Despite little to show from engagement on climate change and fentanyl, President Biden seems to believe we can persuade China to use AI for humanity’s benefit.
But what does “AI safety” look like to a regime using facial recognition to ethnically profile Uighurs as part of their genocide in Xinjiang?
The main AI risk the party wants to mitigate is having the U.S. dominate this critical technology.
We should focus on mitigating the main risk to our way of life, by building a free world technology stack, with trusted allied vendors from chips to servers to software.
Second, we need to wield the free-world technology stack more effectively.
In World War II, America equipped its allies to be the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Today, nations looking to us for weapons might call us the “DMV of Democracy”—we provide what we promised only after an agonizing wait.
As Rahm Emanuel, our ambassador to Japan, recently noted, “our military industrial base is ferkakte . . . it’s screwed up . . . the weakest link in our national security.”
Technology can help.
America has the tools to build a software-defined manufacturing ecosystem, where we can find and fix bottlenecks.
A digital twin of the entire defense supply chain would allow us to analyze, allocate, and accelerate production from the factory floor to the front line.
Third, a revitalized American technological industrial base should catalyze an interoperable free-world technological industrial base.
To outcompete China, we must make it easy for allies and geopolitical swing states to adopt, contribute to, and innovate on top of our software.
In Mr. Xi’s “main battlefield of international competition,” we must make the free world’s technology stack more attractive than the totalitarian alternative, drawing more countries to our side of the emerging Silicon Curtain.
Pillar Two of the AUKUS arrangement with Australia and the United Kingdom presents a massive opportunity to do this, by enhancing joint capabilities in critical areas alongside two allies.
We haven’t made the most of this opportunity.
The State Department recently proposed, at last, exemptions to burdensome International Traffic in Arms Regulations weapons-export restrictions for Australia and the U.K.
Even then, the exemptions don’t apply to hypersonic missiles, undersea vehicles, and electronic warfare—core elements of Pillar Two.
The exemptions also don’t apply to other Indo-Pacific allies, notably Japan.
Congressional Republicans have pushed to loosen ITAR, which a Rand report calls “an impediment to defense innovation and integration with allies.”
Doing so, and transferring implementation from the overcautious State Department to the Pentagon, would serve as a down payment on the policy America needs to win the technology stack competition.
America and our allies have the tools to build a shared software-defined manufacturing ecosystem backed by a free-world technology stack.
This is the cornerstone of a safer and more prosperous U.S.-led coalition, one that geopolitical swing states will want to join.
If we fail, China’s totalitarian technology stack will flourish, ushering in a more fractured and hostile world.
In that case, Americans may view their iPhones and car batteries the way Hezbollah operatives now see their pagers.
Mr. Gallagher, a Journal contributor, is head of defense for Palantir Technologies and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He represented Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District (2017-24) and was chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
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