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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

Did 9/11 not change the world because the idea had been made in fiction beforehand?

The pager attack did change the world in two ways: the obvious one is where your point is most accurate (people becoming aware of how fragile supply chain are - just think snout what a terrorist could do with Amazon’s comingled inventory and returns!), but the other thing it did is start to legitimize this. If it’s only the Unabomber doing something, it’s clearly indefensible but as states use it other people will start to justify it on those grounds.

Hezbollah is hardly a sympathetic target but I’d be shocked if someone in the region doesn’t try to attack Israelis this way saying it’s not a war crime for the same reasons.

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> the other thing it did is start to legitimize this. If it’s only the Unabomber doing something, it’s clearly indefensible but as states use it other people will start to justify it on those grounds.

This is the most worrying part: Do we really need to normalize the idea of governments sending little bombs out into the civilian population and detonating them, hoping that they actually hit their targets? This is not how legitimate warfighting is done.

That’s what I’ve been fearing, too. It’s like dressing up as medical workers or using chemical weapons: no matter the legitimacy of the current target, it’s virtually certain that someone else will cite that as a justification for why they’re doing something similar. This seems especially dicey in the generative AI era where it’d be increasingly cheap for some government to “prove” that the people they just bombed were Hezbollah-level threats.

what is "legitimate warfighting"?

Legitimate warfighting is where sensible pacifist civilians have a sufficient notice and a chance to leave the intended warzone with their belongings before the war starts. It is also where military, industrial, and infrastructural targets are the only targets, where reasonable efforts are made to avoid targeting civilians. Legitimate warfighting brings freedom in the end, whereas illegitimate warfighting takes it away.

What percentage of wars are fought with the intention to bring freedom in the end? A lot of wars are just the result of imperialism. I think that definition is somewhat artificial.

Strictly speaking, yes, I’ll concede that this changed the world if you are part of a military group and your foe is Israel or another highly advanced adversary. But no, I don’t think that this changes the world in the way that the article implies.

9/11 changed the world because it started two major wars in the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. It set the stage for world politics for the next few decades.

The reality of this attack is that it really won’t affect people’s lives in any meaningful way. Maybe a few people will be wary of using beepers for the next few months but I don’t see many people thinking of giving up their smartphones over this. Or perhaps I’m wrong and this foreshadows many similar supply chain bomb attacks in the future… I don’t know, but neither does Bruce Schneier and it’s too early to say definitively what the effect of this will be.

It changed the world because now "regular" people are looking to divest of Israeli tech as fast as possible. They turned consumer devices into bombs and made everyone in the world less safe. It will be seen as the biggest strategic misstep in Israeli economic history. Quite a dumb move given that their economy is already on the ropes.

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