One of China's top diplomats on Thursday opposed “attempts to weaponize and/or politicize supply chains” against the backdrop of hundreds of mysterious explosions targeting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon this month. He encouraged the world to do so.
Officials in the country confirmed that the explosions were caused by pagers, walkie-talkies, mobile phones, solar panels and other everyday equipment that appeared to have been modified to contain explosives. The explosion is estimated to have killed at least 32 people, including children, and injured thousands more.
The origins of the products and the opaque supply chains that put them into the hands of Hezbollah jihadists have raised alarms around the world about their potential to be weaponized by intercepting ordinary objects along vast and often opaque supply chains. It's increasing.
“Any company that manufactures or sells physical devices is going to be concerned about the integrity of their supply chain,” said James Grimmelman, a professor at Cornell Law School. said Al Jazeera. “They may consider adding additional safeguards and verifications to better detect and stop such movements.”
China as a world maximum Lebanon, a manufacturing country and source for many supply chains, was quick to condemn the Lebanese explosion and take to social media to insist that the incident should not influence sentiment towards the globalized economy. . Hua Chunying, vice-minister of foreign affairs and one of the ministry's top speakers, said concerns about the safety of Chinese products that are being broadcast loudly could be an expression of interest in weaponization, and that it could happen. He suggested that this was not a genuine concern.
In a message posted on Twitter (which is illegal for non-elite Chinese citizens to access), Hua acknowledged the threat to the supply chain, but appeared to be direct in his criticism of skeptics of the status quo. It was.
The massive explosion of pagers and walkie talkies in Lebanon revealed at least three hard facts: 1. Civilian devices can be converted into deadly weapons. 2. Trojan horse malware can be embedded somewhere in the supply chain.'' 3. Absurd accusations against Chinese-made EVs, cargo cranes, internet equipment, etc. reveal what the accusers are actually doing. ” she wrote.
“In the interest of world peace, attempts to weaponize and politicize supply chains must be stopped,” she urged.
Hua appears to be responding to an investigation that found that two of the most common devices that exploded, pagers and walkie-talkies, appeared to be manufactured by companies that denied the explosions. The pager had a brand label that said “Gold Apollo”, a Taiwanese technology company. Company executives told journalists after the attack that their company did not manufacture the buzzers. The company said it had licensed its brand to a mysterious Hungarian third party, BAC Consulting, to control the manufacturing process. Gold Apollo has announced its intention to sue BAC for reputational damage caused by the explosion.
The transceiver involved was apparently a model developed by the Japanese company Icom, which also denied manufacturing it. Icom officials said the particular model of transceiver involved had not been manufactured in the past 10 years, but pointed to a shady Chinese e-commerce site where counterfeit models can be easily and cheaply obtained in large quantities.
“In China, there are dozens of stores selling Icom-branded transceivers on e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba.com, Taobao, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo, including the IC-V82 model. '' said news agency Reuters. This was discovered during the investigation following the explosion in Lebanon.
Reuters later reported that the transceivers may have been “contaminated with a highly explosive compound known as PETN” during the manufacturing process.
Following revelations that Chinese manufacturers may be linked to Hezbollah's targeted attacks, experts said compromising Chinese products in complex supply chains is a serious threat. american “We should be wary of continuing to rely on Chinese supply chains for critical goods in our economy.”
“This exposes the kinds of risks we've had with hardware and software operating in countries of concern,” said Mark Montgomery, former policy director for the Senate Armed Services Committee. . said of Washington Post.
The attack involved much smaller equipment, but of particular concern is electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, which China is increasingly cornering. For example, the China Strategic Risk Research Institute (CSRI) warned in a report this month that the UK government was creating national security vulnerabilities by selling a growing share of EVs in the country to Chinese companies. .
