future historians will look back at the pager attacks in Lebanon as the beginning of a new era I call it the age of intimate Warfare let me explain the thing about pages is that they’re incredibly personal they’re always with us on our bodies when the pages in Lebanon beeped some people took them out of their pockets looked at them and had their hands and their eyes blown off other people left them in their pockets and have their genitals mutilated because they’re so personal pages are exactly like our cell phones earphones smart watches whatever else you have and those things because they have better connectivity and Technology than pages are even easier to hack and to weaponize who would do that who would spend years patiently and diligently secretively worming into Global Supply chains it could be countries like China North Korea Iran Russia and of course the United States too or terrorist organizations crime syndicates and they can weaponize our cars our thermostats our fridges our printers electric toothbrushes hair dryers and yep vibrators it’s the most recent innovation in the history of warfare and will add a new twist to the hell and horror of war when the Mongols laid sieges to cities they catapulted plague infested corpses over the walls in that way they pioneered weapons that killed from the inside rather than the outside of the body we can draw a line from that tactic to today’s biological weapons and radio ological dirty bombs when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and nagazaki it demonstrated that homo sapiens can destroy entire cities countries and civilizations and even our species as a whole and on 9/11 when alada turned commercial airplanes into kamikazi missiles they erased the distinction between civilians and militants today we have all of those things and more Killer Robots autonomous Dron intimate Warfare is the new arrival it’s really a form of hybrid War the enemy doesn’t have to destroy an entire city or country they don’t even have to blow up everyone they can just take out specific groups or people say that us and China go to war suddenly all the staff members of the Pentagon get blown up while they’re driving in their cars or talking on the phone and all the rest of us would freak out wondering if we’re next for a while nobody could even prove who did it intimate Warfare changes our relationship to our objects and devices and our habits and behaviors we’ll never trust our devices again just as we already lost trust in so many other institutions and things and people and the more connected we are as individuals and societies the more vulnerable the enemy is in our pockets our houses our beds and bodies and that’s creepy