"The Resistance Wire Network"

This is just too sci-fi crosses real-world to pass up. Apparently, a dispute over a private network “lies at the heart of the crisis that pushed Lebanon to the brink of civil war [last] week.”

See here:

“In the past six months [Hezbollah] have developed a huge, octopus-sized network covering the whole of Lebanon, entering areas where there are no Shiite headquarters in what appears to be the creation of a parallel Iranian network in Lebanon,” Hamade said in an interview.

But Hezbollah regards the network as an integral part of its defensive network against Israel and demonstrated over the past week that it was prepared to wage war against fellow Lebanese to protect its existence.

Enraged by the government’s decision to investigate the network, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah gave the green light to his forces to attack mostly Sunni West Beirut.

…

Addressing journalists live via a televised link to a venue in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs that he said was made possible only by the existence of the network, Nasrallah described the telephone lines as a vital component in Hezbollah’s ability to defend Lebanon against Israel, by enabling Hezbollah members to communicate with one another with minimal risk of eavesdropping.

“The wire network is not only part of the resistance arsenal but the most important part of the resistance arsenal,” he said. Hezbollah fighters also used mobile and radio communications during the war, but those technologies are vulnerable to electronic interception and jamming, Nasrallah said. “Therefore, we have the wire network … the resistance wire network,” he said.

To quote again from one of Bruce Sterling’s sci-fi works, The Zenith Angle:

“You haven’t heard the good part yet. The fourth plane missed the White House. That was their last target: economic, military, and finally political. They missed the White House because passengers attached them inside the fourth plane. Their families got through to them on cell phones.” Jeb lowered his growl. “That is gonna be the future of this story, Van. It’s phones versus razors. It’s out networks versus their death cult. For as long as that takes.”

Indeed.