Ofer Laszewicki Rubin

🇪🇸🚆🇮🇱 Facts regarding the tragic railway accident that occurred in the town of Urda (Toledo): ✅ What is the key contractor responsible for the signaling and traffic-control systems on Spain’s railway network? It is called Thales Group, a French company specializing in the development of electronic systems, advanced technology, and services for three main sectors: Defense and Security, Aeronautics and Space, and Cybersecurity and Digital Identity. Thales is a major French and NATO defense contractor—it develops cybersecurity systems for Rafale fighter jets, nuclear submarines, and satellite systems—and its subsidiaries are said to include numerous former members of Israel’s elite Unit 8200, associated with the IDF’s intelligence apparatus. ✅ In Spain, Thales is responsible for technology designed to prevent trains from colliding. Wait… so what could have failed here after Thales won numerous major contracts to install and maintain signaling and safety systems on Spain’s conventional and high-speed rail networks? Adif, for example, awarded it contracts to renew the signaling and protection systems on the Madrid–Seville high-speed line in order to implement the European ERTMS standard, a highly sophisticated piece of software that appeared to be “fail-safe.” ✅ So was the Toledo catastrophe caused by a failure of this supposedly “fail-safe” software implemented by Thales, or could it have been manipulated? According to the technical architectures described by experts regarding Thales, these systems operate under the strictest safety certification in the world—SIL4, or Safety Integrity Level 4—which means that the software is mathematically designed so that the probability of a critical failure is practically nonexistent. Surprise: there was a critical failure, and it was catastrophic. ✅ Thales also uses RBC (Radio Block Centre) trackside software, which constantly calculates the Movement Authority—how far a train is permitted to travel safely—and transmits this information by radio to the train’s onboard software, or On-Board Unit. If the driver exceeds the maximum permitted speed or ignores a signal, the onboard software takes control and automatically activates the emergency brakes. So what the hell happened to that RBC? ✅ Thales also uses ARAMIS software, which supposedly manages rail traffic intelligently by monitoring train routes across the country and predictively detecting potential conflicts before they occur. All of this technology is highly automated, with practically no human intervention. So, if we accept the explanation of a “technical failure,” what exactly failed so catastrophically in the Toledo accident? ✅ One more thing to add: The security, defense, and military-technology links between Thales Group and Israel are close, and the company is a strategic partner of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, supplying components for military drones. Meanwhile, the company’s digital arm—Thales DIS, formerly Gemalto—maintains government contracts in Israel, operating as a provider of maintenance and upgrades for automated identification and biometric-identification computer systems used by the Israeli police and military in their repression of the occupied Palestinian territories.