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I am most afraid of dying?

62 votes, 9 comments
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RE: Most, if not all DOD electronics

Comment comment by VnutZ on 07 May 2008

The concern isn't actually that the final products are assembled and manufactured within our border, it's that the components that went into them came from abroad. If you get a chance to read the linked article (about three pages) it goes in depth about the threat.

Taken very simplistically, imagine something as simple as an RFID-like circuit hidden within the integrated circuit. It's not even necessarily a separate part of the circuit, rather just another piece of logic embedded into the design through some abstract K-mapping. A highly directed signal that happens to trigger that one logic gate activates some self-EEPROM erase or override that in turn kills that one IC (or all of those IC's within a machine). Anything dependent on it subsequently fails. It's actually ingeniously insidious and simple.

But it doesn't just have to be on the highly specialized equipment. The anger over $500 hammers leading to the usage of cheaper COTS equipment means stuff that wasn't built here is in place. Perhaps not in the vehicle, but in the equipment that relays the orders to that unit on the ground. Or, (an example from the article), an override such that encryption never happens or is weakened. The damage isn't so much from taking down a really big score, but weakening the entire effort from crippling all the little things we depend on.

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