This is a very significant article and I hope no one misses it.
We’ve heard Will Thomas say in 2007 that Chinese microchips in American military hardware are programmed to fail under operational use.
That article is Will Thomas, “Faulty Chips Could Cripple U.S. Military” available on this site at https://tinyurl.com/26n3axw .
Now here is a second article saying the same thing.
If this is true, and this report makes it seem more likely than not, the U.S. military cannot be sure that its systems will not fail under operational conditions. That is the greatest inducement to peace that I can think of.
I’ve only reproduced the part of the article that deals with the chips. Please go to the URL indicated to read the rest.
Outsourcing Security: Defense Manufacturing Goes the Way of the Automobile
29 June 2010
by: John Lasker
t r u t h o u t
https://tinyurl.com/28hzqw5
From the microchips that fly F-16s and activate nuclear warheads, all the way down to the lowly (but deadly) bullet, more and more US military weapons are being made overseas by foreigners.
Some experts say that outsourcing defense contracts not only costs Americans jobs and America’s connection to the war, but one of the nation’s most essential assets, as well: its security.
According to William R. Hawkins, a defense expert on military contracting and former Republican Party staffer, foreigners have been manufacturing critical and sophisticated components of US weaponry for nearly 20 years now.
He says the Pentagon started outsourcing the manufacturing of “high-end” computer chips to Taiwan in the early 1990s – microchips used in US fighter jets and missile defense systems, for instance. Over time, the Taiwanese have “second-sourced” most of these contracts to the Chinese, he says.
“Can we trust buying [high-end] chips from China for our military systems? Will they perform as well?” asks Hawkins. “We have found Chinese chips do not perform as well. They’ve also found counterfeit chips in the supply chain. Can we be sure the Chinese won’t plant Trojans or bugs in them?”
Indeed, on June 13th on 60 Minutes, Jim Gosler, an expert on cyberwarfare, said the US government has uncovered sabotaged microchips within some of the nation’s most powerful weapons. “It’s very clear that a foreign intelligence service put them there,” he added.
(snip)
John Lasker is a freelance journalist from Ohio. He has written for Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Agence France-Press and the Buffalo News.
