Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear.
That shortfall is viewed with concern by current and former United States military and intelligence agency executives who argue that the menace of so-called Trojan horses hidden in equipment circuitry is among the most severe threats the nation faces in the event of a war in which communications and weaponry rely on computer technology.
As advanced systems like aircraft, missiles and radars have become dependent on their computing capabilities, the specter of subversion causing weapons to fail in times of crisis, or secretly corrupting crucial data, has come to haunt military planners. The problem has grown more severe as most American semiconductor manufacturing plants have moved offshore.
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Wasn’t the Canadian Navy dependent on the USSR for vacuum tubes for the electronics in some of it’s older naval vessels. (Vessels that have long since retired I believe, but it was during times when the USSR wasn’t particularly friendly.)
mid island mike
Mmmm? If I recall …
* During the 1st Gulf War the Iraqi military “lost” communications,
* Caused by telecom interference,
* From a chip inside their Xerox printers.