Chinese Government Hacking the U.S. Military with Counterfeit Computer Chips

Would it surprise anyone to know that computer chips used in the production of U.S. Military equipment are frequently purchased from China? Instead of manufacturing computer chips in the United States for highly sensitive, and secret technology. The U.S. military outsources sensitive material to a potential adversary, financing Chinese manufacturing with American Tax dollars

As far back as 2008 there has been issues with using Chinese computer chips for U.S. Military hardware. A high percentage of the chips used by the Military were found to have been counterfeit, and even more critical is the possibility of the Chinese government infecting chips with computer viruses, and hackable back doors. A quote from the Guardian which reported on this subject over 10 years ago,"Robert P. Ernst, who heads research into counterfeit parts for the Naval Air Systems Command's Aging Aircraft Program in Patuxent River, Md. Ernst estimates that as many as 15% of all the spare and replacement microchips the Pentagon buys are counterfeit. As a result, he says, "we are having field failures regularly within our weapon systems—and in almost every weapon system."

Even though in 2008 Chinese electronics proved to have a high percentage of fake chips that failed in critical military systems it was four years later in 2012, and there were dozens of investigative reports showing that the U.S.Government still allowed Chinese manufactures to supply computer chips for U.S. Defense Contractors, and the counterfeit issue was still prevalent. A report by Business Insider in 2012 stated the following," A recent Senate report, titled Inquiry Into Counterfeit Electronic Parts In The Department Of Defense Supply Chain, "uncovered overwhelming evidence of large numbers of counterfeit parts making their way into critical defense systems."

The investigation found 1,800 cases of counterfeit electronic parts involving over one million suspect parts in 2009-10 alone, thereby exposing "a defense supply chain that relies on hundreds of unveiled independent distributors to supply electronic parts for some of our most sensitive systems."

Louis P. Feuchtbaum, who is a former assistant district attorney in the Bronx, and is an expert on electronic fraud, laid down this bombshell analysis on why the U.S. Government should only use chips manufactured in the U.S.for Military equipment,"
Let's say an entity, maybe China, has adverse security interests to the United States. The U.S. does its analysis and says 'In this region of the world where there is conflict, we have the following defense resources... so we could go ahead and feel safe that we have enough deterrents there.The calculus would be changed a lot if the other country looked and said 'Yeah, they've got all these resources here but we know that their bombs aren't going to work, their planes aren't going fly, that we could invade their communications, that we can disrupt their supply chains once we go in the back door and … shut down those functionalities.'"

In 2010 the U.S.Navy bought 59,000 chips from Chinese manufacturers. They were to be used for a multitude of projects including missles. Not only were the chips fake, they had back doors built in to them, and could be remotely shutdown.

These are only the cases of counterfeit chips in military hardware that were found out. How many hacked chips with back doors are built into aircraft, and servers?

Now In 2018 with China having an obvious reputation for counterfeit hacked chips for well over a decade, the mother of all technical catastrophes has hit not only the U.S. Military, but the Commercial market. Bloomberg BusinessWeek wrote an earth shattering report that ties the Chinese government with inserting hacked micro chips into the most sensitive servers of the CIA and U.S. Businesses

Excerpts from the Bloomberg BusinessWeek:"Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.

This attack was something graver than the software-based incidents the world has grown accustomed to seeing. Hardware hacks are more difficult to pull off and potentially more devastating, promising the kind of long-term, stealth access that spy agencies are willing to invest millions of dollars and many years to get"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

This recent case of China infecting major classified networks without a doubt is the biggest case of,"No Shit Sherlock". Corporate America and members of the U.S. Government have sold the U.S. people out for profit on a scale that is Treasonous,and unimaginable. Now that our most secretive, and sensitive hardware and networking have been hacked by the Chinese Government for Decades, maybe we will reinvest in the United States and create high paying tech jobs, and keep our intellectual secrets, and our hardware free from foul play by foriegn actors.

https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-chinese-microchips-weapons-could-have-been-shut-off-2011-6

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-pentagon-rsquo-s-seek-and-destroy-mission-for-counterfeit-electronics/

https://www.businessinsider.com/counterfeit-parts-from-china-raise-grave-concerns-for-both-us-companies-and-national-security-2012-6

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2008/oct/06/security.china

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-trust-the-chinese-to-make-microchips-for-the-military-1509059023

This is a Patriot Uprising Production
By: Nate Powers
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