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Chinese Hackers Steal Top US Weapons Designs
n1ywb writes "Chinese hackers have gained access to the designs of many of the nation's most sensitive advanced weapons systems, according to a report prepared for the Defense Department and government and defense industry officials,The Washington Post reported Tuesday. The compromised weapons designs include, among others, the advanced Patriot missile system, the Navy's Aegis ballistic missile defense systems, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter." Also (with some more details and news-report round-up) at SlashBI.
The question is - was the information really that sensitive, or was it the stuff not sensitive enough to be considered classified?
To get anything more sensitive than FOUO, these "hackers" would have had to physically infiltrate a facility, break NSA Type 1 crypto protocols (in which case the DoD would be shitting their pants), or compromise someone with access to such information.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm a British nobody and I knew that. It was all over the news a couple of months ago. Here we are.
Which demonstrates further that almost all classification is about hiding secrets from ones own citizens.
It makes sanctions, import tariffs and laws like the Patriot Act II much easier to enable.
How can you possibly equate tariffs w/ Patriot Act N? Last time I checked the federal government clearly has the power to levy tariffs, and in the last 200+ years nobody has come up with a decent argument for how they interfere w/ civil liberties. By contrast Patriot Act N is another step in turning that troublesome Bill of Rights into toilet paper.
No, not defense spending. US military spending, which despite the Orwellian terminology used to describe it, has been predominately offensive in the past decade. The US spends about 4.8% of GDP on military spending, more than double the next largest (China), with about 2%.
The US spends about 20% GDP on social programs (from here) - below the OECD member average.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law