U.S. And U.K. F-35 Jets Include 'Core' Circuit Boards From Chinese-Owned Company

[GURPS]

"We are not aware of any other Chinese-owned F-35 suppliers at this time," Lockheed Martin said after the U.K.'s Sky News reported that "a Chinese-owned company is making circuit boards for the top-secret next-generation F-35 warplanes flown by Britain and the United States." British MP Bob Seely, who sits on both the Foreign Affairs and Arms Export Controls Committees described the news as "breath-taking," warning that "it's not a question of is this bad, but how bad is it?" This was echoed by Sir Gerald Howarth, a former U.K. defense minister, who warned that "we have been completely and utterly naive about the role of China and it is only now that people are beginning to wake up."

In truth, though, this revelation has been hiding in plain sight. The U.K. company, Exception PCB, was acquired by Shenzhen Fastprint in 2013, "a company based in China and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange." Exception openly heralds its global parent: "The Fastprint Group of Companies provides manufacturing sites in the U.K., U.S. and Asia, trading companies in the U.K., U.S., Israel, China and main EU Countries," as well as "truly global support... for all sectors including Aerospace."


https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...n-u-s-and-u-k-f-35-fighter-jets/#1a6e961225c0

 

[PrchJrkr]

That's not asking for trouble, now is it?

 

[GWguy]

Wasn't unwanted embedded code in Chinese circuit boards a thing a few years back?

 

[Hijinx]

They never learn.

 

[GURPS]

Wasn't unwanted embedded code in Chinese circuit boards a thing a few years back?

Code Hell ..... Supermicro found a microchip added to server motherboards not part of the original design


The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental’s national security contracts weren’t the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon’s government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA.


To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental’s security, according to one person familiar with the process. The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS to take a closer look at Elemental’s main product: the expensive servers that customers installed in their networks to handle the video compression. These servers were assembled for Elemental by Super Micro Computer Inc., a San Jose-based company (commonly known as Supermicro) that’s also one of the world’s biggest suppliers of server motherboards, the fiberglass-mounted clusters of chips and capacitors that act as the neurons of data centers large and small. In late spring of 2015, Elemental’s staff boxed up several servers and sent them to Ontario, Canada, for the third-party security company to test, the person says.

 

[Yooper]

I find stories like this (and the US Cyber Command malware story also posted today) really interesting.

We have no way of knowing if stuff is actually leaked and the USG is actually pissed or "leaked" on purpose.

The Cyber Command malware story is wonderfully delicious because of hoops the Russian government will have the power grid industry jumping through to see if what is being reported actually is. But even if a report gets back to the Kremlin that nothing was found that doesn't mean "it" isn't actually there....

This F-35 story is one I bet wanted to be let alone or did it...?

Let alone because if it had been known for a while "we" may have been using it to feed avionics disinformation back to the Chinese. Note that the board in question supposedly is central to "everything." Or maybe we played that card long enough and now it's more advantageous to announce it.

I don't have any insider info on any of this. Just trying to look at the when, the how, the what, etc. and seeing if I see anything. At a minimum I see some excellent offensive info ops in play. And it seems to me that one thing is common to both stories: using Russian and Chinese arrogance and paranoia against them.

FWIW.

--- End of line (MCP)

 

[GURPS]

We have no way of knowing if stuff is actually leaked and the USG is actually pissed or "leaked" on purpose.

yeah SuperMicro strongly denied the Business Insider Story ... but then of course they would

 

[BernieP]

They never learn.

You can blame someone who got promoted because they theoretically saved the government money.
Someone who had the power to ignore the experts and approve the purchase.