About the Author

Richard Cochrane is trained in chemistry and metallurgy but is far more interested and practiced as a political and fund raising consultant, writer and amateur historian. He grew up in a Navy family and with his two younger brothers carried on its 500+ year tradition of naval service to Great Britain and the USA then enjoyed a career with one of the largest advertising and public relations agencies working with numerous Fortune 500 companies and many of America's premier educational institutions. He maintains friendships and acquaintanceships around the world. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

See All Posts by This Author

Has China Hacked Into F-35 Secrets?

July 11th, 2009 • Richard Cochrane
Email This Post Email This Post - Print This Post Print This Post -

f-351Following reports that China obtained secrets about the U.S. F-35 jet through computer espionage, the House Intelligence Committee has ordered the National Intelligence Council to produce a major estimate on the dangers of technology loss through vulnerabilities in the U.S. global supply chain.

Little-noticed language in the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2010, released on June 26, states that a National Intelligence Estimate on global supply chain vulnerabilities is required.

“With the growing concerns over cyber security, the Committee believes it is appropriate to focus the Intelligence Community’s attention on threats emanating from the global supply chain that provides much of the computer systems for both government and private industry,” the report states.

The report requires the office of DNI Dennis Blair to submit to Congress an estimate of the risks to national security “resulting from the presence of counterfeit electronic components that may be defective or deliberately manipulated by foreign governments or criminal organizations.”

U.S. officials in April said that Chinese hackers were able to penetrate contractor computer systems containing extremely sensitive data about the F-35 jet fighter program.

Senior U.S. defense officials confirmed that two years ago hackers breached a F-35 jet fighter program developed for the Pentagon by Lockheed Martin Corp. The Pentagon is expected to pay about $300 billion to purchase nearly 2,500 of the F-35 jets for the Air Force, Navy and Marines.

China is considered among the most aggressive cyber intelligence threats.

Compromises of valuable technical data are routinely traced to servers in Beijing. Although it has not been confirmed that the Chinese government or military were behind the penetration, U.S. counterintelligence officials have said China’s military has been known to gain valuable weapons data through electronic hacking.

The National Counterintelligence Executive will also review the “adequacy of the mechanisms to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the global supply chain that pose a risk to defense and intelligence systems due to counterfeit components that may be defective or deliberately manipulated by a foreign government or a criminal organization.”

U.S. officials said that in addition to the F-35 compromises, there are concerns that counterfeit Cisco routers discovered in the Pentagon several years ago were part of a Chinese electronic penetration operation.

There Are 2 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Jack on 26 August 2009:

    Did you write this yourself?

  2. Comment by richard on 26 August 2009:

    Jack: I routinely digest perhaps 50 sources sources ioncluding maybe 500 emails a week editing and amending for clarity and content. I do not footnote or add bibliography believing brevity is best on the internet.
    Do you have something to add?

Post a Response

You must be logged in to post a comment.