U.S. intelligence agencies have begin investigating whether foreign powers and foreign intelligence services have been involved in breaking into the U.S. military supply chain.
One potential company under consideration is Chinese chip-maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).
Last week, a jury in California ruled in favor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. that had alleged that SMIC was engaged in stealing trade secrets and had violated a prior settlement agreement. SMIC could end up paying as much a $1 billion in damages.
TSMC, based in Taiwan, is a leading semiconductor "foundry" or company that provides manufacturing services to designers of computer chips. SMIC, based in Shanghai, is a younger competitor.
China specialists say the case is significant because SMIC, despite being run by a nominal “Taiwanese” Mainlander, is a majority-owned PRC government subsidiary.
What is worrisome is that virtually all U.S. semiconductor companies contract with TSMC to make their wafers.
A major concern is that China has obtained design and other technology that could allow it to penetrate U.S. weapons systems containing its microchips.
Comments
It might be even worse than that. One former Russian military affairs analyst I recently spoke to believes that a staggering number of chips in numerous applications have already been compromised. Most processors have millions of components working in tandem and the idea goes that if just a handful in every chip have been modified to fail under certain circumstances, such as an RF modulation due to a power fluctuation. Now just imagine what would occur if hundreds of millions of chips ceased functioning all at once.
Myfriendscallmetiny
5:18 a.m. / Sunday, November 29, 2009
