*The effort doesn't look easy.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/may08/6171
Link: IEEE Spectrum: The Hunt for the Kill Switch.
(...)
"Today only Intel and a few other companies still design and manufacture all their own chips in their own fabrication plants. Other chip designers—including LSI Corp. and most recently Sony—have gone “fabless,” outsourcing their manufacturing to offshore facilities known as foundries. In doing so, they avoid the huge expense of building a state-of-the-art fab, which in 2007 cost as much as US $2 billion to $4 billion.
"Well into the 1970s, the U.S. military's status as one of the largest consumers of integrated circuits gave it some control over the industry's production and manufacturing, so the offshoring trend didn't pose a big problem. The Pentagon could always find a domestic fab and pay a little more to make highly classified and mission-critical chips. The DOD also maintained its own chip-making plant at Fort Meade, near Washington, D.C., until the early 1980s, when costs became prohibitive.
"But these days, the U.S. military consumes only about 1 percent of the world's integrated circuits. “Now,” says Coleman, “all they can do is buy stuff.” Nearly every military system today contains some commercial hardware. It's a pretty sure bet that the National Security Agency doesn't fabricate its encryption chips in China. But no entity, no matter how well funded, can afford to manufacture its own safe version of every chip in every piece of equipment.
"The Pentagon is now caught in a bind. It likes the cheap, cutting-edge devices emerging from commercial foundries and the regular leaps in IC performance the commercial sector is known for. But with those improvements comes the potential for sabotage. “The economy is globalized, but defense is not globalized,” says Coleman. “How do you reconcile the two?”
(((With global guerrillas and global private militia companies, that's how.
All the fun and profit of ruthless warfare without the bother of nationality.)))
