Communications Backdoor in Chinese Power Inverters

This is a weird story:

U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said.

[…]

Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have also been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers, one of them said.

Reuters was unable to determine how many solar power inverters and batteries they have looked at.

The rogue components provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences, the two people said.

The article is short on fact and long on innuendo. Both more details and credible named sources would help a lot here.

Tags: , , ,

Posted on May 16, 2025 at 9:55 AM • 29 Comments

Comments

Technotron • May 16, 2025 10:32 AM

The Israelis had planned explosives in pager batteries. Here we find radios. We need a complete architectural specification, approval and audit at the component level for everything we purchase for our critical infrastructure – from any nation.

Ray Dillinger • May 16, 2025 11:10 AM

See, this is the kind of thing that tariffs can and should be applied to. This is a foreign power, clearly setting up a capability to attack the infrastructure and communications of other nations and setting up a capability (which may be in use already) of exfiltrating data from other nations. From the POV of other nations, that’s behavior that ought to be avoided and discouraged in commerce.

Devices designed to bypass firewalls and security, capable of sending data via radio, cell phone, or satellite, PARTICULARLY if those devices are also typically used in communications or industrial infrastructure, and PARTICULARLY if those devices also contain cameras and/or microphones (including unauthorized, undocumented cameras and microphones), ought to be subject to a tariff.

To avoid market shocks, I’d start it out around ten percent, raise it by another ten percent every quarter such devices are found to still be manufactured, and lower it by one percent every quarter no new such devices are found.

Unfortunately, this would include virtually all cars and cell phones manufactured today, at least three-quarters of all IOT (Internet Of Targets) devices, many baby monitors and children’s toys, and a plethora of things sourced from third countries that knowingly or unknowingly used Chinese components in their manufacture.

SeattleSipper • May 16, 2025 12:14 PM

I am remember the days when people made fun of news reports that hidden snooping chips were being embedded in motherboards by Chinese manufacturers. They may have gotten the details wrong but the underlying strategy was reported correctly.

Clive Robinson • May 16, 2025 12:20 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

I would expect to find communications in “grid equipment” it is after all what US, UK and European politicians insisted happen for “Smart Grids” and why you will find such radios in “Smart Meters” as well.

Home Solar and Wind installations tend to have Bluetooth or 900Mhz ISM band radios in then to talk back to peoples Smart Phones and central control systems. Likewise city and suburban Smart Meters to a “lamp-post or pillar-box” in the street.

Why? Because it saves a lot of money in installation and maintenance of home systems. Remember the US UK and European Governments want “smart grids” and so the ability to control your house hold appliances like electric water heaters, fridges and freezers and obviously all those new shinny heat pumps they are trying to ram down peoples throats. Because domestic electrical demand is rising and nobody wants to pay to upgrade “the grid” to meet “peek capacity” thus by controling “the load” they can get as much as ten times the number of users on the same back spur just by time shifting when the appliance is on or off.

Look at it this way lets say 10 fridges draw 1 amp each about 2minutes in approximately a thirty minute period. If they are time synced and capped you know the total load will only be 1 amp running maximum and a peak of 5-10 times that for the start up which will be time phased apart.

This the I^2R “heating loss” in the back spur is kept down.

However if the fridges are not synced and capped then you can get all the fridges on at the same time hence 10 amp running load, but consider the peek startup load could be as high as 100amps or more if they cause the line voltage to brown out. This high “in rush” or “startup” current is a consiquence of the likes of DC or AC motors and most Switch Mode Power Supplies.

Switch mode power supplies and DC motors made with rare earth magnets are modern features of domestic appliances because their high efficiencies are the only way to meet “The Energy Star” ratings legislated

However Bluetooth and ISM band radios have a quite limited “reliable range” of maybe 25-100ft with both antennas at ground level.

Thus for larger systems 2G and later GSM radios are used which work in nearly all first world cities and urban areas and quite a few rural areas.

Now from a manufacturing perspective the way to add the plethora of radio communications including the newer LoRa systems is to use a “common chip” to cut inventory and development costs…

Such chips are known as “Systems on a Chip”(SoC) and they are so ubiquitous that they end up in even hand hair dryers and the irons you use for making your cloths look presentable. Oh and yes they have also been used in “sex toys” to do remote control from a mobile phone.

This is the promise of regulated Smart Grids and Smart Devices/appliances in “Smart Homes” on “Smart Grids” for governments and corporations. Oh and don’t forget all those “Internet of Things”(IoT) devices as well.

I’ve been warning about this on this blog for more than a decade or so now.

BECAUSE it robs you of control, and makes you easily prey to full on surveillance from outside your front door or in a can/car just down the street…

So which Government scares you more?

The US, UK, European and other Western Democracies that mandated by law and regulation to make “Smart Grids” and “Smart Homes” so that corporates could off load jobs and maintainer/upgrade costs whilst adding new surveillance and data to be sold to brokers. Thus making national security incredibly fragile for forty pieces of silver

Or foreign governments “robbing Peter to play for Paul” and keep their citizens happy via transnational grid “energy wars”. Something that was the first rumours in the MSM about the South West of Europe going dark due to a massive power failure. Caused in part by “safety features” and “cascade failures” that the politicians do not want to put their hand upto as being the root cause…

Or Russia and China flexing their weapons arms. More than two millennium ago “water wars” that were stopping rivers flowing, or poisoning wells etc, was a common form of the original meaning of “terrorism” and the Roman Empire was fairly skilled at practicing it in many ways.

Today we see India using Water War Terrorism on Pakistan similar being used on people in the middle east. Russia using “Energy wars” on European nations and others using it against the likes of China, North Korea and small Middle East and Eastwards nations from Italy right round to the West Pacific Coast.

As the Roman commenter Cicero observed,

“Silent enim leges inter arma”

(‘The law falls silent in times of arms’ i.e. civil conflict/war any abuse is permissible).

So remember the sage advice,

“No government is a friend of the people or those it has an obligation to protect.”

tfb • May 16, 2025 1:28 PM

Is it a weird story? The US is being run by a group of people who think climate change is a hoax and oppose attempts to generate electricity by solar & wind. A group of people who really, really hate China. A group of people who have a … limited … regard for the truth.

And now we are being told a rather vague story about backdoors being found in components of solar & wind infrastructure made in China. How very odd.

It could be real, but it very much could also be not.

lurker • May 16, 2025 2:05 PM

@Bruce
“The article is short on fact and long on innuendo. Both more details and credible named sources would help a lot here.”

That was my first reaction too. I’m with @Clive here, “we” asked for these comms gizmos in there, and “we” didn’t realize what we aere asking for.

Dave • May 16, 2025 4:07 PM

@tfb: It’s a story about US paranoia, not imaginary Chinese spy devices.

Incidentally, my US-sourced solar panels also have these horrible spy devices in them. They report power produced, cell temperature, cell health, and all sorts of other nefarious stuff. I can monitor their output with an app.

ResearcherZero • May 17, 2025 12:04 AM

China builds much of the equipment that is installed in data centers as well. There are so many vested interests and such a rush to build that many basic physical security features were ignored. There are calls for protections from large explosive type threats.

Data centers not secure against espionage or conventional threats.

‘https://time.com/7279123/ai-datacenter-superintelligence-china-trump-report/

Build data centers in small towns in case of a hail of thermonuclear hell-fire! 😀
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/former-google-ceo-suggests-building-data-centers-in-remote-locations-in-case-of-nation-state-attacks-to-slow-down-ai/

Long established security protocols are being ignored in the rush to build.
https://ainowinstitute.org/news/announcement/new-report-on-the-national-security-risks-from-weakened-ai-safety-frameworks

Ignore the small threats, don’t regulate and just give us money! 😉
https://www.heritage.org/homeland-security/commentary/congress-should-stop-researching-data-center-threats-and-start

ResearcherZero • May 17, 2025 12:19 AM

The planned expansion of these projects across America is massive in scale, with lots of places to install things and many gaps in security to ignore for more interesting matters.

‘https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-whats-in-stargate-the-usd500-billion-trump-endorsed-plan-to-power-u-s/

Small private sector deal launches fun new AI surveillance state with memes and therapy.
https://www.theverge.com/policy/665685/ai-therapy-meta-chatbot-surveillance-risks-trump

Musk and DOGE team members now have access to (your) non-public, sensitive private data.
https://www.epi.org/publication/trump-is-enabling-musk-and-doge-to-flout-conflicts-of-interest-what-is-the-potential-cost-to-u-s-families/

Clive Robinson • May 17, 2025 3:08 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

With regards the Heritage Foundation article you link to…

It’s my considered opinion that either,

1, The authors do not understand the subject matter.
2, The authors hope the readers do not understand the subject matter.

I suspect that you think it’s option two because you say,

“Ignore the small threats, don’t regulate and just give us money! ;-)”

Implying they are acting like con-artists / fraudsters (which mostly they are).

I could go through the article line by line pointing out –lets be polite– “the errors” being used to push the “agenda”… But bearing in mind are pushing so many, I shall limit it to,

Bare in mind that they are talking about high energy ionised particle physics events when talking about solar weather events and nuclear weapons events. And conflating the two which have very different characteristics thus different preventative techniques required. Worse they likewise further conflate with “radiant energy” devices that are non ionising and essentially work by “heating effects” in the target device thus yet again very different preventative techniques from ionised particle events.

But they demonstrate their complete lack of understanding when they say,

“The harder, costlier sell is convincing Congress to retrofit existing data centers to protect them from such attacks. But given the national security concerns involved, Congress should seriously consider providing funding for these protections.”

When you consider with understanding what is being protected against, you quickly realise that the only way to “retrofit existing data centers” is to in fact “entomb” them much like they have tried to do with the Chernobyl sarcophagus,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant_sarcophagus

And importantly that was a failure and had to be “augmented” with a new vastly more immense structure,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement

At a cost that would today exceed $4billion and require a “cleared around ground area” over 25 times that of the existing data center…

You can see why Microsoft was investigating putting data centers on the seabed and others in existing nuclear defense structures built under ground or inside mountains. Whilst others are actively building in disused salt and coal mines.

I could go on to talk about what would be required to protect the megawatts of energy supply and vast amounts of water required for cooling, but what would be the point you would quickly realise it would be impractical.

The thing is the big problem nobody wants to talk about is the energy density caused by the speed of light issues. You can find a little of it mentioned as “Heat Death” in semiconductor chips. And to cool the chip packages those curious “heat pipe” structures used in “Gamer PC’s”. Both of which are a tiny fraction of what is needed for a data center rack for Current US AI LLM and ML systems.

The average US home of 2700 square foot has an electricity use in a year of just under 11,000 kilowatt hours or just a little over 1.25kW continuously. With more than 9/10ths of that to do with generating or moving heat around it’s internal volume of ~22,000 cubic feet (two floors of 37*37 floor area and 8ft head hight). But that is less than 1/800th of the ~1MW or so they are talking about for each data center server AI rack that is about 50cubic feet in volume.

So the energy density of the future US AI rack is about 350,000 times that of a current US family home… You can see why heat might be a bit of a problem.

The simple take away is that there can not be any “retrofit” of existing data centers to make them either Nuclear or Solar ionising event proof, and that is without considering the thorny issue of thermal management…

They may be climate change deniers but each year the average temperature goes up, and the thermal energy from a data center needs as high a temperature differential as possible to get rid of the energy. The chips in those racks do not want to get over 50C which is in effect the max temp with ambient temperature the min, which in summer is getting to 30C… So that differential is rapidly getting smaller.

tfb • May 17, 2025 5:54 AM

By the way, if these things have cellular radios, they’re presumably talking to a cellular network. Which, in the US, is … run by the US. You can know if they’re phoning home: you may not know who they are phoning exactly, but you can know that they are.

Clive Robinson • May 17, 2025 8:53 AM

@ tfb,

With regards,

“Which, in the US, is … run by the US.”

Not according to the

“CCP are everywhere theory.”

That is prevalent in certain political and related circles.

Think back and Remember the claims that two manufacturers of Telecoms Equipment (ZTE Huawei) were putting “secret back doors” in exchange and mobile phone equipment?

They then built up an echo chamber in those circles and eventually,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63764450

Hence the commanded pulling out of 5G infrastructure equipment including passive antennas…

Nothing was ever demonstrated let alone proved[1]… that is there was nothing anyone could find, and recognize, even though the UK equivalent of the NSA were given a seat for oversight in the design and manufacture of the equipment.

But that did not stop US politicians insisting that “5G had to go” along with an infantile chant. And as some have indicated at the same time we started sliding into a recession in the West.

[1] The problem is that,

“Beyond trivial examples you can not prove something does not exist”

And to rub that in, two things in nature you’ve probably seen “Black Swans” and “Orange Cats” show that even boring Nature does things in odd ways (just remember “brown is not a colour but a shade of orange”).

Then consider what the US and UK Sig Int agencies got upto putting backdoors not just in equipment but into standards with that “Dual Eliptic Curve Random Bit Generator”(Dual_EC_DRBG),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

Being “in standard” for something like seven years till the embarrassment forced NIST to re-issue the standard sans Dual_EC_DRBG. The SigInt agencies had pushed it ‘in standard” in “plain sight” and have tried pushing other “suspicious algorithms” since. For the likes of low power computing communications (think to use in embedded systems like “Smart Meters” and other infrastructure control).

It kind of says more about the behaviour of the SigInt agencies in the West than it does about other nations.

tfb • May 17, 2025 2:33 PM

@Clive

I think I agree. It’s reds under the bed but these reds are Chinese, not Russian (who, somehow, are now to be supported?). And very conveniently forbidding the use of the Chinese technology helps non-Chinese suppliers, who I’m sure are not arranging for money to arrive in the pockets of people who work for the various security services.

Edward Huff • May 17, 2025 4:36 PM

Recall that it was necessary to literaly destroy a very large utility generator (purchased for that purpose) before the people in authority would believe that an internet attack could harm generation equipment. Recall how they did it: the generator was commanded to operate 180° out of phase.

Now think about what would happen to the generators and transformers on the grid if a large number of small inverters switched phase simultaneously. How long would it take to replace 10 large transformers?

Of course the inverters have to be able to adjust their phase. Of course they have to connect to the internet. Of course the hardware, firmware, and software are obtained on a low budget.

It doesn’t even require commands from the CCP to cause such vulnerabilities. Hopefully someone is watching for this. Oh, did they just get fired?

lurker • May 17, 2025 5:59 PM

@Edward Huff, ALL

Remember what @Clive keeps reminding us, these machines DO NOT need to be connected to The Internet. There are other ways that “we” can remotely control these machines, but they require more clear thinking and hard work. Once again convenience has beaten¶ security.

¶ it’s starting to get annoying trying to find appropriate synonyms for that handy little verb t—p.

Clive Robinson • May 18, 2025 5:04 AM

@ lurker, ALL,

With regards, the comment from the Guardian article,

“We designed this building for lots of contingencies, but we didn’t design it for war”

Some might say that was “short sighted” bearing in mind when it was built back in the 20-teens there were already significant signs Russia was going to act the way it has subsequently done.

The real reason for not including “war” in the planning, was the over arching shelter would not have been built if it was as the cost would have ment it could not be funded.

Even now we do not design nuclear facilities for “war” just the dropping of a 747 jumbo on them.

If we consider things in the light of Chernobyl and Fukushima disaster “events”, we should ask questions especially as War in the South China Seas and West Pacific region around Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam looks increasingly likely. Then add in the “normalising of action” of the fact that Israel routinely commits “Primary acts of war” by bombing nuclear energy sites in countries in the Middle East. It’s clear to see there is a potential trend to using nuclear sites as “targets of denial”. The modern equivalent of “salting the land” and “poisoning the wells” from Roman times and earlier.

The Chernobyl and Fukushima disaster “events”, with the first “man made” and the second by “force of nature”. So far are the only two nuclear disaster events classified by the “International Atomic Energy Agency”(IAEA) at the highest level (7) for such such event, but “For how much longer?”

I mentioned here the other day that increasing numbers of supposed “Superpowers” nolonger regard nuclear weapons as “Strategic Defence” weapons but now battlefield level “tactical” weapons. This was due to China, India, and Pakistan over the contested areas of Kashmir.

China has built many “Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles”.

It is now probably the worlds leader on delivery systems using “hypersonic maneuverable” missiles (think of them like a non ballistic path Mach 5 Cruise missile).

And like as not China also has tactical nuclear devices with “Smart Weapon” capabilities that can be dropped from aircraft or fired by MLRS or larger calibre field artillery such as highly mobile “self Propelled Guns” with indirect fire out to 100kM range so capable of being used outside of normal battlefield artillery range.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_artillery

India is known to have developed nuclear devices in response to China, so likely has tactical nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

As for Pakistan they are known to have a very limited number of strategic nuclear defence weapons to “discourage” both India and their nuclear backers Russia.

There was a general feeling that the whole recent Kashmir incident was a “pretext action” by India’s current leader to start a war to take attention away from his domestic failings. However the early loss of a top line Indian fighter aircraft made public by the World MSM appears to have ramped up attention in India thus caused a “cooling effect”. But many thought the risk was high that India would “go nuclear” due to India’s actions.

The almost certain result is Pakistan will rethink it’s strategic nuclear defence storage and readiness in a way that will make it less susceptible to attack by India or others. But over all less secure against other threats.

mw • May 19, 2025 2:07 AM

Simply snaip the cable to the antenna and nothing is transmitted any more. but this is not a problem of chinese source this is a worldwide problem. Everyone and every nation is spying on us. Do not use cloud connected devices anyway. Every wireless device needs an antenna and these devices give us a hint what’s “hidden” in the gadget. It seems a big problem if an inverter calls “home” but billions are using Microsoft software which continously spies on us and Microsoft may switch it off anytime. Crazy.

Ian Stewart • May 19, 2025 8:51 AM

I wonder how many care? When President Biden won the presidential election in 2020, the Guardian newspaper said that now President Trump has gone, perhaps the British Government could get Huawei to build the U.K.’s 5G network. The new Chinese Embassy is planned to be built over the communication cables the Security Services use.

I am British and come from an Armed Forces family, I can assure you most people I know couldn’t care less about internet or data security. I know of someone who is involved in highly political activities which would be of interest to both the British and U.S. intelligence services – she uses a Yahoo email address. Her political ally in America uses a Gmail address. Neither understand security.

Clive Robinson • May 19, 2025 2:31 PM

@ mw,

With regards,

“… billions are using Microsoft software which continously spies on us and Microsoft may switch it off anytime.”

Which is maybe why millions of Chinese run Win XP still…

The figures are hard to gauge because many are running “EPOS / Embedded” versions that have been tweeked, but several million are running vanilla XP with just a few mods. But again there are “licence key issues” that is why few Chinese ever installed “Genuine Advantage”.

If memory serves XP goes back to the turn of the century, and many regard it as being the “Last Windows” of what is now called “the legacy era” as Vista was the cludge that heralded much that people hate about Win 10 and now Win 11.

As I sometimes joke,

“I’ve no opinion on Win 10, as I’ve never run it longer than it takes the time to remove it.”

For most ordinary people all they really need is,

1, A bootable OS.
2, Some external connectivity.
3, A modernish web browser.

The next tier up,

4, An Office style product.
5, A sensible EMail client.

Some might require,

6, Support for gaming.

Whilst others need,

7, Hobby related CAD / CAM.

All other uses by ordinary people are a tiny fraction and of fairly niche use.

The exception of course are the “computer language nerds” who need tool chains and libraries for every known language from BASIC to the latest ding-bat generator via BrainF–k.

The thing is the real risks are the use of the OS junk and Internet with pulling down “free-Apps” that bring in vulnerabilities of various forms.

It is possible to get quite a chunk of modern software to run on Win XP which has fewer vulnerabilities than most would think, thus much to most peoples surprise they don’t need the upgraded hardware, OS, etc. The hard part is putting protection in for connectivity / communications. Importantly back in Win XP time there was next to nothing Microsoft could turn off remotely, or steal PII etc with. Not so Win 11.

In the old days of the early Internet before Microsoft stole the TCP/IP code from BSD, stoping the user side vulnerabilities was done with OS Hardening and with proxies and similar that acted as gateways. Some people still do that to get rid of Ads and similar garbage.

As noted earlier to today someone realised that Newspapers out of the Murdoch stable are 95-99.9% adds, tracking and similar even though there is an over priced paywall and most of the dribble of information is actually plagiarized from non paywalled sources of higher quality. The Murdochs will eventually do it by AI, but at the moment humans are still less costly for them to abuse…

If you use a suitable public proxy then browsing becomes way more pleasant and responsive, and you might even get misty eyed for the old days.

As for OS’s look at the *nix ones but try to avoid those like Ubuntu that try and force users down a “Microsoft like route” with the horrendous work of “Agent P” stealing RAM and CPU cycles and making vulnerabilities way easier.

According to The Register, Agent P has “visions”,

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/06/14_years_of_systemd/

But just remember when AI had “visions” we call them “hallucinations” or more correctly “Soft Bullshit”. So I suspect the latter term is more appropriate for “Agent P” who has gone “South of the border down Microsoft way”,

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/07/lennart_poettering_red_hat_microsoft/

Where stealing RAM and CPU cycles is a respected trait and something that is a recognised hallmark of Agent P’s work (who remembers PulseAudio?).

ResearcherZero • May 21, 2025 11:03 PM

@Clive Robinson

The Heritage Foundation ignored the electrical grid connected to said data centers.

If you are adding trillions to the deficit, what is a few billion here and there? The Golden Doh is at least a trillion on its own. They are not concerned with accurate forecasting, as none of the systems will hit their marks. There will be a few purpose built tests filmed in optimal conditions to show one successful short-range strike as PR. Photos of men installing mesh in high-viz to insulate sights from the cosmic rays, or foil, or something that looks like foil and is painted silver at least. Amber and crystals maybe?
But we all do not live in a cult and they are probably expensive setups to run.

Everyone’s’ data will end up on those servers. Government agency and department databases, private contracting data from surveillance companies, credit, finance, health, education…

Holes will be dug. Concrete poured and pumped. Animations and mock-ups. Money transferred.

While that is going on, the data centers will be penetrated and the data exfiltrated.

–

Nearly all of SK Telecom’s data was accessed over a three year period. IMSI data appears to have also been compromised – after more than two dozen servers were stealthily infiltrated.

‘https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10490627

The intrusions first began in 2022 and went unnoticed until 2024.
25 types of personal information were leaked from the company’s databases.
https://pulse.mk.co.kr/news/english/11322569

Red Menshen is suspected of compromising the USIM server with custom versions of BPFDoor.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-05-20/englishStudy/bilingualNews/SK-Telecom-hack-exposes-data-of-26-million-subscribers-over-three-years-KOR/2311248

Red Menshen specializes in long-term espionage and persistence operations.
https://www.trendmicro.com/zh_hk/research/25/d/bpfdoor-hidden-controller.html

Clive Robinson • May 22, 2025 12:06 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

With regards,

“Photos of men installing mesh in high-viz to insulate sights from the cosmic rays, or foil, or something that looks like foil and is painted silver at least. Amber and crystals maybe?”

NASA are looking to stop cosmic radiation giving astronauts cancer and worse outside of the Earths magnetosphere on say a trip to Mars by use of Hydrogen in a suitable / useful and mostly safe high density form, that you might know as water.

So maybe we should build all these data centers on the ocean floor right next to “Off shore Wind Farms” and even those “wave energy extraction” systems.

Only what to do about Chinese tankers… That have lazy Russian crews that keep dropping anchors over the side. Oh and those Chinese cheap AI run submersibles with their deed sea cable cutting equipment or shaped charge mines…

As you further note,

“Everyone’s’ data will end up on those servers. Government agency and department databases, private contracting data from surveillance companies, credit, finance, health, education…”

Yup, as was once said in an Issac Asimov short story “The Dead Past”,

“Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone, and may each of you fry in hell forever.”

Or if you prefer,

“Welcome to the 21st century Panopticon where your cell is your cell.”

Ronda Davidson • May 23, 2025 9:06 AM

Look, supply chain security is real, and nobody wants a backdoor to the grid. But this article reads more like a whispered rumor than a confirmed breach. We’ve got unnamed sources talking about undocumented comms modules — but zero details on how many , which models , or what exactly they do .

Until we get solid evidence, hard technical specs, and maybe a named official or engineer willing to go on record, this feels less like breaking news and more like fuel for the next tech Cold War headline. Bring us facts, not fear.

Clive Robinson • May 31, 2025 6:30 AM

@ _jim, ALL,

With regards,

“TOO BAD you can’t back that up with ANY amount of specificity or certainty.”

But you can not deny the recorded facts of those who have recorded the changes over the past century or so.

But I was not taking about the science or measurements of climate science, and not even those who have a predilection to cognitive bias (as noted by other commenters).

But since you are throwing it up in the air I will shoot it down. The two recorded facts that are easily found and verified by many sources of data are,

1, Average atmospheric temperatures are rising.
2, Weather ranges are increasing.

Now you can accept or deny those recorded facts that is a choice between you and what ever deity you might believe in.

From a technical point of view of the statistical mechanics of thermodynamics and moving thermal energy around and at what rate, those facts are quite important when you have getting on for 1MW of power usage in a standard 19inch rack as used in data centers.

You appear to have some knowledge of electronics and RF generation to what level is not clear. However look up how high power television signals are generated and how the Class AB outputs circuits of VSB systems have been cooled in the past.

And you will find a wealth of information about what I was actually talking about which is thermal management and the non system specific but highly relevant issues behind it.

Winter • May 31, 2025 9:34 AM

@ _jim

This ‘climate change’ nee global warming hoax has been in ‘motion since 1988 when James Hansen testified in congress (look it up)

You just want to make this an American Conspiracy Story. I am old and definitely not American. In early 1983, I had to do a talk to a student reading group I was part of about an article describing an early, simple global climate model. This article made predictions about the global effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels on temperatures and climate in general.

All predictions in this article have come true.

But we can go back much further back a century more to the 19th:
How 19th-Century Scientists Predicted Global Warming
‘https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/

Meanwhile, some people took a look at all the past climate models. And guess what:
Historical Climate Models Accurately Projected Global Warming
‘https://climate.mit.edu/posts/historical-climate-models-accurately-projected-global-warming

There is no “better” data than accurate predictions. And there is no one as blind as they who do not want to see.

Or as Americans use to say:
It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It.

JTC • June 15, 2025 9:39 AM

Story has apparently disappeared, at least to your link. This probably says it all, as you pointed out lack of detail, etc.

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2025 12:49 PM

@ JTC,

With regards,

“Story has apparently disappeared, at least to your link. This probably says it all, as you pointed out lack of detail, etc.”

Let me be clear,

For US regulatory and US business reasons the basic hardware to do what has been claimed, is in just about any device with a microcontroller or greater made after 2020.

That hardware is in use actively for “user convenience” to a users “mobile phone”. So the software to do it is definitely already there as well.

Due to the fact that microcontrollers are difficult to “patch” much of the functionality is done “off device in data centers” a trend that was pushed very hard by Amazon to give more profit by centralized control and user data gathering.

Terabytes of user data flow every day into data centers around the world due to XaaS.

All governments see such troves of data as “theirs by right” and the US Gov in particular has been a leader in abusive legislation to ensure it gets the data without having to pay a nickel for it.

So all of what was claimed is possible, and actually happening.

The thing is the top layer of the claim is as far as we can tell not true “currently”… but is certainly true for US Corps.

So two things to consider,

1, Who do you fear most the authoritarian Government of China or the authoritarian Government of the US?

2, Which Government can do US citizens the most harm and get away with it, the Chinese or US Government?

Now consider the warnings from WWII given by an edge participant in the propaganda war. You might know him as George Orwell, and the title of his book was selected by his editor who simply reversed the last two digits to make it “1984”.

As far as I can tell every prediction he made in that book with allowances for faster technology changes has happened. The electronic spy on citizens by their own Governments is not by compulsory TV in their home –though it is happening– but willingly carried for convenience Mobile Phone.

@ ALL,

Prophecy or Prediction?

Was Orwell a prophet? Of course not he had simply seen enough to see where human nature would go with advances in technology.

The real lessons he taught us was the “MMO of autoritarians” and “The lack of self defence or even willingness to follow by the citizens”.

What Orwell predicted happened in many states between Russia and the US with the East of Europe getting “thrown to the wolves” by the West of Europe and the US. Look at the history and you will find that it was the UK and US that were the direct cause of what is currently happening in the Ukrainian. The Ukranian’s on seeing what happened to their neighbour Belarus at least realised what fate awaited them if they did not stand up and fight back politically and eventually by armed conflict.

Now consider my comment of,

“Then add in the “normalising of action” of the fact that Israel routinely commits “Primary acts of war” by bombing nuclear energy sites in countries in the Middle East. It’s clear to see there is a potential trend to using nuclear sites as “targets of denial”. The modern equivalent of “salting the land” and “poisoning the wells” from Roman times and earlier.“

Note the date of my comment, and what the Israeli Government did just a couple of days ago to Iran,

Prophecy or prediction?

I claim “prediction by observable behaviour of the authoritarians in charge”.

Also look back further on this blog and you will find I was predicting that the US would be involved in armed conflict involving Iran or China back before Trump first got into office, and my reasons for saying so.

None of those reasons have changed for the better in fact they have all got worse quite predictably if you chose to look, which most do not.

Now consider my preceding comment above of,

“If we consider things in the light of Chernobyl and Fukushima disaster “events”, we should ask questions especially as War in the South China Seas and West Pacific region around Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam looks increasingly likely.“

Prophecy or prediction?

But remember before saying, Russia has normalised attacking nuclear facilities in war by what it has done in the Ukrainian War it started after the UK and US governments laid the ground work for the Russian Government…

The US is repeating the same stupidity with the more or less democratic nations around the South China Seas. But attempting to first “steal the pocket watches” of those nations…

Prophecy or prediction?

I claim prediction by way of “human nature” as seen for over 4000years of recorded history.

The lesson is fairly clear to me,

“What holds humanity back is stupid self obsessed authoritarians and their cults of followers wantonly supported by faux deity religions.”

Anyone care to take on an opposing view for the purposes of educational debate?

Just remember to keep politics especially party politics out of it as they rarely have positive outcomes.

Clive Robinson • June 15, 2025 3:22 PM

@JTC, ALL,

Whilst I was writing my above,

Perun posted his latest video,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xr-wqGyF4cU

I would recommend people watch it.

BUT, I would disagree with his basic premise of “Dig in and put a box over your head”

Because as I mentioned to @RrsearcherZero just a few days ago, the problem with hardened shelters is the entrance/exit.

Or to put it another way,

“If you build a Castle, it easily becomes your prison or coffin.”

It does not matter how much concrete and iron you use the weak point will always be the door.

You go deep underground and yes your bunker can stop bunker bombs, but what about the entrance and exit?

If I drop even a conventional bomb on that you are trapped, so ask who is going to come to get you out?

Drones are cheap so is the surveillance they provide especially if it is automated with little more than early 1990’s AI tech that today might cost you $10-100 in hardware.

Just leave a bunch of “ground squatting” drones behind to watch for people digging, then send a drone in to attack them. It turns into a war of attrition that the defenders will loose on head count alone.

But getting back to aircraft and similar surface shelters / bunkers, even a heavy reinforced door can quite literally be “stopped in it’s tracks” that are always vulnerable at some point. Remember anywhere a man can go so can a modern cheap drone with a half pound of explosives and a half pound of old scrap bails and screws etc. It is what a hand grenade is just slightly bigger.

Now consider a “shaped charge” or “thermite bomb” and what damage that could do to door tracks.

Also as I noted on the same thread heavy doors are slow to move. The Ukrainian attack on the Russian aircraft was so fast it was over before the Russian forces could respond.

So if I watch the hanger door I can wait untill it’s nearly finished opening then fly my “shrapnel drone” in before you can even start closing it. The shrapnel will do a lot of damage to fragile things like humans, aircraft, equipment, and stores.

Putting “nets or chain curtains up and even internal baffles won’t really help.

In the boxing world there is an expression for the “one two knockout punch” of,

“You lead with the can opener, and follow with the spoon.”

The logic is you send in one or two drones that explode on stopping. They hit a net a chain curtain or light weight baffle and they will blow a hole in it, you follow through the hole to get inside.

But also there is the “fallacy of camouflage”…

Camouflage only works on non static positions. Back in the early 1970’s UK Prof Dr R.V.Jones wrote a book called “Most Secret War”. In it he went into a lot of detail about aerial reconnaissance on German radar and beam installations and showed how “troop movments” and “barbed wire” and similar could be easily spotted by ruts in the ground and where vegetation grows differently.

From above with oblique lighting the shadows stand out like fresh blood dripping off of a hand and are as telling.

We’ve moved forward since then and various types of radar can pick up weak old boot prints in sand or other soft ground, even tracks from wheeled vehicles on hard ground.

Such radar can be put in satellites, and already is up there. Building lots of bunkers and not using them means “no foot fall” or other tracks, using them does.

The same applies to decoys even when made with genuine decommissioned aircraft. Either no tracks, or tracks that are different to active aircraft.

Such surveillance coupled to low end AI run on a single board computer as a “remote sensor head” is something I’ve discussed on this blog before.

It’s starting to happen…

As for aircraft, well they might be fun for “Top Gun” types/movies but in their current form their days are over…

Why?

Because of runways. It’s why back in the 1950’s the UK pushed ahead with VTOL and STOL aircraft, where no runway or a very short ski-jump highly transportable runway was all that was needed.

Take men and the need for landing in the same place or at all out of the equation and then agility becomes the key to success… Which is what the real lesson from the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian aircraft is all about to misquote,

“They came, they saw, they conquered, with only fall guys left to die.”

The knock on effect in Russia will ve immense and also create “new targets of opportunity”.

Consider the Russian option, they will have to set up check points etc at known places such as roads where splitting traffic is possible.

All those drivers mobile phones will bunch up and be visible to even $10 SDR radios and $50 dollar smart pads and mobile internet…

If you don’t think such things could be done to provide useful intelligence, have a look at what ADS-B on aircraft has done for not just “plane spotters” but OSInt practitioners and embarrassing US “Guard Labour” including the CIA.

It’s not just man-baby Hellon Rusk throwing the toys around over ADS-B it’s others with way way more to loose.

The simple fact is intelligence is now so inexpensive, the actual bottle neck is processing it.

And this is where current AI LLM and ML can “pull out the patterns” as fast as humans can make new ones that work. These patterns can be put into cheap 90’s AI on low cost microcontrollers for next to no cost. Building “ground squatting” “AI Stay behind” loitering weapons will be less expensive than making artillery munitions.

It’s something nobody is really talking about, but I predict it’s less than a half decade away.

But also consider “drones carrying drones. The consumer and commercial drones most of us think about can only stay in the air for a very short while.

Now consider long wing gliders and delta wing long range aircraft. They actually require little or no power once in flight and long distances and long flight times are very low cost. The same logic applies to drones that can be made quite stealth just by using plastics for the airframes and wings and batteries and motors can be so so stealthed with various “carbon loaded plastics”.

Such drones could carry one or two short range very fast attack drones.

Then there is the notion of “smart dust” intelligence gathering networks that Prof Ross J. Anderson did some academic work on with regards making the networks very resilient. Work we’ve seen carried forward into LPI node LoRa systems.

War is going to change way faster than many are going to be able to look forward at, and yes that includes me. I can make predictions based on past human behaviours, but just like George Orwell I can not see the shape of technology to come. It took less than a half century for mobile phones to become what they have become, and even though I helped in building the technology, I could not see just where it would go, just have a feeling for the direction the wind of human nature was blowing it.

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