Old Trick Threatens the Newest Weapons.

[elleng]

Despite a six-year effort to build trusted computer chips for military systems, the Pentagon now manufactures in secure facilities run by American companies only about 2 percent of the more than $3.5 billion of integrated circuits bought annually for use in military gear. . .

“Compromised hardware is, almost literally, a time bomb, because the corruption occurs well before the attack,” Wesley K. Clark, a retired Army general, wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine that warns of the risks the nation faces from insecure computer hardware.

“Maliciously tampered integrated circuits cannot be patched,” General Clark wrote. “They are the ultimate sleeper cell.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/science/27trojan.html