In 2011, General Michael Hayden, who had earlier been director of both the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, described the idea of computer hardware with hidden “backdoors” planted by an enemy as “the problem from hell.” This month, news reports based on leaked documents said that the NSA itself has used that tactic, working with U.S. companies to insert secret backdoors into chips and other hardware to aid its surveillance efforts.
That revelation particularly concerned security experts because Hayden’s assessment is widely held to be true. Compromised hardware is difficult, and often impossible, to detect. Hardware can do things such as access data in ways invisible to the software on a computer, even security software. The possibility that computer hardware in use around the world might be littered with NSA backdoors raises the prospect that other nations’ agencies are doing the same thing, or that groups other than the NSA might find and exploit the NSA’s backdoors.
Given the size of our carriers and all the sailors and Marines on board them, might the Chinese be able to exploit this backdoor issue to condense the kill chain for their DF-21 anti-ship cruise missile into one simple link?
Let me offer a non-Manhattan Project-style and unconventional solution to China's targeting problem. What if Chinese agents placed a signalling device on the keel of an American aircraft carrier while in port? Or a homing device in the galley's coffee machine before it is installed? Or buried in the storage bins of some bulk product? What if the Chinese maneuvering ballistic missiles were designed to home in on the signal of such a device and the Chinese had a means to turn on the device when needed?
Simple. Low tech. And utterly devastating if the Chinese actually get homing ballistic missiles before we get missile defenses at sea capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.
I don't know if planting homing devices on our carriers is possible, but as long as we are looking at asymmetrical means of fighting our forces, let's think outside our technological frame of mind for how China might create such an assassin's mace.
And it could be in any of the electronic devices the crew carries aboard, no?
