>Amazon’s security team conducted its own investigation into AWS’s Beijing facilities and found altered motherboards there as well, including more sophisticated designs than they’d previously encountered.
>...the malicious chips were thin enough that they’d been embedded between the layers of fiberglass onto which the other components were attached
>...that generation of chips was smaller than a sharpened pencil tip, the person says.
I hope this corrects the mistaken believe that China can't home grow sophisticated tech.
This sounds strange but it's commonplace to make parts like this. Some DCDC converter modules have silicon dies embedded into their PCBs to save physical footprint, most notably there's a family of Texas Instruments ones which use this technique.
> I hope this corrects the mistaken believe that China can't home grow sophisticated tech.
There's nothing particularly sophisticated about what they did, especially given what China has access to as one of the central hubs of tech manufacturing. There are two dozen nations (or more) that could do this from a strictly technical standpoint (few have the kind of required supply chain access to pull it off at scale in actuality). It's the audacity that is primarily impressive. China is encouraging all of their richest trading partners to further isolate them when it comes to supply chain and advanced tech. They're confirming for the 107th time what everyone already believes.
One question though. Would a politically correct, by-the-book US president have had the balls to sanction China? Considering such sanctions could affect the US economy.
The goal, explicitly stated and often acted on in many contexts, is to disrupt international order and cooperation (including trade), and promote nationalistic competition by all countries. Recently his UN speech, for example, advocated it.
Given that there’s video from 4 decades in which Trump advocates for tariffs, during which time he wasn’t a politician, it would seem that they are something he believes strongly in.
IC fabrication and packaged component assembly are very different things. China doesn't have anything near this level of sophistication, at least not without any outside help.
>...the malicious chips were thin enough that they’d been embedded between the layers of fiberglass onto which the other components were attached
>...that generation of chips was smaller than a sharpened pencil tip, the person says.
I hope this corrects the mistaken believe that China can't home grow sophisticated tech.