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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: Israel Tests on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal. Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own. Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms. “To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.” Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program. In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world. The gruff Mr. Dagan, whose organization has been accused by Iran of being behind the deaths of several Iranian scientists, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties that could delay a bomb until 2015. That represented a sharp reversal from Israel’s long-held argument that Iran was on the cusp of success. The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed. In interviews over the past three months in the United States and Europe, experts who have picked apart the computer worm describe it as far more complex — and ingenious — than anything they had imagined when it began circulating around the world, unexplained, in mid-2009. Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence. In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities. Seimens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet. The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart. The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults. “It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable. Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.
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If WWIII breaks out who the hell do you think is going to be regarded as the axis powers? You get two guesses.
If WWIII breaks out who the hell do you think is going to be regarded as the axis powers? Being a tech dummy, the worm thing is over my head. Being a history person, war is coming and WE WILL HAVE NO WORTHWHILE ALLIES.
this is one thing that really concerns me this country won wwii not just out of industrial prowess, but also because it had and maintained the moral high ground with respect to its rivals germany and japan were seen as predatory, capricious and ham-handed powers, and whose rulers prosecuted policies that destructive of the aspirations of ordinary people everywhere it's said that nations do not have friends - they have allies i disagree if there is a real war, we will need people around the globe that are favorably disposed toward us we have done much over the last 20 years, in particular, to soil our reputation
Got your thinking cap on. With the next showdown, accepting it to start tween China and the US, I SEE NOT ONE COUNTRY THAT WOULD THROW IN WITH US. Not Europe, not Asia. If you do research for instance on Australia, more and more of their people and their government are for "accommodating" China and for the US to go home. Their memories are short, I recall when the Japs were bombing Darwin daily, the Aussies headed en masse south, running for their lives. All the while they were demanding we send troops to save them. Their memories are short.
Cyni, do you believe that it is in China's interest to act sooner rather than later? It seems that China is soon to lose an important buffer state between itself and the West, if you count places like S, Korea and Taiwan and Japan in that camp strategically and economically. It also has to act while it is strong. It cannot be strong if there is a collapse here because that is sure to throw China into an economic tailspin itself. That clock is ticking. The question is: Is China strong enough at the present time? Can it reach out and take Taiwan, for example?
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