This is Tom Clancey novel Krap. Is Ol’Tom writing for the NYDit’s now? What sane, thinking person would suppose that screwing with the Persians’ computers would keep them from building a bomb? We did it without any kind of computer geek help and so can they. Their older engineer types were educated here and can figger it out.
Now I’m all for every possible effort to clusterflock the Persians-—they got it coming——but my personal preference is to use them to test our weapons in places where it would really count. The idea that slowing their program is beneficial is somehow desirable is pure bullstuff. The idea is to KILL their program and make them remember it.
A sane, thinking person who has read about the effects of the Stuxnet worm on the centrifuge control firmware that Iran was running. There are several reports that, by tweaking the operating speeds of the centrifuges just a bit, the worm was able to disable almost half of them.
Fewer centrifuges working = less enriched uranium produced = longer to create enough to build a bomb.
Nevertheless, even if it was just an excuse to let the NSA hacker brigade have at an enemy for the practice, it would have been worth it.