Article is spot on and I believe that it is part of the overall architecture compromise that has been noted in over 200,000 Cisco routers. My understanding is that the “special circuits” were added post standard Mfg cycle by special techs. Cisco is the primary unit used by big operations and using that ship along with other algorithms as described in docs like F7 it will branch communications and feed directly to their servers and storage farms. I have posted articles about the Cisco part in this whole conspiracy previously and it all fits into the models used by Facebook, Google and others. For reference read George Gilders book Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy. It’s all in there save the technology part. Their empire is crashing as a result but they are dirty birds.
As a crusty old engineer of some 32 years now when the cloud came along I scoffed. I told my friends, “All your data now belongs to us” and they chuckled at my skepticism. About three years ago in my final years at what then became Schneider Electric I heard stories about engineers coming back from work in China (automating their nuclear power plant controls) and they were destroying their laptops. They were not allowed to be plugged into the network. We all knew about the poor quality of electronic components coming out of China already as we built the controls, sensors and other hardware we automated. I told people that China is probably taking the functional designs of specific computer hardware, then modifying it to plant trace/report chips in them and then deliver them as contracted. Everyone thought I was a loon. I bet they’re not laughing now.
... speaking of Blockchain....
We need to use it for things like Wikipedia.
One of my (many) concerns about the Orwellian society we have become is the rewriting of history. It’s bad enough when they rewrite the history books, but at least with books it’s possible to find old ones somewhere and compare the changes. When history is all online, the dictators can erase it with a click.
Blockchain would maintain a record. It should be required for news/history online. Or if not required, at least sites that use it could advertise their increased level of honesty with the “Goodhousekeeping Seal” of Blockchain.