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.
Sorry that reply was a bit disjointed, it’s late and I can’t sleep. When I say, “All your data belongs to us”...the minute someone Else is storing your data, well, they have access to it. They probably even have rights to it, that I don’t know. I always keep my stuff off the cloud and backed up multiple times on separate media.
As for the laptops coming back from China with field engineers, yeah at that point we knew something was up. The worst part of it all is now China has ALL the software and hardware specs of what we sold them. Little did we know then but I suspected then was that they demanded it. I was right.
As for poor electronic parts quality. Think LCD TV’s crapping out years early. Bad components. South Korea was MAD about that. Samsung is BRUTAL to do work for but that’s another story for another time. I loved those guys. True warrior engineers.
Exactly, and the chips in question are in Cell phones, laptops etc...Anyone who outsourced or used those boards no matter what it says on them can be controlled
42 years in the biz and worked with Engineers directly, I know just what you mean...