[pieceofthepuzzle]

“There were Chinese tech specialists on the plane who worked for companies known to have hacked things like Google.”

As long as we're all allowed to speculate, does Iran need specific expertise to help them get beyond the software viruses that have plagued their nuclear program? Or was there expertise on that plane that could help them with missile guidance systems?

[RC one]

What is obvious at this point is that one of the largest conspiracies of all times has just been pulled off by someone so, in trying to understand it, we should approach it as a conspiracy. Yeah it's tin foil hat time but, here we are with a missing 777 and 239 missing people some of whom seem like characters right out of a Tom Clancy novel.

The way I see it, there are three likely possibilities. There was something or someone on that plane that A.) at all costs, could not be allowed to land in Beijing or b.) that, at all costs, needed to be secured by Beijing. Less likely, though certainly equally worthy of consideration, is C.) a government or organization that needed to secure a Boeing 777 by theft in order to use it later to infiltrate someone's airspace, most likely US airspace, with some kind of a weapon, a weapon big and bad enough to justify a conspiracy of this magnitude.

[grania]

I had a thought similar to yours. What if someone or some country needed to learn the technology included in that plane? If they'd been studying its potential, they might've been to the point where they could hack its systems.

And I for one am going to applaud wild speculation. This whole situation is way out of the ordinary, and using it as an opportunity to explore what is and is not possible is healthy brainstorming.