[E. Pluribus Unum]

My bet is that it’s not really that sophisticated a piece of malware. If it was, whoever made it would have kept it quiet. Its purpose is probably to scare the Hell out of the Iranians when they turn the thing on.

[Melchior]

Whoever created the Stuxnet (and certainly it was not the United States because the information would already have been leaked to the NYTimes) was not interested in a bunch of Iranian laptops. The game was much deeper and seems to account for the delays in the Bushehr operation that were first noted about three weeks ago. Other reports have it that Bushehr has been badly damaged. Included in discussions on this are Russia, Israel, Germany, and Siemens.

[Melchior]

Whoever created the Stuxnet (and certainly it was not the United States because the information would already have been leaked to the NYTimes) was not interested in a bunch of Iranian laptops. The game was much deeper and seems to account for the delays in the Bushehr operation that were first noted about three weeks ago. Other reports have it that Bushehr has been badly damaged. Included in discussions on this are Russia, Israel, Germany, and Siemens.

[Agamemnon]

This is what appears in the press. I'll guarantee you that the malware attack, like terrorism itself, is far worse and is asymmetric in nature -- making complete detection and elimination almost impossible.

Israel has been implicated, and it may very well be true. Allow me to speculate that the malware could have even been created with the help of Russia in cooperation with Israel.

Russia has nothing to gain by allowing the whack jobs in Iran to become nuclear any more than anyone in ME or East Europe does. But the nuke facility is of Russian design and origin, and Russians know its vulnerabilities.

Now let's speculate that Russia simply hoped to benefit from a transaction, but which when Iran chooses to exercise the technology, the system engages, overheats unexplainably and power kill switches are confounded and stuck in the off position. The tech becomes a molten mass of junk.

As an aside, Russia even reneged on shipment of S-300 missiles or their parts recently, too, if I recall correctly.

I'm just guessing but I'll bet Iranians are even fearful to throw any switches of any kind at this point.

I don't think the Saudi's have in their possession any tech from US or Russia that could do this, but they could be involved in this thing too in some way. They have no desire to see a nuclearly equipped Iran run as it is by a mad man situated within range of the same missiles that could reach Riyadh as easily as they can reach Tel Aviv.

What would be really funny to see would be Iran firing off missiles whose guidance system software has been corrupted and reprogrammed in such a way as to return the missile's trajectory to its the original site of firing. Might even be able to manipulate such a thing from a satellite.

Boom boom. Iran shoots itself, and this brings about regime change.

Just speculation, of course.

I've been including the following in recent threads on this topic. What Reagan did to the Soviets is quite instructive:

The Farewell Dossier

FReegards!