Seriously, the thought did cross my mind that someone in the Clinton administration was actually on the ball and the transfer of missile technology to red China under them was all a clever cover for just this sort of capability. The ability to remote program or simply detonate Chinese ICBMs could be the ultimate missile defense.
The idea occured to me because I heard a story from someone who would actually be in a position to know that something had happened but was still officially secret in another, related context. The story is that Saddam Hussein's air defense IT system used networked printers from a single foreign company and they were serviced by foreign techs. Before the first Gulf War we supposedly managed to get one of those techs to flash the ROM on the networked printers providing our forces access to and the ability to mess with the air defense computers around Baghdad. According to this story this allowed us to use more than just the F-117s to bomb the Baghdad infrastructure the first night, allowing for a lot more missions to be flown than would have been possible with the limited number of stealth planes we had in theater.
Again, I don't know for a fact that the story is true, but the source is someone who is credible to me and has told me other things that have since checked out. At the least it planted this idea in my head.
I've heard the same... Let's hope.
Is the memory you were thinking about, Phsstpok?
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39147917,00.htm