The U.S. military-political complex underestimated Iran's electronic warfare capabilities and ignored a serious virus-infection problem in the U.S. drone fleet.

Iran hacked into a U.S. drone spy plane and reprogrammed its GPS coordinates to make it think it was landing in Afghanistan when it really landed in Iran.

We Told You So

Classified Information reported in October that the U.S. aerial drone fleet was suffering from widespread virus infections that commanders flippantly discounted. At that time, the U.S. already knew that Islamic hackers could watch spy drone video in real time. All they needed was a back door to take control over the drones’ internals (a.k.a. a virus).

Christian Science Monitor released a preliminary report that helps document how Iran changed the drone’s GPS system coordinates to make it land in the wrong place. (Though the article makes clear that Iran hacked the drone’s system, it evades the virus issue.)

What happens when you ASS-ume

The U.S. military-political complex funneled dozens of billions of dollars into the drone program, only to assume the enemy was incapable of hacking computers and manipulating GPS.

Just as the U.S. got burned from the un-encrypted video signals used by the drones, it got burned by its failure to harden the drone’s software controls.

Iran has again proved that its capability to wage electronic warfare isw much more sophisticated than the political-industrial complex believed.

Where in the World?

A 2003 report published from Los Alamos documented vulnerabilities of the GPS system. It explained how GPS signals could be replaced, leaving almost the entire world vulnerable to malicious attacks.

This technology is expected to fall into the hands of criminals who can re-route trucks, airliners and armored cars. After Iran perfects the technology (it seems awful close to perfection now), any two-bit foreign country that shares Iran’s ideology can wreak havoc on U.S. military planes, ships, trucks and soldiers.

Thanks Obama, Bush, Clinton, et. al.

Now that Iran has our mega-billion dollar drone and its accompanying technology on hand, expect that nation to share it with the Russians and the Chinese. What cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars in money borrowed from China is now accessible to China for pennies.

This situation is eerily similar to the way Democrat President Bill Clinton gave away U.S. missile technology via Loral Space in exchange for campaign contributions.

Clinton also sold almost every other defense secret to the Chinese to get campaign cash.

As a result … Beijing’s strategic nuclear capabilities were catapulted from 1950s-style technology, to being “on a par” with America’s, in just a few years.

 The Bottom Line

Here’s the problem: The U.S. worker gets raped by the government every payday to help keep the industrial-military complex awash in cash. After spending hundreds of billions of dollars enriching the U.S. Power Elite class with that money, the U.S. either:

• Plays fast and loose with its technology and lets it slip into the public domain, or
• Allows foreign hackers to access government and corporate computer systems so other countries can learn to interpret and apply our technologies, or
• Sells it to our enemies (and creditors) for fresh infusions of campaign funds and other goodies.