[marron]

I obviously don't know the particulars, but this sounds somewhat bogus. Software designed to run a pipeline still needs to be programmed by the users, with actual logic and actual wiring addresses. You wouldn't be able to put such a routine in it as described in the article, because it wouldn't correspond to anything in the actual program.

What you possibly could do would be to design an abrupt failure into it. But any system would be designed to respond to a sudden failure of the software, or the chip, because things like that happen in the best of cases. So in this case the Russians would be right, even if the chip was doctored, there should have been no pipeline failure at all. If there was, there was a design error or a construction error, or more likely both. Chip failure alone wouldn't do it. The chip fails, you get an alarm, you change out the card or the program itself, and thats it.

This sounds bogus.

[jungleboy]

marron - you say "Chip failure alone wouldn't do it"

But, it wasn't chip "failure"... it was chip "design".

[NewRomeTacitus]

Not bogus. This was related in the book "Reagan's War" by Peter Schweizer. Not only did they pull this off, the Gipper destabilized the price of natural gas and made the Soviets expend vast sums of money to maintain Russia's energy needs. When he suckered them into the missile shield race, bam! Game over.