Cybersecurity & Tech Foreign Relations & International Law

Missile Sabotage by Covert Means

Herb Lin
Tuesday, February 19, 2019, 4:08 PM

In a Feb. 13 story in the New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad report that the Trump administration has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets by inserting faulty parts and materials into Iran’s aerospace supply chains.

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In a Feb. 13 story in the New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad report that the Trump administration has accelerated a secret American program to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets by inserting faulty parts and materials into Iran’s aerospace supply chains.

The recently released Brookings book “Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations” contains a chapter on “Hacking a Nation’s Missile Development Program,” which may provide some useful background for understanding the Sanger and Broad story. This chapter is not specifically related to any covert program that may—or may not—have been proposed or carried out. It does provide what might be called informed speculation on how a long-range missile development program of a small, authoritarian and relatively impoverished nation might be compromised by cyber (and other) means. In other words, it does not address anything specific that is known to be actually happening but rather focuses on what might be possible within the limits of known technology and techniques.

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Herb Lin

Herb Lin

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Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

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