Hi J & Friends
sorry, this may seem like an off topic rant, but it really is all related to Aerospace in The Real World
if you stick with me to the end you'll understand.
The problem is that you're assuming that there is a localised target.
Actually , I am not assuming a localized target.
I am assuming they are targetting the world.
The Chinese Smart Phones have been shown to ship with spyware and malware installed , now these servers with built-in hardware remote backdoors.
China is systematically and deliberately building backdoors into every product. And we are letting them do it, and not calling them out.
Therefore you have to work on the assumption that ANY motherboard made in China is potentially compromised.
Based on the evidence, we have to assume EVERY piece of electronics from Red China is spyware until proven otherwise.
So what to do?
The only real solution is to restore localized international manufacturing.
That is the only way to ensure what is actually in the product .
Remeber history, or be doomed to repeat it:
- Remember the Major Name Brand (from china) pet foods poisoned with melamine to increase "tested protein"?
- Remember the Major Name Brand toothpoaste from china that was laced with anitfreeze because it was the cheapest sweetener?
- Even now, mainland Chinese citizens still flock to Hongkong and Shanghai to buy commercial Western made Baby Formula by the pallet
because Chinese Baby Formula is tainted and cannot be trusted.
- At the Bejing Olympics, athletes were banned from eating local Chinese food because they were so full of chemicals, drugs and hormones that the
athletes would fail the drug screening tests.
- RIGHT NOW there is an international shortage of common Blood Pressure Rx medicine, ( valsartan, losatran and irbersartan)
the recall began in mid 2018 due to The impurity, known as NDEA, was found in the drug’s key ingredient made by Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. in China.
the base drug is used worldwide by EVERY Pharma manufacturor and Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical is the ONLY source for the base medicatiuon.
NDEA is used to make rocket fuel and can also be a created through certain chemical reactions and as a byproduct of industrial processes.
https://www.webmd.com/drug-medication/news/20181113/losartan-latest-bp-drug-recalled-for-contaminationhttps://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/valsartan-losatran-bp-med-recalls-2018-19http://fortune.com/2019/02/27/fda-blood-pressure-medication-recall-list-losartan-2019/http://fortune.com/2019/02/13/cancer-causing-chemicals-contaminated-heart-medicine-cardiovascular-drugs-fda/The Big Corporations outsourced all manufacturing to maximize profit.
which means the technology was "given away" as well .
That also meant that good technical jobs, including product design , product engineering, QA, technical security, etc are all gone.
Which means none of those jobs (including AeroSpace!!!! ) are available in the Western Hemisphere, and damn few in EU.
Which means the current and next generations will not have jobs that pay enough to support buying anything but food and rent
which means the Consumer-driven economy is slowly collapsing upon itself. - nobody can afford to buy the products! ( except the new chinese middle class)
even now, kids with EE an IT degrees are moving to India because that's where the jobs are.
yes it will "increase costs". But perhaps it will be back to a more "normal state".
instead of $20 DVD players and $80 TVs sold in grocery stores that break after a year.
we should be able to have $100 players & electronics that last 5 years.
But I digress. Let's go back to simple Aerospace Engineering, shall we?
I would love to, but the entire outsourcing debacle means there will be little or no Aerospace Engineering
going on in the western world , which is actually why I put this rant here.
You yourself have found no jobs in the US even tho you are overqualified for those few available.
We have seen the Boeing 737 grounded because the Aerospace technoweenies never tested the "smart software" enough
and Boeing Management refused to fix it even when it was thrown in their faces by the pilots.
Similar problems occurred with the Airbus 320 family.
When I worked for Honeywell and Sperry, we built triple redundancy in all MODULES of fly-by-wire systems, with extensive POST (Power On Self Test)
and Background running BIT ( Built In Test) software, which included 3-way voting and shutdown of an "out-of-spec" module, switchover to
dual-redundancy and a RED FLAG to replace the module upon landing. That software was then leveraged into Ground based STD (Self Test and Diagnostic) software,
and FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) software that could be run any time the plane was hangered.
The Acceptance Testing and Selloff software/ firmware was run on EVERY box prior to shipment, in a "shake and bake" temperature and vibration test stand
and a factory or DOD rep (or both) witnessed and signed off on the whole thing. The checklist was a book several hundred pages long, and we generated a
printout from the test stand detailing the serial numbers of the chasis, the serial numbers of the circuit cards, testers and witnesses names, and chip lot numbers
so we had a permanent paper archive as well as electronic record. .
Q/A of the development process was done IN PARALLEL with flight system and test software, hardware, and firmware development by a completely
independant Q/A team that answered to a different VP.
Q/A also did destructive testing, and failure analysis of all failed components . They had an electron microscope and disected the chips. Almost
all failures were due to failed/blown internal chip paths. Q/A could tell which chip paths had failed and how. They were so good they were able to determine
"what " caused a path failure with a greater than 90 % certainty. Most were due to ESD (Electrostatic discharge). Some were pre-installation, some
after the chip had been wave-soldered to the board. Q/A were even able to determine what kind of ESD - ie: static from a 1 foot piece of scotch tape
pealed off the roll next to the componant blew a different hole than static from an ungrounded worker touching a board.
Q/A also took samples from every chip lot and dissected them. They used Xrays to examine the layers and they compared the actual chip guts to the
archived design LSI layers matrixes. One time, they found some ass-hat had etched their initials into a corner. The ass-hat was pilloried, held up as an
example of STOOPID and that batch of chips destroyed.
It was pricey, but as I told folks we were responsible to keep airplanes from falling out of the sky.
This included the 727, first gen 737, 747 and first gen 767 as well as the AV8B, F4-G, F14, F15, F16 and first FA-18, and several black programs.
Guess what?
Neither Honeywell, Sperry, Boeing or McDoug do that anymore . Their LSI chip fab plants as wel as TI's and Motorolla's and Intel's plants have been closed
and outsourced to Asia.
That's the Aero part.
The Space part is just as bleak. The available jobs suck, they are mainly paper-pushing "project manager" jobs meant to give lip service to
Western oversight of Asian contractors. and commercial endevours are the only thing going forward.
Since Asia manufactures all electronics, I actually
expect backdoor hardware to be in all commercially launched satellites.
I actually have to appologise for sounding so bleak, but this is actually the same pattern that followed technology at the turn of the 1890-1920 era.
change the names and it's the same. The huge rail, telegraph, and oil corporations dominated the country at the cost of the common folk and pollution.
Jobs were outsourced from EU for "cheap labor" and sweatshops and factor mill jobs and mining jobs were dangerous and killing workers, and
child labor was the norm.
The FDA did not exist yet, so poison was sold as medicine, and COCAIN was the active ingrediant in Coca Cola.
Tainted and rotten or adulterated food was common.
So now it's come full circle again, and we just have to fix it.
My basic advice is go live where the jobs are.
If automation is replacing your job, get training and a job the build and fix the automation.
If you want to work in Aerospace, figure out a "niche" that can't be outsourced.
Tesla and Musk and Bezos spend millions on PR to look good, but they are legends in their own minds. They are working their people to death,
workers hate them, they are all constantly trying to get around laws and regulations.
space rant over, more on next post
yhs
prof realist
a realist is one of those grumpy barstiches
that see things as they really are
instead of how we tell them.
