The Dark Side Of National Security Report Disclosed By Bloomberg's Spy Chip

The recent story of Bloomberg has been a bombshell. The Chinese spies merged themselves in the different supply networks and secretly settled the pencil tip-sized chips on the motherboards built by Super Micro Computer (Supermicro). Those are widely found in the info center servers in the U.S. tech industry including Apple and Amazon. The spy chip could modify all the data belong to the server, which leads to the fact that a definite number of the richest and most powerful firms are put under surveillance of China.

The two giants Apple and Amazon, Supermicro and the Chinese government explosively denied the accusations. Following the way Supermicro refuted claims about the malicious chips, Apple also did the same with a standalone statement. In fact, those kinds of statements rarely appears unless they have something to be kept as a secret. Therefore, reading them by yourself is an advice.

No matter whether it is right or wrong, whether the ones who make the report have one way or another reveal the murky world of the U.S technological industry or not, many people messed up.

So let’s discover that dark side of the national security reporting.

Reporter Zack Whittaker wrote on a newspaper that he started working for the computerized and national security since around five years ago. He has moved to CBS recently and mostly makes reports on different fields such as that U.S. government forced tech firms to give their source code with the purpose of finding out their susceptible points and doing supervision; or the fifth exposure of National Security Agency. The assorted documents pointed out that the government program of collecting data had a much larger extent that we have ever thought, and it seemed like they were gathering the data information of the U.S. citizens.

In fact, on the way seeking for the truth of reporters, getting approach to the information sources from the secret government agencies is almost hopeless. And it is also abandoned to share assorted data with anyone else if you are a spy or a diplomat, otherwise, you might be sent to the prison. However, if you are a security reporter, like what Zach has been doing now, it will be another story.

As a result, many people put a doubt on the reality of the story of malicious chips, as they are standing in the middle of a scale with two unequal sides. One is Bloomberg which has been well-known for several decades, they told a story with the support of different sources and it was persuasive enough for people to believe. Other is anonymous source, which brings a reverse effect. The information published shall be unreliable if the source is not named out, and they might be at risk of legal jeopardy as it wasn’t theirs. Therefore, they had better tag the names of some people who are powerful enough to make their words accountable. Besides, the denials of the firms whose names have been declared by Bloomberg seem not to be able to save them from the claims tracing back to the story.  These statements passed the legal counsel and follows the government regulations.

These statements are like a balanced scale, turning the story from a report requiring evidence to a circumstance of “he said, she said”.

However, no matter who and what the readers put their trust in, the reliability of the Bloomberg’s report shall be still judged. Regarding to the claims to Bloomberg from the Apple side, they mostly concentrate on the uncertainty in the way it gave out the questions. And because this is an issue relating to the reputation and even revenue of a firm, then you never want to push all the disadvantages to yourself, but to find a method to distract people to another thinking, which is a trick sometimes applied by the government.

Another hypothesis that some firms mentioned in the story including Apple, Amazon and some others might belong to that murky world is also considered. Imagine that they carried on an active investigation on the spies’ activities after receiving the accusation of a foreign government, it is certain that a few people working in those companies could realize the situation. It is due to the U.S. laws of surveillance and counter-espionage which mention the people to be informed about those kinds of investigations, and it is a restricted number. They are usually the chief managers, presidents or the chief executive, who are often kept in high track after they receive those information. And they have to keep in mind not to make any mistakes in leaching misleading information to companies’ shareholders.

A typical example should be the story of 2013 with the publication of Edward Snowden documents.

Following the disclosure of PRISM, many tech companies mentioned in the pulling program of NSA was accused, including Apple, but they denied all the relationships between them and this bombshell information. They brought the reliable evidence to support their deniability despite the fact that the government claimed on the direct access by PRISM to many tech firms’ servers.

Edward Snowden

However, the critics of Bloomberg also never left the stories to be like that, they applicably added supportive information including technical data included inside the chip, its blueprint and specifications as well.

Reporter Zack Whittaker used to hesitate on sharing this story due to the complicatedness, lack of persuasive evidence and even claims of this issue. It could be seen that reporters from Bloomberg have spent a lot of time observing and collecting useful information for this claim, not regardless to the effort to complete it in just one hour.

Bloomberg has done a good job of reporting a completed bombshell on a cover of the magazine after several times editing and checking before publishing. However, they could even do better in the method of delivering those information to readers. Just the matter of the best moment for the news. If they could be clearer on conclusions of those issues, and the news were approaching to many people, then the effectiveness of information given shall me more reliable to the readers.

Nowadays is the time that the distinguishment of real and fake information becomes more difficult than ever, and the more detailed and trustworthy the story are provided, the more trust and faith readers will put on them. Zack believes Bloomberg, and he does hope that his faith isn’t put in wrong place.