The USA does not have secret remote kill switches in its military exports. This is a crazy myth that doesn't make any sense. For the F35, the US controls all spare parts distribution (for a maintenance intensive aircraft). They could just cut a country off from spares and ground their plane. They don't need a massive built in vulnerability.

[–] vritrahan@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That maybe so, but most of the present day expensive tech, like F-35s or the drones, or the missiles, need access to proprietary USian software bundles. Even if the client country gets to keep compiled binaries in air gapped private networks and make it work, they're still running a losing race being cut off from updates.

[–] JillyB@beehaw.org 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes exactly. That's my point. Why would the US (or any country exporting complex defense products) need a Killswitch when they can just cut off support and make your equipment quickly useless.

[–] adb@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fair point but I find it bold to assume that people do stuff only because they need do. We also do plenty of stuff just because we can.

And if you have a tractor company that includes kill switches in its equipment ( https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/john-deere-remotely-disables-tractors-stolen-in-ukraine-by/427045 ) it’s hard to rule out that a Defense department, which probably pays handsomely a certain number people to be actively paranoid, would refrain from doing so.

[–] vritrahan@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Even if it is not a literal red button that they press and everything powers down, they definitely have backdoors.