Just open the fracking door for the cylons why don't you
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Relevant video: https://youtu.be/4X9ww6FtUhE
Tl;dw is that sure, the US could withhold software updates and sure, NL could do their own software thing, but there is a whole intelligence software thing too that makes it harder. And ultimately if the US stops supplying new parts the existing planes are quickly dead in the water anyway. So it's a short-term solution at best.
Hey Tuinman, congrats on having a bigger ego than sense of responsibility.
Possible sure, easy unlikely, knowing you got all the backdoors (for allies), nigh impossible. Only way to be sure is to clean room it from the ground up, not jailbreak.
Plus it's strongly suspected, and rumoured, to have kill switches, a fusible link that bricks the whole thing. I believe it.
I mean every country that takes delivery of them gets to inspect it really closely. The "kill switch" is that they stop providing you the software for mission planning and shit.
Why wouldn't they?
The F-35 mainly uses Pratt & Whitney engines; the RR engine is for the B variant. Although, 15% of every F-35 is designed and built in the UK.
Sounds more like an admission that there is something that needs jailbreaking in the first place
Except the US has killswitches hard wired in. A fusible link, irreversibly bricking it based on signal from the mother ship.
Either you're talking confidently about something you couldn't possibly know, or you're risking the rest of your life in prison for leaking top-secret military info. Which is it?
Where is the support for this? I believe they would but as I understand it they cut cloud services, not core functionality.
It is a long standing rumour. Not just in these in a lot of their gear. I believe it.
It's also rumoured, going way back over 20 years, that the us has kill switches in a majority of the world's computers.
I lean towards discounting both rumors. I think the temptation to use said kill-switches would prove too great to resist, particularly for the authoritarian types involved.
We saw this a lot with provisions of the "PATRIOT Act". It was championed as tools needed to combat terrorists and claimed to be reserved for such cases. In actuality, it was used to go after people running fan sites for sci-fi tv shows, among other things.
If such a kill switch existed in computer hardware, I'm sure it would have been used already. I'm less sure about a kill switch in the planes. On one hand, that's a pretty situational tool, and you wouldn't want to play that card until you really needed it.
OTOH, we didn't hear about threats to throw the kill switch during the bluster over Greenland. If they had one, I think it would have been part of that bluster.
I remember working with an old dude 10 years ago who pointed at the CPU in a computer and said "the government can turn that off whenever they want". He died of COVID so take his quote with what value you want.
Wow if its rumoured it must be true
Meh, they are whores but they dont produce shit. They get your information through invasive NSA actions and capitalist acumbaggery.
Intel management engine strikes again
Yes, but it can be wired-out
The way I heard it, it's like hard wired it is thought, not like a part of the software per se, something physical in there they can trigger with a message that makes a circuit that bricks the unit.
We don't actually know though, I bet if someone did find out lockheed would have their head and the news wouldn't touch it.