"Abu Dhabi is the federal capital of the United Arab Emirates and the
largest of the seven emirates." There are no general elections in UAE nor any democratically elected institutions.
6/5/16, "Pentagon Hires Foreign Chips Supplier," Wall St. Journal, Doug Cameron
"Globalfoundries, owned by Abu Dhabi, will make microchips for U.S. jets and spy satellites"
"The Pentagon has decided to rely on an Abu Dhabi-owned company to
supply the most advanced microchips used in U.S. spy satellites,
missiles and combat jets.
A senior U.S. Defense Department
official said in an interview that the Pentagon has reached a seven-year
agreement with Globalfoundries Inc., one of the big four global chip
makers, to supply the microchips. Terms weren’t disclosed.
The
agreement ends months of uncertainty over supplies of such chips but is
just the first step in a broader effort to protect sensitive military
systems from cyberattacks and other tampering.
Globalfoundries last year acquired from International Business Machines Corp.
the two plants—in Burlington, Vt., and East Fishkill, N.Y.—that
make the chips. IBM had been the near-monopoly supplier of the chips to
the Pentagon for more than a decade and paid Globalfoundries $1.5
billion to take the unprofitable business off its hands.
Lawmakers
and watchdogs such as the Government Accountability Office had
expressed concern about the Pentagon’s reliance on a single source
for some of its state-of-the-art chips. “Due to market trends, supply
chain globalization and manufacturing costs, the [Defense Department’s]
future access to U.S.-based microelectronics sources is uncertain,” the
House Armed Services Committee said in a recent report.
The new
Globalfoundries agreement, which was previously undisclosed, runs until
2023. Meanwhile, the Pentagon will seek to identify more suppliers and
expand protections needed to prevent chips from being tampered with or
falling into the wrong hands.
The Pentagon also is moving away
from a reliance on purely U.S.-made chips, widening its net of vendors
to keep up with changes in commercial technology that are outpacing the
defense world.
“Our goal is to look globally,” Andre Gudger, the
Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for manufacturing and industrial
base policy, said in an interview. “We want access to the latest and the
greatest.”
The plants where chips are assembled have long been viewed by the Pentagon as a vulnerable part of the military supply chain.
The
biggest concerns were over technology theft and any insertion of rogue
elements that could be remotely triggered to access equipment, or
so-called kill switches that render equipment useless. In 2004
the Pentagon launched a vetting system of what are now more than 70
companies, including about 20 so-called trusted foundries. But the two
heavily guarded former IBM factories in Vermont and upstate New York
produced almost all of the custom-made chips used in the most sensitive
weapons systems, effectively leaving the government reliant on a single
supplier in the U.S.
With the semiconductor industry’s center of
gravity shifting to facilities in Asia that churn out hundreds of
millions of chips for consumer-electronics devices, the Pentagon has
much less influence on an industry it helped fund and develop in the
1960s and 1970s.
While military users accounted for as much as
one-quarter of global chip demand in the early 1980s, that had fallen to
less than 0.1% by the turn of this decade, according to the Trusted
Access Program Office, which coordinates buying for the Pentagon and
intelligence agencies.
The military relies on customized chips
rather than the mass-produced ones used in cellphones. For instance,
while the new F-35 combat jet contains several hundred advanced
chips—manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp.
won’t disclose the exact number—production runs for the most
sensitive military-grade processors range from a few dozen to 1,000.
That compares with tens or even hundreds of millions for
consumer-electronics devices.
Chip makers have shifted their
focus to the larger consumer market, where competition led to technology
being refreshed in months or weeks, while military chips ordered in
small numbers might be upgraded once or twice a year, industry officials
said.
“We have fallen behind in what our typical electronics have in them,” said Bill Chappell, a program director at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa.
Opening the military market to more producers of the most advanced
commercial chips, would allow the Pentagon to keep pace with technology
developments, officials said. But that also will require new ways to
monitor chips to ensure they haven’t been tampered with, whether
manufactured in the U.S. or overseas.
For example, Darpa is
developing a tiny tagging device for chips that can be embedded in
processors from any manufacturer and used to detect malicious content or
an attempt to tamper with the technology.
“There’s a lot of
wariness and concern, but it’s a great opportunity to open the door to a
much greater supply chain,” Mr. Chappell said.
Mr. Gudger, the
Pentagon official, said the Darpa technology is only one avenue being
explored. While others are largely classified, options include “blind”
manufacturing where chip makers produce individual parts that are later
assembled in a secure facility.
The work on vetting and tagging
chips has also attracted interest from other industries, including
utilities and financial services, looking to counter the rising threat
of cyberattacks.
Globalfoundries-which has expanded through
acquisitions and has significant operations in Germany, Singapore and
upstate New York-provides the Pentagon’s immediate needs. But a
coalition of U.S. chip makers including Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has
been pressing the Pentagon to help fund upgrades to fabrication plants
owned by U.S. companies to allow them to take on the most sensitive
work.
For some, the main safeguard remains keeping the trusted-foundry program focused on domestic manufacturing.
“That [chip] foundry needs to be in the U.S.,” said Norton Schwartz,
Air Force chief of staff from 2008 to 2012 and now president of
Business Executives for National Security, an industry trade group."
====================
"Abu Dhabi Emirate"
"Abu Dhabi is the federal capital of the United Arab Emirates and the
largest of the seven emirates. The Emirate lies on the borders with the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman and the Arabian Gulf. The
emirate comprises 200 islands and has 700 kilometres coastline."
=====================
Added:
6/6/16, "Pentagon To Buy Advanced Microchips From Company Owned By Abu Dhabi," Daily Caller, Jonah Bennett
"When chips are manufactured abroad by companies outside of the United
States, the problem arises of other sovereign powers using these
companies as proxies to penetrate U.S. security by installing
killswitches or other malicious content....
The future of Globalfoundries is not even secure. Abu Dhabi as of November has mulled over selling part or all of the company
to potential buyers. The company could be valued at anywhere from $15
to $20 billion. Part of the reason for the possible sale is that the
United Arab Emirates has hit a huge slump since the price of oil has
tanked, even though developing a chip manufacturing industry was part of
the country’s plan to diversify away from oil."
================
UAE doesn't accept refugees, grants no asylum for any reason:
p. 12, "Protection of Refugees"
"The country's laws do not provide for the granting of asylum or refugees. The country is not a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. There is no system for providing protection to refugees, and the government did not provide protection against the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion."
...................
Added: Islam is the official religion of the United Arab Emirates.
..........................
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