Maybe you're thinking of the Air Force supercomputer built using PS3's? https://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomput...

I mentioned this in another comment. The Barcelona Supercomputing Center made a jailbreak for the playstation (https://www.bsc.es/projects/deepcomputing/linuxoncell/ 404 now). But no worries, the chips in the Playstation were the rejects. :-/ (PS3 according to my contemporaneous notes.)

https://www.eurogamer.net/article-29913 probably this you are thinking about, it was fake "Saddam Hussein uses PlayStation 2 to conquer the world"

PS2 with regards to Japanese export law (https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-apr-17-fi-20482...)