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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Yes, that is the actual issue. Here's the relevant part of the story.

>The U.S. military has been concerned about the cranes for years and has made efforts to skirt ports with the China-made cranes as best as possible, according to the senior U.S. military commander who oversees the military’s logistics operations.

>The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel to determine exactly where the military is shipping it, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Journal last year.

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Why do we not just remove the RFID radios and cameras from the cranes, or just not allow them to call home?

This is a problem that doesn't require billions in investment to solve, but rather a wire cutter.

> just remove the RFID radios and cameras from the cranes

Because they require these to work.

> or just not allow them to call home?

I can't say for sure, but I believe they already don't call home: this is also why building a solution to block them from "what if they started to call home" doesn't work.

If they don't call home, then the foreign interests wouldn't be getting the data, I think? If the concern is access to inferred logistics and crane telemetrics, then the solution would still seem to be removing access to the data or retrofitting new controls systems to the cranes, and not replacing the entire crane.

> Because they require these to work.

What if its wrapped in aluminium?:0

Just guessing that the software forces you to put in tracking information for every item. If it can't read it, you'll have to input the stuff manually. I bet they make that interface painful too.

Or just design a container whose RFID identity changes between being loaded onto the ship and being unloaded at the next port, making tracking impossible.

Could be as simple as telling the captain of the ship to swap the RFID modules between two containers during the voyage.

Since the cranes "know" the physical location of each container when it is loaded and unloaded, I suspect the CCP can update their container tracking software ~100X faster than the Pentagon can implement a decent RFID-changing system.

Do you have any idea how many containers can go on a single cargo ship?

This sounds a lot like suggesting a Walmart manager can “just quickly stick encrypted payload QR codes over each EAN barcode in the store”.

Even if you swap RFID identities during transit, the location of each container on the ship doesn't change much during any voyage, so this wouldn't materially change things: the tracker just has to update the ID references with the locations of the containers in the unloading port.

If the location of the container changes while the ship is underway, you've got bigger issues than RFID tracking!

Like any system that is "monitored", it also presents the opportunity to feed disinformation to an adversary; what's labelled as submarine technology heading for one place is really anti-drone weaponry heading to a different front thousands of miles away.

The volume and timing of containers is also important and leaks a lot of information. The weights probably have to be accurate too.

Then, besides this, the whole thing is a bad idea. The Chinese will destroy these cranes in the event of a war with the US.

> destroy these cranes in the event of a war

Indeed you are right. And I was once laughed out of security meeting for suggesting that allowing certain nations to build the control systems for one of our nuclear power plants might have issues.

TBH, I think the laughter was very, very nervous and I distinctly heard the sound of a penny dropping.

[0] https://www.punchline-gloucester.com/articles/aanews/edf-hin...

> >The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel

Everybody can do that. Here are sites for tracking a container.[1][2]

Many people need to know where containers are. Ship operators, ports, railroads, truckers, customs officials in multiple countries, customs brokers... It's not usually a big secret. The military may operate outside the commercial system at times, but probably with their own vessels.

[1] https://www.track-trace.com/container

[2] https://www.searates.com/container/tracking/

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