Post
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@littlealex/116076064920214380
Why do I suspect that Lockheed's reaction to foreign customers jailbreaking F-35s will be just as understanding and conciliatory as Apple's response to customers jailbreaking iPhones (only multiply severity of the reaction by 10,000 per unit for the price of the item they've just lost control of)?
@cstross F-35’s are at the command of Trump 24/7...ponder that.
@TENET_CDN Only the F-35s the US military operates. It was always designed as an F-16 successor, where international sales considerably exceed USAF usage. Trump has kneecapped that sales program already (IIRC Spain and Portugal dropped out, Netherlands are looking for an off-ramp, etc) …
@cstross @GinevraCat I'd be happy if we didn't fly with the F-35 anymore. I live near a military airfield, and the F-16s were kinda OK in moderation but the F-35s are loud as fuck.
@cstross I wonder if that violates the end-user certificate?
@cstross I suspect these customers have a bit more leverage. If they decide this is the last shipment they will receive from lockheed if lockheed doesn't pay ball they can actually stick it out.
@cstross Dutch defence minister really said if you all can't jail Trump we're gonna have to jailbreak your F-35s
@cstross This might be the only way those planes get fixed. They are notoriously awful have been reported to require "in-flight resets." I could post links, but you won't regret a self directed internet search.
@cstross Do pilots of the F-35 have to accept a EULA every time they get in?
This needs to be the response to trump's tariffs in violation of numerous trade agreements that include sections on respecting IP. If he's going to ignore the agreement I think every country in the world should ignore all IP rights of US companies and jailbreak an reverse engineer everything.
@cstross that might be the right moment to do, what @pluralistic argued in his " A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet" talk at #39C3 for - breaking free from the stranglehold of the anti-circumvention laws and all the trade agreement related issues and dependencies connected to them:
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet
Transcript:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
Don't suppose they'll sell these at a swap meet though. Dag.
Wild guess:
They'll try to swap them for a batch of the U.S.A.'s modern ones that don't work in combat and that have a brick where the radar is supposed to be. (-:
@JdeBP Go googling for "blue circle airlines"; the RAF did the cement-instead-of-radar for a while with the Tornado ADV in the 80s.
@cstross Just as a reminder, a jailbreak is a security vulnerability. If Apple doesn't fix it, they've left a security vulnerability in their phone and I would not use any product that contains known security vulnerabilities.
@mattw Yep. "Kill switches" in weapon systems are almost invariably a supply chain lock (the supplier can cut off the supply of replacement consumable bits needed to keep it in service). An actual kill switch ("broadcast this code and F35s will fall out of the sky") is too vulnerable to espionage and an enemy actor using it during combat. Same reason ICBMs don't have a recall code once they're flying.
@cstross Like Apple clients, if we have a good enough reason, we will. What are they going to do, not send us any more spare parts?
@motorbike_sensei That's actually pretty much it. Also updated terrain/radar maps for navigation, without which the F35 is vastly less effective as a platform (stealth works best when it knows where radar installations are and can avoid them).
@cstross Lockheed bribed the then Dutch prince-consort to get the F-103 Starfighter AKA widow-maker sold to us, despite it being unfit for the role. They bloody owe us for that.
@cstross the analogy with Apple breaks down in that there is another party to the transaction; namely the US government which might literally go nuclear over this issue.
But the whole thing is rather moot at this point anyhow, fighter jets being on the verge of becoming obsolete. UAS will be built by new supply chains outside of the grasp of bellicose power.
@cstross Why bother? Buy SAAB. Help fund Canada's existing committment for F-35's as a gift to Ukraine.
@cstross military-industrial complex losing market share like crazy, but it's not because of "journalists" or "whistleblowers" or "uppity brown ppl," so they do nothing. No lane-correction mishaps, no helicopter coincidences, no nothing
@cstross
I'd not buy an iThing.
If I was a Government I'd not buy USA, Chinese or Russian weapons.
@cstross I wonder if the UK can jailbreak the nuclear arms which are physically sitting here in Scotland but in practical terms are in US control.
@peterbrown The UK nukes are British-built. As are the submarines they launch from. What *ISN'T* British built is the UGM-133 Trident-II missiles they fly on. (Oops.) And no, ArianeGroup M51 SLBMs won't fit in the British Dreadnought-class submarines (they're too long). Would need a whole new missile cloning the Trident-II (admittedly a 1980s design and probably do-able with European allied help—Ariane could probably build one).
@cstross you clearly know more about this than I do. So is it actually the case that our nuclear missiles could be used *without* US clearance?
@peterbrown Yes, but if the USA wants they can stop the supply of replacement rockets—the RN's UGM-133s are maintained by Lockheed in the USA and come from the same shared stockpile as the USN's missiles. Like, you made(!) your own rifle and cast your own bullets but you buy cartridges and propellant from the company store because making gunpowder and percussion caps is fiddly work you have no experience of. You *could* build a hobbyist-scale powder mill but it'd be disproportionately expensive.
@cstross I wonder how much of the jailbreaking is just so they can service the planes without the stranglehold of having to go back to America for everything to maintain it.
@cstross Does this mean they are already doing it? Anyway, ne more reason to threaten bombing The Hague. I stand with the kaaskopjes.
@cstross I wouldn’t be surprised the guy shows up having committed suicide by shooting himself in the back with a shotgun
@cstross Okay, so you can jailbreak the software, but what about the complicated supply chain of hardware to keep them running. I've heard some reports that F-35's are often down for maintenance almost half the time. Like, you need a fleet twice as big as you expected to maintain operational readiness. And that's the situation when you have a reliable way to get spare parts.
@cstross If the relationship between the US and the rest of the world becomes more adversarial, those F-35's are going to become the world's most expensive paperweights in the span of a handful of years. We've seen similar things with other countries who had fighter jets from the US when the relationship soured and they could no longer get spares.
@Infoseepage Second-most expensive! The most expensive would be the UK's Lockheed Martin UGM-133 Trident-II SLBMs.
@cstross Lockheed could start refusing to hand over parts which might cause a few problems! 😉
@alex_p_roe @cstross 3D printers would quickly show up, I presume. Executives have always been idiots. When the first computers for offices and manufacturing came out, executives tried to depreciate them like old-time manufacturing equipment, then were upset when software upgrades and whole platform replacement didn't behave like that.
@timo21 @alex_p_roe 3D printing fighter jet parts has been A Thing since at least 2015 (the RAF was 3D printing non-critical parts to keep their Tornado GR4 fleet operational until retirement in 2019.
I imagine there's been a decade of experience since then …
@cstross @timo21 @alex_p_roe If F1 teams can 3D print their engine parts, it really should not be a problem.
@alex_p_roe @timo21 No, you'd need a composites factory for that. (Shock horror: the EU has those.)
@alex_p_roe @timo21 I hate to break it to you, but the OS inside a fighter jet's gubbins probably isn't anything consumer-visible: it'll be some exotic micro-kernel RTOS written for high reliability and security that none of us have ever heard of.
@cstross It's the 'John Deere' principle.
@cstross
Learning that they have a remote lock feature for combat aircraft is likely to not be a particularly fun moment for anyone involved.
To be clear, I really hope they don't have that. A lot.
@cstross this does carry a powerful What Could Go Wrong energy
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