DISINFO: The Pentagon doesn’t want to renounce Russian and Chinese equipment and software
SUMMARY
The Pentagon continues buying equipment and software of Chinese and Russian production, despite the warning of US authorities about an alleged security threat.
RESPONSE
The affirmation is false, based in a distorted reading of a report by the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense. According to this document, in fiscal year 2018 the Pentagon spent around 32,8 million dollars in products of Russian and Chinese firms such as Kaspersky Lab and Lenovo. The report’s title is: “Audit of the DoD’s Management of the Cybersecurity Risks for Government Purchase Card Purchases of Commercial Off-the-Shelf Items”, and it is actually a warning against the potential risk posed by these firms for US national security. The report was commissioned after the Department of Defense started to compile a ‘do not buy’ list of software by mid-2018, with the stated goal of minimising that risk and keeping code created in Russia and China out of its systems. To conclude from this document that the Pentagon continues buying this equipment and software is an interested lie. You can see other examples of Russian disinformation on the propaganda machinery of the Pentagon, its unreliability to defend its allies or NATO’s dark actions to increase its budget.