Stories Behind a Minuscule Chinese Chip

Abstract

We begin by examining the context of a political media campaign launched in October of 2018 in the scope of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military alliance, aimed at disseminating among IT managers, with backing from general public opinion, perceptions of new risks in the use of electronic microchips fabricated by Chinese companies, for use in sensitive computational platforms.  We then contrast theses actions, which occur at the intersection of psychological and informational cyber fronts of the contemporary form of warfare (hybrid, 4th generation), with a similar type of risks inherent to the model for informatization of the federalized electoral process in Brazil, chosen more than twenty years ago and since frozen. Such contrast signals the presence of some form of geopolitical and/or ideological filtering, active in the mapping and evaluation of risks through scientific, legal and lay narratives on cibersecurity, regarding either embedded systems for military use, such as in weapons’ controls, or for civilian purposes, such as in electronic voting systems.