Seemingly confirming what we hinted at previously, The Sun newspaper reports that the US may have sabotaged Kim Jong-un’s missile test yesterday through a cyber-attack causing the rocket to spectacularly flop, according to a former British foreign secretary.
In light of the recent NYT report that the US has been able to sabotage and remotely control North Korean launches for years courtesy of cyberattacks, we previosuly wondered if the US did not play at least a minor role in this attempted, but failed, launch.
Three years ago, President Barack Obama ordered Pentagon officials to step up their cyber and electronic strikes against North Korea’s missile program in hopes of sabotaging test launches in their opening seconds.
Soon a large number of the North’s military rockets began to explode, veer off course, disintegrate in midair and plunge into the sea. Advocates of such efforts say they believe that targeted attacks have given American antimissile defenses a new edge and delayed by several years the day when North Korea will be able to threaten American cities with nuclear weapons launched atop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
And now, as The Sun reports, Sir Malcolm Rifkind claims American intelligence has used cyber warfare to successfully foil missile tests before and that there is a “strong belief” that President Trump’s administration was behind North Korea’s latest failed launch.
Speaking with the BBC, he said:
But Sir Malcolm, who served as foreign secretary from 1995 to 1997 in John Major’s government, did warn that despite the missile flop, North Korea remains a serious nuclear threat. He said:
“But don’t get too excited by that, they’ve also had quite a lot of successful tests.“They are an advanced country when it comes to their nuclear weapons programme. That still remains a fact – a hard fact.”
Shell-shocked North Korean experts admit the secretive nation now appears far more advanced than previously thought. Dave Schmerler, a research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, told The Wall Street Journal: “We’re totally floored right now. I was not expecting to see this many new missile designs.”
Sabotage or not, one can’t help but wonder if the US intelligence agencies have the capability to blow up a North Korean missile after launch, do they also have the capability to ‘launch’ a North Korean missile, setting in motion yet another ‘safe’ false flag to enrage the world?
