Cool USA Facts!

In 2010, as part of a program by the Bush and Obama administrations to hinder the development of Iran's nuclear program, US NSA and cyber-command operatives, working with Israeli counterparts, developed the Stuxnet Virus. The virus was originally designed to infect siemens microcontrollers, that controlled the rate of spinning gas centrifuges, causing them to spin out of control and explode, leading to a temporary setback in Iranian nuclear fissile material production. In a classic case of blowback, Stuxnet also infected nearly all computer networks around the world, including in the US, threatening critical infrastructure, such as water, electricity, telecommunication, transportation, and health networks. By releasing stuxnet, the US and Israel initiated the first use of, and began an arms race for this new type of war weapon: cyber-attacks that can harm critical infrastructure. A more comprehensive plan to destroy all of Iran's critical infrastructure via a country-wide cyber-attack, called Nitro-Zeus, was also developed, and exposed by whistleblowers in the Alex Gibney documentary: Zero Days, which details the history of the Stuxnet virus.