Forget hackers, honey traps and photon-counting lasers. China's latest haul of F-35 secrets apparently came courtesy of an unread email.
According to a new Bloomberg report, the F-35 cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door that ended up in Beijing's possession were routed through Hong Kong because a United Parcel Service (UPS) employee missed an email warning not to send the shipment through Hong Kong. The email, from freight forwarder DSV (working on behalf of Lockheed Martin ), said the parts must not transit certain countries under the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the rules designed precisely to keep American weapons tech away from American adversaries.
Regular readers will recall that we have been following this saga since it first went "MIA" on the way to Hong Kong last month. What started as a mysterious detour has now been traced to the most mundane failure imaginable. Below we lay out what the Pentagon just told Congress, why the parts matter more than anyone in an official capacity is willing to admit, and what it means for UPS, which was already the market's least favorite parcel name.
Late, Rerouted, Gone
The new details were laid out by Pentagon officials on Sept. 29 in a roughly hour-long closed-door meeting with staff from the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, according to a person briefed on the incident. Here's the sequence, per Bloomberg:
- The shipment, from an Australian F-35A and bound for the US "for possible repair or dispos
