In 2001, a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft accidentally entered Chinese airspace and was forced to land at an airport in Hainan Island by Chinese fighter jets, capturing the entire crew.
The time the U.S. aircraft was compelled to land was quite extensive, but the technicians aboard did not have enough time to completely wipe all the reconnaissance data stored on the hard drives, allowing some intelligence secrets to fall into Chinese hands.
Since then, U.S. military scientists have focused all efforts on developing a technology that can erase all data stored on hard drives at “super speed,” ensuring it does not fall into enemy hands. To date, this technology has been successfully implemented.
Scientists at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta) collaborated with L-3 Communications (New York) to successfully create a technology capable of erasing hard drive data extremely quickly and irretrievably. This technology has effectively addressed many shortcomings of older technologies, and now, if a second aircraft capture incident were to occur, technicians would have enough time to erase all data from high-capacity hard drives within just a few minutes, rather than the several tens of minutes required previously.
During the 2001 incident, technicians seemingly only had enough time to erase data using traditional methods, which China was still able to recover. However, the newly introduced technology integrates multiple data erasure methods simultaneously, including thermal techniques, chemical surface cleaning of hard drives, microwave erasure, and especially erasure using extremely powerful permanent magnets.
To create a magnetic field strong enough to erase data, scientists designed a special device made by combining metals such as Neodymium, Cobalt, and Boron into a super magnet housed in a special box weighing only about 60 kg. This box would be installed in a secret location on the aircraft, and in the event of an incident, a sophisticated mechanical system would automatically withdraw all hard drives from the aircraft and place them into this magnetic box. Within just a few minutes, all data would be erased using a combination of magnetic and microwave erasure. Extensive testing has shown that all data erased using this method is completely unrecoverable, even the smallest fragments.
This data erasure technology is set to be commercialized in the near future, primarily targeting large enterprises that store significant amounts of confidential business data. The scientists behind this project believe that erasing data extremely quickly in large organizations will be much more challenging than on reconnaissance flights due to the cumbersome nature of enterprise computer systems, which are entirely incomparable to the lightweight supercomputers on the most advanced reconnaissance aircraft in the world. However, it is sufficient to equip a lightweight box designed for reconnaissance aircraft for businesses to securely erase all data stored on hard drives, floppy disks, and all types of magnetic tape.
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