I don’t think this has anything to do with China, but all of those things can be compromised. You need to get data off SEMs and on to CNCs some way. They are usually on some sort of network and you can use flash drives and so on. There are always weak points. There are loads of examples of compromising industrial systems on Wikipedia even. See stuxnet and so on.
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You would be a fool not to, it’s how the industry works now days. Besides the cutting data, you get maintenance reports, productivity reports, software updates and patches, part ordering online trouble shooting and even engineers dialling in remotely to help you fix physical problems.
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Until a hacker gets in and crashes the thing… or a string of CNC machines. Once you can get at the programming, it takes very little skill to crash it. It’s why one friend who operates CNC machines refuse to connect the computer he uses on it to the internet.
Your friend sound like he is stuck in the dark ages, all the CNC’s i have worked with for the last 20 years have been networked.
Anything can be hacked some mentioned Stuxnet, that was designed to jump an air gap, I would be more worried about ransomware or my bank account than then some one killing the CNC’s.
Thats why companies have insurance.
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I haven’t read anything from those guys. Why do you follow all of them?
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That was what, some 25 years ago? Were the machines even able to be networked? We have gaggles of large CNC machines, and they’re all networked.
No reason other than to be more efficient and make more money. Who wants that from CNC ? ha. 
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You’re right. Because it was
In any case I think hacking or sabotage was already ruled out. The ship had numerous problems with their power system too. I hope this will lead to different safety protocols, perhaps requiring tugboats.
Because they have a huge following, they’re all racist MAGA heroes, and if Trump is re-elected there’s your new American government.
You’re therefore a small part of the huge following. It feels like it’s bordering on obsessional to me.
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As a former SEM field service engineer I can answer that. An SEM’s operating system is meant to be isolated from the internet, we don’t want any updates or virus screwing up the software. So the SEM PC is isolated from the internet and only connected via Ethernet to a support PC, which is then connected to the internet. This was the case even before hacking was a thing.
But today, it’s the reverse, most companies or universities won’t let the SEM computer touch their network because it’s using an out of date version of windows and is never updated nor has virus software. So IT groups won’t let the SEM computer on their network (the support PC can get on).
Sorry if too much information. 
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The problem is a student can really screw stuff up if he’s not careful, like smashing the lens against the sample because it doesn’t tell you what your working distance is until you focused it. That working distance can be quite small, like 1mm or less.
I mean I’m sure you can write algorithms to use the electron beam to continuously update the working distance and not allow it to get too close, in fact I suggested it, but since I wasn’t a CS major I wouldn’t know how to do that anyways. Even stuff like raising the filament current too fast can burn it out early, and algorithms can be written to optimize that as well. There’s a certain sequence of steps that must be followed exactly when loading a sample, and they watch you like a hawk until they’re confident you’ll follow those exact sequence of steps. Like turn on XT before it pumped down, stuff will break and the software won’t stop you (because there’s like probably 30 or more kV running through that filament when XT is on, and vacuum keeps it from burning out).
I think the thing ran on windows XP or even windows 2000 (I don’t remember which), so it’s definitely very outdated.
My friends computer that he uses to interface with the CNC machine runs windows XP.
I guess my point is, hacking it isn’t easy and there’s no evidence that this happened.
Yes, the SEM vendor isn’t worried about hacking, but the IT departments won’t allow any out dated PCs on their network, that’s the issue.
Who made the SEM? You can’t avoid the working distance issue - the problem is not that it’s not focused, it’s when it’s focused incorrectly by the user, so the machine thinks the sample is 5mm away when it’s really 4 mm away. User raises sample 4mm and crash. It’s not usually a big issue when it happens, I’ve done it myself multiple times. But university tool owners are usually hyper paranoid.
I had some old systems running Windows XP, I think those were the first Windows based SEMs for us.
Instrument was made by Joel. Don’t remember the model, but I got a few tiff files I took off the instrument that I can dig up.
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Like the Baltimore shipping lanes, I think this thread needs a bit of a clean up.
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I think only 6 people died.
Yes, yet being Americans, they had a lot of mass.
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I think you mean “JEOL”, which is a major manufacturer of electron microscopes.
“Joel” is just a random bloke. 