>"my nation's telecommunications backbone has a malicious FPGA hidden somewhere so it can man-in-the-middle critical communications" Not just that, for about a

>"my nation's telecommunications backbone has a malicious FPGA hidden somewhere so it can man-in-the-middle critical communications" Not just that, for about a decade now I've had a thought that you could just have a chip "self-destruct" when a signal goes out and bam a chip re-writes itself to be bricked. If you bake this into some common chip (or just include it in a firmware update), or something used in say backbone level network hardware, or something in millions of cellphones you could send out the instruction in some previously routine traffic to and from the mothership and then a clock starts counting down. You build in long enough of a delay to ensure you get most devices to receive the signal, say a week or even a month, and you suddenly cripple millions of devices and create mild to moderate chaos which gives gives you a leg up for an invasion or has a massive impact on the markets, or cripples internet access for a large area for weeks or months until hardware can be replaced.