United States Defense Department investigators have discovered that it’s surprisingly easy to purchase restricted or classified items of military hardware; all you need to do is have a scout on eBay or Craigslist. [via SlashDot][image by swotai]

” Among the items purchased include two components from F-14 fighter jets …”

The article mentions the risk of items being reverse-engineered or countermeasured by enemies of the United States … though I’d hazard to suggest any enemy worth being worried about has probably decided that it’s best to continue letting bureaucracy and internal discontent do all the hard work of wearing their opponents down.

I think the thing that astonishes me most, though, is the fact that I’ve had eBay auctions delisted for tiny marginal breaches of the site’s code of conduct, yet their eagle-eyed monitoring teams don’t notice or investigate people selling chunks of fighter jets. It’s a weird world, and no mistake.