China would. Russia would.

Notice how you don't hear too much about "Chinese hackers" anymore? There's all sorts of brinksmanship and politics involved here.

The US have even publicly acknowledged this stuff. In 1982 pirated software (I think IBM mainframe stuff iirc) was modified, stuxnet-style to cause one of the largest non-nuclear explosions of some sort of gas refinery ever. God knows what's been done since then.

You're probably thinking of the story Reed included in "At the Abyss," about a pipeline explosion from a trojan horse slipped in the Canadian control software. That was supposed to be in 1982. It's become an infamous legend about ICS attack.

Probably didn't happen though. There was definitely a big pipeline explosion at the time, though Reed's fact checking misses the location, and somewhat more importantly, the fact that Russian control systems weren't software-based at the time.

Although it was a fun legend, it probably started as a game of telephone (a/o paranoia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Abyss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_(role-playing_game)

I'm not a fan of these "Notice how you don't hear too much about X" arguments. Just because you aren't interested does not mean it's not being reported.

It's more the opposite. If you follow the government beat, China was this unlimited threat until it wasn't.