Before I read the article, I thought this was a trite comment, but instead it's an apt analogy. It really is a distributed system of components whose byproducts can propagate between/through cell firewall.

Now wait until computer virus writers use the idea ! A virus distributing little pieces of its payload over several binaries !

Ah, that's probably common already…

I mean isn't that what a trojan technically does.

A small binary that embeds itself, opens a backdoor, and downloads more intrusive code.

but what about multiple Trojans at once, that each download a piece of more intrusive code, but it only starts up once all the pieces are available on the same network?

Yeah that's more what I meant by "distributed". Doesn't have to be over the network though, loads of side channels on a machine…