British engineers of nuclear submarines have involved programmers from Russia and Belarus in software development, The Telegraph newspaper reported citing documents of the UK Ministry of Defence.
“British nuclear submarine engineers are using software developed in Russia and Belarus, which contravenes Ministry of Defence rules,” The Telegraph article said.
The newspaper specified that the software development should have been handled by UK employees with security clearance, but the task was partially transferred to developers from Siberia and Minsk. The country’s Ministry of Defence called it “a serious threat to the defence of the UK” and in the summer of 2022 began an investigation, which ended in February 2023, the material notes.
According to the results of the investigation it turned out that the company Rolls-Royce Submarines, which provides the British nuclear submarine fleet, subcontracted the development to a consulting firm in the field of digital technologies WM Reply. The latter, in turn, recruited specialists from Belarus, one of whom actually worked from home in Siberia. The firm kept this fact secret and debated whether it could conceal the whereabouts of the developers by giving them fake names of dead Britons.
Rolls-Royce Submarines said it had ended its co-operation with WM Reply following the investigation. An unnamed representative of the British Ministry of Defence told The Telegraph that the incident did not affect the security of the UK.
Recall, earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin called Western ideas of a new world order hypocrisy. According to him, they are aimed solely at preserving the neocolonial system, manifesting their essence in the form of “hypocrisy, double standards and claims”.