A good summary of what we do know for sure:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/18 ... rty_guide/More on the passenger/dodgy angle:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/09 ... _on_mh370/From the wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_A ... passengers"Of the total, 20 are employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas – 12 are from Malaysia and 8 from China"
My take:
The passports thing PLUS the Freescale connection PLUS the weird behaviour by the Malaysian authorities&military during the search tells me this reeks of industrial espionage/commercial interests.
Consider that the Pentagon recently identified the
primary threat facing the US military: untrustworthy/unverifiable computer chips from Asia deployed in US systems. The reason for the high risk value assigned to this attack vector is that any number of back doors could be built in by anti-US adversaries during the chip production process, i.e. during design (non-US design company) or fabrication (depends on geographical location of factory), and 1) it is almost impossible to detect "sleeper" behaviour in a system-on-chip without intensive analysis and 2) it is very hard for the mil-ind complex to prevent such infiltration
in a cost-effective way using its own resources. This is where the CIA comes in, as covert service taking care of US business and technology interests.
I think those Freescale employees are suspected of facilitating introduction of attack code in critical chips, and were targeted by the CIA for this reason. Right now the CIA is debriefing them, after which they will disappear - with new identities and an understanding to keep their mouths shut lest their families end up as pig food.
If you think I am a tinfoil-hat candidate, and that the CIA is purely political/military and does not get involved in commercial interests, I recommend you read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". I am not making this up. The world turns on money and business interests.
EDIT:
This entire episode has a personal meaning for me, albeit far-removed: my ex-girlfriend's father's colleague's wife was on board the missing plane :/
EDIT 2:
Actually, there is no way a planeload of people will be given new identities as it costs too much and eventually the story will come out. No, they will be disposed of.