Exporing Military encryption to China

[Dr. Evil]

Does anyone know why this KIV-7 thing is so super-seekrit, or why the
Chinese would want it so badly that they paid to smuggle them?  It is
made by Mykotronx, the same guys who made the Clipper chips.  From
what I could find about it, it just sounds like a super-secure VPN box
that can basically encrypt T1s and satellite links.  It is
TEMPEST-spec.  I couldn't find out exactly what kind of encryption alg
it uses, but is it likely to be any better than AES?  It does have
some great features, like removable keys, and it probably has some
amount of tamper-resistance, but it's still not doing anything more
than VPNing, but at a telco layer, not an IP layer.  Surely the
Chinese could have gotten the same functionality with a couple of
OpenBSD boxes with ipsec?  Maybe it wouldn't be as nice of a package,
but it would be a lot cheaper.  Or maybe they were hoping to find some
backdoor in it?  Seems unlikely that there is one in this product.

Hey, for a good time, you can go to the KIV-7 conference at the Golden
Nugget hotel, January 15-17.  Maybe I'll see you there.

In these cases, I always wonder, "what's the real story?"