As political tensions ratchet up between the U.S. and China amid an ongoing trade war that has had some big repercussions on the global technology industry, the Chinese military is reportedly looking to replace Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system with its own, internally built OS.

The report comes by way of Kanwa Asian Defence, a military news print magazine whose story was first picked up Monday by the Epoch Times. China’s motivation apparently stems from its fears the U.S. government could potentially use Windows to snoop on its military secrets.

Those fears are not entirely unfounded. There’s no direct evidence to suggest the U.S. has spied on China, but leaks from whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden have shown that American spy chiefs do have an array of hacking tools at their disposal.

China believes it cannot trust any U.S.-made technology, so it’s reportedly planning to adopt a “security by obscurity” approach for its military that should make its computer systems more difficult to hack.

China has apparently created a new Internet Security Information Leadership Group that will lead efforts to build its new operating system. The new group is said to be independent of the rest of China’s military and intelligence agencies, reporting directly to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

This is similar to the way in which the U.S. Cyber Command operates as a distinct entity under the Department of Defense, separate from other intelligence agencies.

In addition to building a new OS, the Internet Security Information Leadership Group is also being tasked with building a replacement for the German-made programmable logic controllers used in 70% of its industrial control systems. Details on China’s new operating system are scant, but the Epoch Times reported that it’s looking to build a “fully customized OS” from scratch.

Analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group told SiliconANGLE that China is capable of doing this, but it would still most likely end up with an inferior product.

“I expect they’ll find this is far harder than it looks,” Enderle said, adding that it would most likely be forced to build an OS based on open-source technology such as Linux, Android or Unix. “The question isn’t whether they can build a workable OS, it is whether they can make it competitive performance-wise, and secure it.”

The problem for China is that it will be unable to match the resources thrown at the development of more established operating systems such as Windows or iOS, Enderle said.

“I’ll bet they’ll find that assuring performance and security will be far harder than they realize over time,” the analyst continued. “If they don’t do this right they’ll just cripple their own military, and given that military leaders generally aren’t programmers, the odds favor them under resourcing and under funding the effort with dire results. I give them five to 10 years to figure out this is a truly bad idea.”

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. was equally skeptical of China’s chances of building a viable OS anytime soon, though he said it does at least make sense for the country to try and decouple itself from western technology.

“If China will succeed from a technology and commercial perspective remains questionable,” Mueller said, likening the situation to the early computing race between the U.S. and the USSR – a race that the U.S. easily won as the Soviets were unable to keep up with the fast pace of innovation in the west.

“China today probably has a much better shot than the USSR did back then, but it remains a formidable challenge,” Mueller said.

Photo: Jason Edwards/Flickr