Comment by rainsford
2 hours ago
But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.
I asked Claude, and now I know that there are nice, basically undetectable, plausibly deniable ways to render solar panels useless within months, or, with some preparation, days. It seems that open-source, carefully scrutinized panel controller firmware may be critically important.
Your Claude may have been hallucinating - solar panels have no microcontrollers or microprocessors, and hence have no need for firmware. Battery Charge controllers -- that are downstream of panels do have firmware, but even if a booby-trapped firmware were to short-circuit the panels, they'd be undamaged.
Solar panels are usually connected to inverters or other power circuits that make the variable voltage they provide usable as a stable source downstream.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).