Intel has received a complaint from the SEC warning it that its CPUs were used in PCs in a number of rogue nations, identified by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism.

The SEC is now demanding Intel describes its contacts with some of those countries, mainly the peace loving democratic nations of Cuba, Sudan, Iran and Syria. Now, if Intel was selling powerful server chips to these countries, the SEC moan would make sense, but we're talking about regular PCs, low-end at best.

The SEC describes PCs shipped to the socialist paradise of Cuba as powered by Celeron CPUs, "with 80 gigabytes of memory (yes, memory) and 512MB RAM". Furthermore these babies run Windows XP, which the Caribbean communists prefer in favor of Linux for some reason. Apparently Cuban companies assembled them using parts attained from fellow Chinese communists. Considering the hardware used in them, they could have probably salvaged something better in the shark infested waters off Florida.

Unlike Cubans, Iranian mullahs prefer AMD Opteron parts, and use them in their supercomputers on a regular basis. We're not sure what they use in North Korea, but if they've got Celerons like all communists, Californians should probably learn not to worry and love their Taep'o-dongs.

More here.