According to a Fox News exclusive, experts think the Stuxnet virus is still wrecking havoc on Iran’s nuclear program, particularly to the centrifuges.

Yet it’s worth considering that even cyber-warfare — like all kinds of warfare — can produce “collateral damage.” The term is a military euphemism, now widely accepted in the lay lexicon, for the unintended harm done by waging war.

Fox News reporter Ed Barnes writes:

The American and European experts say their security websites, which deal with the computer worm known as Stuxnet, continue to be swamped with traffic from Tehran and other places in the Islamic Republic, an indication that the worm continues to infect the computers at Iran’s two nuclear sites.

Yes, but not only nuclear sites are being attacked.

A contact in Iran recently e-mailed to let me know that the Stuxnet virus shut down the operations of a 350-ton capacity multi-purpose milling factory (think wheat flour) near Iran’s Mount Damavand. As the Fox News report seems to indicate, discs with computer security patches had to be mailed in from abroad to get the mills back up.

People aren’t starving — yet. But give sanctions some time, some say. My contact says Iran has more than 350 large-scale mills. Nonetheless, the (likely) government-created virus apparently can’t tell the difference between factories for baking bread and centrifuges for creating nuclear fuel.

Just some food for thought, or thought for food, as it were.