If there was a cyber attack, however, it’s quite possible that there’s no evidence aboard the McCain to find. It would have been much easier for an adversary to hack the merchant ship involved in the accident, the Alnic MC, causing it to turn unexpectedly across the destroyer’s path. That’s the hypothesis — admittedly speculation — of a Navy IT expert we’ve featured previously in these pages, recently retired Capt. John Zimmerman. He commanded the submarine USS Jefferson City, served as deputy chief information officer at Navy Sea Systems Command, and now is vice-president at contractor SubSystems.