Thank you. And that's the only subject these scare articles actually pertain to. FRAUD. Not ESPIONAGE.
There's evidence and proof of obvious commercial fraud. There's no indication whatsoever of the PLA secretly inserting magic backdoors into resistors that readers are inferring.
The article is third-rate hearsay from a report from DEMOCRAT Carl Levin and RINO John McCain for crying out loud.
The article uses "fake" and "counterfeit" interchangeably. If it's a fake blank package, it won't function. The article also says "Of the 16 items bought, all were counterfeit and some had bogus identification numbers." If it's got A CLEARLY MARKED DIFFERENT PART NUMBER STAMPED ON IT then it's not a goddam counterfeit!!
Yet from this, the PLA is trying to sneak backdoors into systems by clearly marking their surreptitious parts with the wrong part numbers? Come on!
It says, "[counterfeit parts] were also found in memory chips in the display systems of C-17..." Nonsense. Did they mean that counterfeit chips were found in memory modules? Or they de-capped the chips and found counterfeit dice in memory chips? This article is good for nothing but promoting FUD from a RINO and a Dem to make the defense system vendors look as bad as the Chinese and deflect any blame from incompetent bureaucratic procurement QA weenies.
Thanks sp.
I’ll agree with your post because it is (mostly) accurate - I’ll get to the qualifier in a bit. I should’ve been more to the point that I was not referring to only this article, but more to the overall issue of counterfeiting that is well documented and has been going on for a long time. China is a major player in the counterfeit market (I will include fakes and intentional mis-marks in that category). Realistically, China may be the biggest player in this.
I only ever argued the realities of the situation and its impact on quality. I never made any spectacular claims about magic back doors in two or three legged components or anything of that nature - never once alluded to that.
I have seen poor work practices cause the issues inherent in allowing counterfeits and poorly qualified vendors (ones claiming to sell the exact same part - number, marking and all), but when decapped - a very different die appears. These were latent failures that passed a dozen or more very stringent test protocols (both functional and manufacturing defects test types) throughout production and caused a major recall a few years down the road (devices should’ve lasted a minimum of five). Some of this is brought on by cronyism in departmental upper echelon, some of it by desuetude/short term memory of management, or just plain intellectual dishonesty among the same and their reports. These are people skirting the system to make themselves look good short term and get promotions, which only bolsters their clout to the unknowing fops in mgmt as time marches on.
I see the same going on here and have seen what passes for quality in the military first hand (usually whomever does the best job of smoking their superior’s pole or has their lips most firmly attached to their bum is the one who gets the promotion - usually).
Finally, Mil-Specs are (in a lot of cases) somewhat general and left up to interpretation. They assume that the individual engineer will place an emphasis on knowing their product and its limitations. The specs also assume that the cognizant individual will chose a proper method to vet the device within the constraints of their specific design and manufacturing allowances, which best represents usage in a given system. This all hinges on proper qualification of vendors, which is a huge mouthful.
Agreed, at least as far as you and I know, anyway.
All I'm saying is that such a thing is possible, not that it's ever actually been done.
Here’s some cases of actual prosecution of fraud in chip sales:
And a little article from ECN on what types of counterfeiting there are:
http://www.ecnmag.com/articles/2010/03/fighting-counterfeit-semiconductor-epidemic
If a chip that was never a Moto, AD, TI, etc chip has a Moto, AD, TI logo on it, I don’t care what the exact part number is/was. The fact is, the ChiComs are peddling their shite under the name of a reputable company. Same deal in rifle scopes: If the phony scope is carrying the markings of a Leupold and has a name of “Leupold” on it, I don’t care whether it is a 5X fixed power scope that Leupold doesn’t sell: It’s still a counterfeit and a fraudulent use of an established company’s name.
The U.S. Government has become corrupt to the core.
Good post.
On related topic, if you want to know why DoD system costs keep going up, a big part of it is continually more demanding parts compliance requirements. In the aerospace world, they are known as TOR’s. Its MIL-SPEC on steroids. Instead of letting the vendors build their product to meet performance specifications, they now have to ensure all parts meet part requirements in TOR’s regardless of whether or not it affects performance. These requirements and their verification flow all the way down the procurements from contractor to sub-contractor to simple parts manufacturer. Most manufacturers cant meet the requirements without significant cost increase.
I don’t think that they were claiming any conspiracy by the Chinese government. When McCain said that it threatened our security, he didn’t mean intellectual security. He was talking about the threat that bogus parts not working endangering the success of an operation and the risk of life that could result.
The conspiracy probably didn’t have anything to do with the Chinese government, other than the fact the Chinese stand up for their own companies, in the same manner that unions protect worker, whether they are guilty or not.