[sam_paine]

However, often these designs are very crude and poorly made copies, that can pass very basic functionality tests, but fail later on - far earlier than a ‘legitimate’ part. I’ve heard of brake pads that ‘looked’ like the real thing,

And THAT my FRiend, is the ultimate point!

VISUAL INSPECTION is what these procurement bureaucrat ijits are talking about.

If you are relying on what's printed on the package or the reel or on the component, then THAT is the problem, because you are just as vulnerable to a failure due to an innocent mislabeling or a test escape error as you are to malicious intent.

In military equipment, you must control the acceptance test for the system.

And yes, they do partial sampling for environmental burn-in and accelerated lifetime tests, and yes you can validate system tests even if you don't verify every cell in a memory.

These systems passed the qualification tests. So either the tests are adequate and it doesn't matter functionally that they got knock-off parts that met that stringent test spec, or the tests are inadequate because when sampled in the extended burn-in tests they failed.

These stories are ENGINEERING stories about quality control. They are NOT chicom espionage stories, although the reporter word-magicians are counting on non-engineers to draw the conclusion that the chinese are magically putting TCP/IP backdoors into resistors and capacitors by mislabeling them.

[null and void]

I bet I could make a component that would look like a resistor until it received a particular coded series of pulses and then make it “fail” open or shorted.

And I’m not even a sufficiently motivated, determined and patient enemy.