Navy buys Chinese microchips
Marinescoutsniper sends a Business Insider article that accuses the Navy of buying counterfeit microchips from the Pacific Rim which turned out to be from China;
…the chips weren’t only low-quality fakes, they had been made with a “back-door” and could have been remotely shut down at any time.
If left undiscovered the result could have rendered useless U.S. missiles and killed the signal from aircraft that tells everyone whether it’s friend or foe.
59,000 faulty chips.
Wired says they’re looking for a way to close the barn door now that the horses are out;
One way [Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA)], would like to make chips from foreign foundries safe is by splitting up the manufacturing process. Under this scenario, the front-end-of-line (FEOL) stage of manufacturing would take place at offshore foundries, while the back-end-of-line processing would finish up at a more secure U.S. facility.
Seems to me that someone would have come up with a way to secure the process before we bought technology from some third world shit hole that uses slave labor and influenced by Chinese intelligence services. I noticed that the Bureau of Industry and Security added some Pacific Rim tech companies to their Commerce Control List a few weeks back. I hope it included some of these manufacturers.
Category: Military issues
…or they could just build them in Ohio. Assholes.
This is the consequence of moving so much manufacturing offshore – Ray Charles could have seen this coming.
Over the years, I’ve read various reasons for why this has happened. The two that stand out are labor costs and over regulation of which, EPA regulations are the biggest jobs killers in America. Like OSHA, the EPA started out as a good idea, but has turned into an over sized, Frankenstein, monstrosity that needs SERIOUS cutting back.
Oddly I’ve once argued a “conservative” position for keeping the post office, etc. despite their expense. It is the legitimate job of the government, both from a constitutional perspective, and from a simple moral perspective: To protect property by ensuring we have the resources to logistically move materials in wartime even if it’s not cost-effective on the civilian front, via rail, road, and airports, and whatever other forms of transportation are necessary. Yes, some voerly large airports may end up where not commercially viable as emergency landing sites for large military jets. Yes, that means helping fund large national superhighway networks, and keeping the rails and Amtrack running. This also means having a postal network within its own control for security reasons.
This also ties into why many companies are finding offshoring to not be anywhere near the boon expected once cultural differences, norms in expected quality and initiative, shipping, and communications problems are taken into consideration. Throw industrial or industrial-style national espionage into the mix, and perhaps they ought to make sure they order from local foundries?
Part of what you pay for in QA-certified materials is trust, and proof that the component will meet spec.
Agree with NSOM. No reason for sending defense manufacturing overseas to a state that has declared itself our enemy.