GAO Sting Finds More Fake Military Parts From China

Nidi62 writes "The Government Accountability Office, through a fictitious company, recently requisitioned parts from China in order to determine if the Chinese government was living up to its promises of battling counterfeit parts. The report from the GAO found that '334 of 396 vendors who offered to sell parts to the fictitious company were from China' and that 'all 16 parts eventually purchased by the fake company came from 13 China-based vendors and all were determined by an independent testing laboratory to be counterfeit.' The parts requested were supposedly for use in F-15s, MV-22 Ospreys, and nuclear submarines, and were requested as new parts. The report (PDF) also says that in the past three years, over one million counterfeit parts came from Chinese companies. This stands in sharp contrast to the Chinese government's promise to clamp down on the production of counterfeit parts in China."

Comments

... and nobody is surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

China looks out for China, nobody else.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[Fluffeh]

China looks out for China, nobody else.

Yes, but the recent few weeks seems to be US looking out for US - by trumpeting an ever-growing tirade against China across a number of political fields - manufacture, technology (hacking) and a bunch of others. The last time the US seemed to do this with such fervor, they invaded Iraq a few months later. The time before that, it built up to the war in Afghanistan. I typically don't worry too much about the US bitching about this or that, but when it reaches a critical level, bad things seem to happen in quick succession - and that makes me worried.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[khallow]

It's an election year. Politicians are currently looking for issues with legs, um, that "resonate with the voter". A good hate for China might help certain congresscritters with their primaries or a certain someone to look presidential.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an election year. Politicians are currently looking for issues with legs, um, that "resonate with the voter". A good hate for China might help certain congresscritters with their primaries or a certain someone to look presidential.

Spot on. Playing with foreign threats (real or not) is a great way to gain local support. Everyone does their part to fight the common enemy. With the enemy defeated, a new enemy is fabricated and the cycle repeats. Without this kind of trick controlling a democracy would be way more expensive, but it'd also be far more interesting.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for the US being less of an international douchebag, but if they're calling out bad shit China is actually doing, isn't that a good thing?

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

the recent few weeks seems to be US looking out for US

apparently you must have been living under a rock till recent weeks. the US has ALWAYS looked out for the US, very publicly and aggressively

this is merely an extension of it... blame China for supplying dodgy products that the US was to incompetent to inspect and conform properly

dodgy parts can come from anywhere... even reputable suppliers accidentally let the odd bad egg slip through the noose (i have worked in civil aviation as an engineer). that's why there is supposed to be inspection of parts and documentation at every step of the lifecycle.

if US defence contractors are too lazy or inept to make sure their parts are kosher (ie Mil spec) (including the occasional destructive material test) then i pity the poor idiots they pay to fly their aircraft

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice set of numbers there : 396 vendors, 334 chineese. However, just *16* parts where ordered, *all* from chineese vendors. Thats a sample of less than 5%, and in absolute numbers *way* to few to be able to able to conclude anything from.

Its also funny that although 15% of the vendors where non-chineese not a single part was ordered from them.

I wonder what (if any) the outrage would be if one of the none-chineese vendors would be American, *also* selling a counterfeit product.

Its almost if someone tried to "proove a point" any way he could ...

Lies, damn lies and statistics. Oh wait, isn't it an election year ?

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[hairyfeet]

No way we'd go that far with China, our corporate masters are too addicted to the massive profits they get by dumping their toxic waste out the back doors of their plants in China and the people are too addicted to CCC, aka Cheapo Chinese Crap.

I'd say the bigger question is WHAT THE FUCK are they doing with plans for our planes detailed enough they can crank out knockoff parts? Have we REALLY gotten as bad as Huckabee said and our military can't run without CCC either? I mean if we are just gonna have parts cranked out by potential enemies we might as well say fuck it and offer a first come first serve arms deal to anybody with cash. this is just sad man, we can't even keep our shit together enough to keep any hack with a Chinese plant from cranking out F15 parts, that's fucking pathetic, just pathetic.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[ooshna]

The reasons for the Iraq war were just a farce. GWB had every intention of attacking Iraq before the Afghanistan invasion even took place.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[SoothingMist]

Why does our own Government insist on purchasing military equipment and components from non-US suppliers? What is wrong with American industry that we have to send our money to other countries to have defense-essential items produced? One often hears the "Generals" say that this approach yields the best value for the American people. Tell me again how it is good for Americans to be put out of work and to not have the education and training to make them economically viable. Tell me again how it is a good thing to destroy American industry and employment opportunity by sending jobs to other countries. Tell me again how it is good for America to create a huge out-of-work and under-employed population. Tell me again how our being past our individual and national debt limits is a good thing. America is on a very slippery slope and is not going to recover if it stays on its current track.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[tlhIngan]

dodgy parts can come from anywhere... even reputable suppliers accidentally let the odd bad egg slip through the noose (i have worked in civil aviation as an engineer). that's why there is supposed to be inspection of parts and documentation at every step of the lifecycle.

You omit the fact that in the 80's, many American suppliers were caught with counterfeit airplane parts with stolen FAA tags on them. It got so bad it made it all the way into the presidential 747! And given the security of that, if counterfeit parts coming from American suppliers can still make it through... it's why the FAA in conjunction with the FBI did massive arrests.

The parts in question were basically time-expired or rebuilt worn parts resold as new.

Why does our own Government insist on purchasing military equipment and components from non-US suppliers? What is wrong with American industry that we have to send our money to other countries to have defense-essential items produced? One often hears the "Generals" say that this approach yields the best value for the American people. Tell me again how it is good for Americans to be put out of work and to not have the education and training to make them economically viable. Tell me again how it is a good thing to destroy American industry and employment opportunity by sending jobs to other countries. Tell me again how it is good for America to create a huge out-of-work and under-employed population. Tell me again how our being past our individual and national debt limits is a good thing. America is on a very slippery slope and is not going to recover if it stays on its current track.

Tell me again your reaction to the military purchasing $500 hammers and such, again. The problem has been the past 40 years or so, the defense department is no longer the technology driver it has been the past 150 or so. The ICs NASA used for Apollo? Mostly built and funded with DoD dollars.

But these days, the biggest driver of technology comes from the consumer sector.

If the DoD needs ICs for their newest jet avionics, they have to wait. I mean, I think the DoD is buying what, 2200 F-35's? That would mean that part counts would be a multiple of that, over a number of years. An IC supplier like Intel, IBM or Texas Instruments (who all have fabs in the US) would laugh at such pitiful quantities. Oh sure they'll sell the DoD parts, but given the special requirements for mil-spec parts, in quantities that these companies build at it would probably be double the price. But since only the DoD is ordering mil-spec parts, and not a lot of them, they're easily going to be 100x the cost because it's a special run.

Ditto if it's a regular IC - if you specify you want it fabbed specially for you, they can do it, it just costs a hell of a lot more money (especially if they have to build another set of masks as they're being used in fabs at other countries, and each mask is $100K or more which easily turns a complex chip into a $3M production run. If you only want 10 chips, you're looking at $300K/chip!).

If you want to save money (and the DoD's tends to like saving money for use on other things), you end up going with COTS parts that anyone can go to Digikey and order from. But then you run into issues like this (and even reputable dears like Digikey have been shipped bad parts too)

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[luis_a_espinal]

the recent few weeks seems to be US looking out for US

apparently you must have been living under a rock till recent weeks. the US has ALWAYS looked out for the US, very publicly and aggressively

By the way they conduct policy and ridiculously low penalties imposed in such infraction, I bet to differ with your opinion. Actions > political rhetoric (and the US government has been giving us a lot of the later and the mindless masses stomp the ground thinking it is the real shit.)

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[El Torico]

Yes, it is a good thing. The kettle is, in fact, black.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[paxcoder]

As opposed to...?
Britain? I guess it takes care of Northern Ireland, sometimes.

Re:... and nobody is surprised.

[SoothingMist]

You asked my reaction to $500 hammers. Having served as a uniformed program manager in DoD I had to go through certification training in procurement. (I hold several. One is of the highest level.) During those courses we were specifically trained in ways to get the contractors to do work for free under the bid and proposal process. We were also trained in ways to manipulate the contractor community using the economic might of the government. What the government forgets is that it costs money to do work and to produce products. If work is done for "free" the cost has to be made up somewhere else. So, $500 hammers and other such should be no surprise. (Not to deny the cost affect of low-quantity unique components.) One of the most sacred mantras in the government (not just DoD) is that more gets done with less and that work gets done for free. I have seen four-star generals put into retirement because they refused to promote that false notion. So, everyone plays the game. Everyone thinks of the government as a separate entity and that the money belongs to the government. Nobody thinks of the money as belonging to the people and that the government is supposed to serve the people. Instead, they have their personal agendas and fiefdoms. They prefer promotion to doing what is needed to accomplish something meaningful. In the end, whatever does not work is done ever more fervently. Regulations are written to prevent anything from being done that does work. In that way, more and more money can be demanded to accomplish less and less. You see the results today in the weakness of our military. Troops are lied to about why they can not get armor fittings for vehicles being used in direct combat. People are put in prison for doing what must be done to keep front-line troops supplied during a “shock and awe, rapid pace of combat” invasion. “Leaders” sit in safe-zones and Pentagon offices being fawned over while trying to control the action down to the individual bullet to be fired. Those in authority have become expert at not giving orders but making clear what they want you to do, leaving you to take the heat if things go wrong. Fratricide is allowed to pass and its perpetrators rewarded unless there is a politically-negative public outcry. Notice too the reductions undertaken by DoD as a result of the budget cuts (cuts that simply limit growth in spending). They cut the number of troops and equipment, not the number of high-ranking deadwood (uniformed and not). Their next step will be to complain that they can not carry out their mission because of the cuts. In this way, they game the system to get more money. Notice too what they did with the retirement plan for military. The brass cut the lower-ranking troops but not themselves. Indeed, I am truly not surprised.

Not sourced in the US?

[JoeCommodore]

I thought there was security issues from buying parts in countries we don't particularly trust.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Ihmhi]

The one thing we really shouldn't outsource is this kind of stuff. Making it in our own country wouldn't make it invulnerable from bad stuff being put in during the manufacturing process but it would greatly, greatly reduce the chances of anything bad happening.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Barbara, not Barbie]

In a new development to this story, a new series of tests run after acquiring new testing equipment (from China) and new software (from China) determined that the parts previously identified as counterfeit were in fact genuine.

Scared yet? You should be.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

We do and we don't. Military (especially classified) equipment is 100% manufactured in the U.S. but since we don't have the industrial base (not to mention the fact that its economically nonviable) to produce the sheer number required in a practical time frame (no sense in stopping the tire assembly line every week just so the engine assembly line can catch up), we have overseas manufacturers produce parts to make up for shortfalls.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[cold fjord]

Scared yet? You should be.

Why? The Chinese apparatchiks perform to high standards.

And don't forget, where the Chinese fall short, they can usually find someone to help close the gap.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[exomondo]

I thought there was security issues from buying parts in countries we don't particularly trust.

Only when they aren't significantly cheaper.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[rtfa-troll]

The whole point of this is that even when they are trying not to outsource, but when they attempt to buy "made in USA" parts it turns out that lots of stuff being sold to them is actually sourced indirectly from China and made to look like the US parts. Looking at the parts they are examining it's pretty interesting. For example, bit that protect against anti-static discharge; presumably ones where long term stability is critical and breakdowns like the capacitor plague would be a complete pain.

This is pretty difficult because, in the end, nobody can keep all the parts in stock. You have to go to a shop. The shop has to go to a supplier and so on. At any point in that chain there are people who have a good motive to swap out the good component (which can be sold on at US prices or used to make reliable equipment) for a fake component which costs much less.

The free market selects exactly for components which work for some time but fail shortly after the testing period or guarantee period. I'd be interested to see what the effect of European two year guarantees is on the level of fake components in distribution. Probably not enough; you really need at least five years and a government testing lab willing to prove that inadequate components were used to even have a chance of pushing back against this.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Ihmhi]

This is pretty difficult because, in the end, nobody can keep all the parts in stock.

No, that's horseshit.

Look, for all the money we spend on defense we can afford to have secure warehouses of all the stuff we need.

Look at the A-10 Thunderbolt. That airframe is a precise weapon of destruction. It has served faithfully for years and it's tough as all hell. The A-10 is a marvel of engineering in every way.

It's also impossible to build new ones. Why? Because the supply chain doesn't exist anymore. The plans are gone. It'd be like trying to build a brand new shuttle - it just isn't feasible. You'd have to reverse-engineer an existing one.

This is, frankly, idiotic. It's rare to have created a machine so perfect. The A-10 is going to be in service at least through to 2028. That's a testament to its staying power, and it's sad that we're not going to see any new ones created.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[wierd_w]

I work in aerospace. Ironically, in quality.

The problem is likely to be counterfiet material (stock material sold as 2025, or 7075, but is really some gods awful alloy of who knows what, but you would never know the difference because it weighs the same, mills the same, and looks the same...... until you do a hardness test, a conductivity test, and a vapor assa test.)

Other things likely counterfieted:

Bolts. Nuts. Nutplates. Washers. Rivets. Paint. Adhesives.

We literally order NAS and BACD nutplates and rivets by lots of 1 million. We go through those things like diabetic children dig through candy. It would be *really* easy for our suppliers to slip us a mickey, and sell us bogus nutplates. Those things have specifications they have to meet, concerning their material composition, degree of heat treat, size, and overal dimensions, including weight, and finish. Once cooked up though, are you *really* going to check each and every nutplate in a bin of 1 million to look for counterfeits?

That's the problem. Counterfeit rivets and nutplates throw a monkey wrench in a product's expected lifecycle. Shitty rivets crack out. They corrode. They induce the rest of the assembly to corrode. They respond incorrectly to changing pressure... on and on and on.

Similar with bad adhesives and finishes.

What, are you going to expect every plant in america to do wet chemistry testing on all their paints, primers, and sealants? In addition to vapor testing each and every rivet and nutplate?

Can't be done. Airplanes would cost billions of dollars each.

The US govt wants to crack down on it? Here's an idea: customs can do its fucking job, and search cargo containers from china for counterfiet goods.

That way the cheap chinese knockoffs don't get mixed into fungible supply bins, and we don't have this problem.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[neyla]

You don't have to. To the contrary, checking becomes *easier* when you order a larger quantity of an item.

If you've received a million nutplates, pick 100 of them randomly, and check them thoroughly. Reject the entire shipment if any of those 100 are counterfeit.

If more than 1% of the nutplates are fake, you'd be likely to detect it, and if more than 10% of the plates are fakes, you'd be virtually guaranteed to detect it. Thus when all 100 check out as genuine, it's unlikely that there's more than a few percent fakes, tops.

At that point, it's probably not worth it to the supplier to fake the delivery. Yes they can put in 1% fakes and 99% reals, and hope that it's not detected (their odds of this are about even).

But having 50:50 odds of getting away with 1% fraud while 50% of the time your entire shipment is rejected, just isn't profitable.

In contrast, it's hard to do reasonable checking when you order a *low* count of some part, say 3.

Statistical sampling *works*. You really -can- test the quality of a million-gallon-delivery of whatever by picking a few random samples, and test those.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is not China interfering with the parts, it is that they are knock-offs or recycled when they are supposed to be new.

The military should be able to go directly to the manufacturer, in which case having the parts made in China isn't such a big deal. The problem here is that they use suppliers who are basically just middle-men. By going to the manufacturers directly they could be sure they were getting genuine parts.

Problem is that a lot of the parts are probably obsolete now. Military hardware can be in service for decades and companies stop producing the parts required. Substitution for newer parts requires re-certification. The only other options are to buy a large stockpile of parts when they are still being made and hope it lasts or to do what they are now doing and source the parts from dodgy suppliers who are recycling them.

The company I work for has had the same problem with parts for a product that is about 15 years old (a DSP chip). It is a major problem.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[intok]

Thee way things are currently, they hire a US based firm, that firm outsources it to China to make the pieces, when the pieces arrive at the US firm they grind off the Made In China badges and stamp on a Built In the USA label. Least thats how it is at the Case tractor plant here.Thee way things are currently, they hire a US based firm, that firm outsources it to China to make the pieces, when the pieces arrive at the US firm they grind off the Made In China badges and stamp on a Built In the USA label. Least thats how it is at the Case tractor plant here.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[sFurbo]

Statistical sampling *works*. You really -can- test the quality of a million-gallon-delivery of whatever by picking a few random samples, and test those.

Only if you can get a representative sample. Getting that from a liquid is easy, getting that from a crate of nutplates isn't. It can be done, but you need to carefully think about how it is done.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Richard_at_work]

You are abit off on the A-10, as both the toolings and he detailed plans are in longterm storage - the DoD retains the ability to restart production at any time, it just needs funding. It's actually a rarity for military aircraft toolings and plans to be destroyed, most of the time they are stored for later use.

With the F-22 shutdown, Lockheed spent millions of dollars on video documenting every aspect of production, with the line workers detailing what they do and how they doit, so production can be picked up with a lower learning curve.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Fred Ferrigno]

If you're sourcing millions of units for vital military assets, then it's only prudent to think carefully about it.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[WindBourne]

Do you have proof of that? That is illegal to do. In addition, how would management explain that to employees?

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[coinreturn]

Whoosh!

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Ihmhi]

That's the problem. Counterfeit rivets and nutplates throw a monkey wrench in a product's expected lifecycle. Shitty rivets crack out. They corrode.

Do you honestly think counterfeit or sub-par stuff would come up in America?

If the penalty weren't a laugh and a handshake because someone in China fucked up it'd be a non-issue. If your business lost a government contract as a result, you could bet your life on those nuts and bolts.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[WindBourne]

Yeah, but my point is, do you have pix or other evidence of this? I have wondered if this kind of stuff goes on.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[luis_a_espinal]

What, are you going to expect every plant in america to do wet chemistry testing on all their paints, primers, and sealants? In addition to vapor testing each and every rivet and nutplate? Can't be done. Airplanes would cost billions of dollars each.

Statistical sampling?

The US govt wants to crack down on it? Here's an idea: customs can do its fucking job, and search cargo containers from china for counterfiet goods.

That is a good idea, but not without problems. You'll have to equip every Customs port with reasonable equipment to test for that kind of stuff. It is one thing to test if a perfume (in a perfume lot of thousands) is counterfeit (the specs are quite simplistic), quite another to test if a capacitor or rivet (in a lot of millions) is up to specs running the gamut of tests necessary.

What could be done is for Customs to do the most basic of tests with a small sample (1/10000), and some lots picked at random for testing with larger samples (1/1000) or for more extensive testing. Then those lots destined for government use tested again.

It would also seem that the government should built a strategic reserve of such type of equipment. For DoD/DoE work, there should never be a case of lack of inventory. Ever. We are willing to throw billions in inefficient acquisition and contracting practices, but we can't build a strategic reserve of rivets, nuts and capacitors? WTF?

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[luis_a_espinal]

Statistical sampling *works*. You really -can- test the quality of a million-gallon-delivery of whatever by picking a few random samples, and test those.

Only if you can get a representative sample. Getting that from a liquid is easy, getting that from a crate of nutplates isn't. It can be done, but you need to carefully think about how it is done.

You are going to get not just one crate, but multiple crates. Pick one at random, or better yet, pick several at random, dump their content off, pick stuff off it, and put the rest back into their crates. A nutplate (or similar stuff) has a specific volume and mass, so one can estimate how much volume or mass 10, 100 or 1000 of those suckers would take. So we use that to pick stuff out of a randomly picked crates for analysis. Right there one can check if volume/mass ratios correspond to what they should be for starters.

It can never be as perfect as sampling liquid, but it is not impossible or even difficult/cost ineffective.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[Ryanrule]

How about dropping bad suppliers? Or requiring them to be completely liable if they want to do business with the govt. IE, shit goes bad, board of directoers and c levels execs lose everything they own. Sure as shit they would behavee then.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[sFurbo]

You are going to get not just one crate, but multiple crates. Pick one at random, or better yet, pick several at random

Good so far

dump their content off, pick stuff off it,

No, that is not a random sample. You need to make sure that every nutplate in the crate have the same probability of being chosen. In your example, nutplates at the bottom of the plate will end up in the top of the pile, and will have a higher chance of being sampled. You need to either make a stream of plates which you can sample at random intervals, of divide the crate into subsamples, which you then sample randomly. Placing it back in the container in small portions, and randomly selecting some of them for sampling would be a way to do it.

It can never be as perfect as sampling liquid, but it is not impossible or even difficult/cost ineffective.

If you can get it to be a one-dimensional stream, the sampling itself can be as perfect as sampling of liquids. The particles are somewhat larger, so more of them is needed to get a proper sampling, but as GGP pointed out, we don't need to detect ppm levels, percent levels are fine.

Re:Not sourced in the US?

[neyla]

While true you miss the point. I was arguing that it's *not* impossible to check a billion-nutplate-delivery in a practical manner, and infact that it's *easier* to do so than it is to check a 3-gadget-delivery.

Slight imperfections in sampling can be compensated by increasing the sample-count, and in any case it probably does not matter.

If 10% of the nutplates are fake, and you sample 100 of them randomly, the odds of non-detection are 1:38000 even if fake nutplates are *free* (they're not) you'd save 10% on the shipment 1:38000 and have the entire shipment rejected 37999:38000 so cheating is obviously not going to be worth it.

But if sampling is decidedly non-random, let's say for example, that choosing of the correct crate *is* random, but the top-half of the crate is samples 3 times as often as the bottom-half, then the odds of successfully cheating by putting in 10% fakes in the bottom-half of the crates, rise to 1:33 which still makes it wildly unprofitable to cheat.

Infact, even if there is a part of the crates that are only sampled 1:10 as often as the rest of the crates, and all the fakes are reliably placed here, you've still got only 1:3 chance in successfully sneaking in a 10% fake delivery. A 1:3 chance of saving 10% with a 2:3 chance of rejection, is *still* not worth it.

Your point stands if your sampling is completely broken - if there's some fraction that isn't sampled at all. But it's just not *that* hard to pick a sample in a way that is /reasonably/ random.

You can also make it less tempting to cheat by upping the penalty. Having one shipment rejected costs them something. Losing the DoD as a customer for a period, hurts *more*. And it's not unreasonable to say: If you ship me fake shit, I won't buy from you again, atleast not this year.

The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

The federal government of the United States should not blame China for this, it's called being Shanghaied for a reason, and it's not a new term.

The reason the market is ripe for these sorts of problems is the governments own fault. There used to be lots of chipmakers in the United States. It costs to much to do business in the United States. Businesses have gotten in bed with the government and bought their own representatives and more important industry regulators to control the market to benefit the biggest players. When the biggest players can no longer afford to do business here they pick up and leave the country but the regulations they paid for remain.

Mix that with an unfavorable tax economy, actual government incentives to send business overseas (still haven't figured that one out), and punishment via tax brackets for people who attempt to move up in class and of course the market is ripe for China to supply fake chips. We ran all the good businesses out of the country, just how many lobbyist DOES China have?

Re:The government can blame itself.

[GodfatherofSoul]

You started out right, then you ended very wrong. Tax policy in this country didn't start being a problem until we decided to go Free Market; translation, forcing US companies to compete with Chinese companies that don't give a shit about human rights, worker rights, or environmental rights. It's impossible for US companies to be competitive with a company that can dump its waste behind the factory, work its employees like slaves, and treat its citizens like government property.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

I don't know, USA Today seems to agree with me, as does Hilary Clinton and Obama. Here's another.

I'm not digging for it right now, but it seems articles have run here on Slashdot about help desk jobs moving to India partially because the government made it the most logical step.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Formalin]

You forgot the part about how they can counterfeit with relative impunity, as well.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

There's another thing I question.

If the "real" chips were outsourced to China to begin with, then China kept producing the chips in the same factory by the same people, even after the original orders were fulfilled, are they really "counterfeit" or just "chips without the royalties"?

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't cost too much to do business here. It's just cheaper over there. You want all those jobs back from China? Turn the clock back about a hundred years, say goodbye to our quality of life, and enjoy your low-wage assembly line jobs. But then you'd have a whole new group of people complaining about the jobs that they lost.
(I don't know what those jobs are, exactly, but considering our insanely high GDP in this country they must be doing something.)

The reason why those things aren't made here anymore is because of comparative advantage. We can still manufacture those things as good or better as China, but we do other things even better. And because we focus on those other things, and because we can't do everything at once, those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.

We should buy cheap parts from China, and the Air Force should buy their tankers from Airbus. Why? Because those countries foolishly subsidize those products; China with the blood and sweat of their population; Europe with hard currency. So its basically a hand-out for us. We'd be fools not to buy those things, and in the tanker case we actually are being supremely foolish. All this hand waving about patriotism and security will just end up lining the pockets of defense contractors, without any proven improvements in security.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

You've got some great points there, especially with the Europe/Airbus reference.

I do disagree however with we can't do everything at once. We can. We have a lot of land mass, a lot of people, and no shortage of talented people or of people without a lot of talent but can and will work on an assembly line.

We can make doing business here more attractive without becoming isolationist and we can do it in a way that actually increases our own employment, lowers individual and corporate taxes while balancing the budget. It's going to take rethinking government roles and contract structure and some outright wars on corruption.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Counterfeiters generally skip QA inspection on the chips, so you might end up with a chip rated for milspec (temperature, g force and other) but won't live up to the requirements. Or maybe the chip is a CPU and they mark it for 3 GHz but in fact it will only survive a few months at that speed.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[capedgirardeau]

I thought the same thing, but reading the article they present the example of contracting to purchase new chips of a certain type and what they were delivered were old recycled chips from the 80's and 90's that were salvaged from discarded equipment, ground down and remarked as the new chip the contract required.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Gordonjcp]

To be fair the US also seems to treat its citizens like government property, and people in the US appear to be worked like slaves.

I don't know anyone in the US who does less than a 40-hour week, and many of them do over 50 hours.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[rhook]

The federal government of the United States should not blame China for this, it's called being Shanghaied for a reason, and it's not a new term.

Who said anything about forcing sailors to work on ships?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

"Shanghaiing refers to the practice of conscripting men as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. Until 1915, unfree labor was widely used aboard American merchant ships. The related term press gang refers specifically to impressment practices in Great Britain's Royal Navy."

Re:The government can blame itself.

[sociocapitalist]

"...and whose citizens are government property."

FTFY

Re:The government can blame itself.

[FairAndHateful]

There used to be lots of chipmakers in the United States.

Used to? (That's AMD's spin off).

It appears the US is still a major player in the CPU market. China's current huge advantage isn't the ability to make top-end chips. Its advantage is in rock bottom assembly prices, combined with the flexibility to make almost overnight changes to manufacturing processes. That flexibility is partly due to their reliance on cheap human labor that might even be on call 24 hours a day. If you try to change a process in a mechanized/automated plant, it takes time and very possibly some retooling. To change a process in a factory relying on cheap labor, it takes a few hours of classroom time and a trainer.

That said, the US has some major manufacturing problems. The US is no longer capable of making what they used to make. It seems that some expertise is gained/maintained by being close to or involved in the end process, and if you rely on other people to do it all, you lose the ability. I'm not wading into the rest very deeply, but I will admit that there are a lot of reasons that it costs more to manufacture things in the US that don't involve labor costs or the environment.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[AmiMoJo]

Depends if you trust the Chinese company to certify the chips. Are they maintaining the standards that the original manufacturer set down? Do they do all the same testing? Often a chip or entire PCB might be made in China but only fully tested when it arrives for assembly in the US.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

I know plenty who do less than 40, but I wouldn't exactly consider them the most productive members of society >40 is usually closer to 0 than 40 with most of these people.

You are right about government meddling having a lot to do with that. The administrative cost of an employee to a business owner beyond what an employee immediately sees in many businesses is due to regulations and requirements that prevents companies from hiring more people. In turn they simply demand more of the people they do have. This is part of the reason staffing firms are so popular, they put the burden of the employment paperwork and benefits on someone else and remove much of the legal liability that can be associated with firing someone. They simply tell the staffing firm they don't need this person anymore and the staffing firm is free to lay someone off with the justification their position is gone, even if they're replacing that person with someone else.

Our national debt is established with a "people are the government property" mindset. The US people are the collateral against the loans our debt is financed by. Quite literally our butts belong to China (and other countries) if we default. So glad my butts being sold to other countries to pay for tattoo removal in California.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

2. to put by trickery into an undesirable position

You're using one of the most commonly used fallacies in existence to attempt to discredit a statement. Quit it. It gets old, usually it's an attack on grammar or spelling, but ignoring an accepted definition in order to twist another is in second place.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[WindBourne]

And yet, Offshore companies say that the taxes and regulations are NOT issues here. In fact, as is regularly pointed out, taxes are higher in Germany, and regulations are much tougher through most of the west. In fact, they like not having to bribe or not being sued later for obeying the regs. Even the unions are a non-issue. So, that tired argument just does not make it.

We have 2 issues. The first is that our LEGAL system is now a nightmare. We sue on a dime. We stop new factories for just about anything.
Then our own companies do not manufacture here because in general, the CEO's own large amounts of stock and want to run it up in price, sell it, and get out of the job. We can thank reagan for that one.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[pecosdave]

I'm going to argue the legal system IS government. Yes it is a nightmare, and yes there are elements of our society that abuse the shit out of the legal system. Not just welfare queens turned lawsuit queens but the abusive sue your competitors out of business approach to things so many companies have. Since the justice system is government run and laws are the definition of government our legal nightmares are still government issues.

The pump and dump stock problem is very real, maybe we can start trying that with manufacturing companies as well.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Reservoir Penguin]

No body is arguing that you are not able to. it's no joke that comparative advantage is literally on the first pages of most undergraduate college economics books. It's like the basic fundamental principle and not following it is insanely stupid waste of countries resources.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Khashishi]

It's impossible for US companies to be competitive with a company that can dump its waste behind the factory, work its employees like slaves, and treat its citizens like government property.

Don't worry, the Republican congress is working hard to ensure that US corporations can stay competitive by eliminating regulations on dumping waste behind the factory, working employees like slaves, and treating citizens like government properties.

Re:The government can blame itself.

[Khashishi]

Sometimes, but in this case, the real hardware is supposed to all be American made.

Surprised?

[Kid Zero]

How can they be surprised that China's pirating designs? For that matter, substandard military parts aren't limited to China. I've heard of several cases of manufacturers here in the USA who didn't care to supply the best.

Lenin was wrong.

[bluemonq]

Turns out, the capitalists won't be selling the rope with which they'll be hanged. They'll be paying for it themselves.

Re:Lenin was wrong.

[shutdown -p now]

I think he's saying that because the American private companies that were asked by US DoD to provide military components that were supposed to be manufactured in US, ended up outsourcing that to China.

And yes, China is not communist anymore, but so what? The guy that originally said the thing about rope was a communist (and they did in fact sell him the rope); but a capitalist will gladly sell the rope to the highest bidder, which in this case is another capitalist.

Sounds like...

[TWX]

...they need to buy parts from all of the vendors and use our international investigative abilities to find out who the actual people selling the parts are, then test the parts. When parts come back bad, we need to ensure that we don't do business with those people again, and that we publish who we bought from and what the results are. That might stop a lot of companies from buying from those vendors. It certainly wouldn't stop all, but it could help.

Couldn't this just be assumed?

[theshowmecanuck]

Why did they need to waste money on a sting operation? Correction: why did they need to wast MORE money...? And granted the U.S. trades with China, but why the fuck would they source military parts from a country that is openly antagonistic if not outright aggressive to one of their allies, namely Taiwan? Or who backs North Korea all the way. Or who supports Iran getting nuclear capability. Don't they remember that Chinese fighter planes aggressively caused a mid air collision and forced an American navy surveillance plane to land in China a few years ago while it was flying over international waters above the the South China Sea?

What kind of bug fuck retarded moron in the military logistics department had them order parts for sophisticated military equipment from China anyway? America has an almost $300,000,000,000 per year trade deficit (that's THREE HUNDRED BILLION dollars) with China and they are spending Tax Payers Money buying military parts from there? If the government is going to spend hard earned tax dollars, they might as well buy from American companies who operate factories in America. Or does "Buy American" mean buying from companies who outsource jobs to China? Someone in the purchasing department at the pentagon needs a fucking kick in the balls and a slap up side the head. Gah! The country deserves what they get when they do this.

Re:Couldn't this just be assumed?

[shutdown -p now]

They did not order anything from China. They ordered it from American companies which were supposed to have them manufactured locally, but instead they've got Chinese-made parts.

Re:Couldn't this just be assumed?

[tftp]

If the government is going to spend hard earned tax dollars, they might as well buy from American companies who operate factories in America.

Most of gate-level logic and other silicon is made in Asia on their fabs, even if nominally the design is owned by TI or Fairchild or IDT.

Another problem is that the government is legally required to announce when it wants to buy something, and then it has to pick the vendor who offers a compliant part for the lowest price. In this "compliant" means "they say it's compliant." Reliability of many silicon devices is not measured directly (try to measure MTBF of a 2NAND gate) - it is either calculated, or estimated, or measured in accelerated aging conditions.

A good deal of products (electronic or not) are not even made by US companies, in the US or outside. Many electronic components that I use every day are made by Japanese owned companies, for example. Some big names always were Japanese - Seiko, MuRata, Citizen, TDK, Panasonic, Rohm.

Re:Couldn't this just be assumed?

[Ryanrule]

So shut these companies down, take EVERY asset the company has, void all the stock, and fine the hell out of the board of directors and the c level execs. BLAMMO, no more counterfeits. Its all about the money, so make it about the money.

counterfit?

[bigdavex]

These aren't expensive handbags. What does counterfeit mean? Do the parts meet the specifications?
 

Re:counterfit?

[Sqr(twg)]

Counterfeit, in this context, usually means made with inferior materials that wear out faster.

Re:counterfit?

[OKK77]

They are "counterfeits" because they display manufacturer LOGO, part numbers and date codes. I don't see the report mentioning if they are "fake"/non-working parts.

So, this is like you requesting for a iPod first gen that is produced in 2012. The vendor will sell you a music player that shows the Apple logo, has the proper part number (product identifier) and a manufacturing date of "2012" - even though no first gen iPod are manufactured in 2012 anymore.

GAO in this case, didn't say if they tested whether the iPod works as a music player or syncs with iTunes. They did a test on the material and declared "no, this isn't produced by Apple in 2012".

Re:counterfit?

[Suddenly_Dead]

They're parts being sold with fake product numbers and manufacturing dates to make it look like they came from an original parts manufacturer. Some of them probably don't meet specifications, and the danger is that you can't tell without testing them because they're misrepresenting themselves as being from a reputable source. That's definitely no good when these parts are being installed in aircraft and weapons.

As another example of potentially dangerous counterfeits, there's counterfeit climbing gear floating around out there that apparently fails at forces far lower than it's claimed to be rated for.

Re:counterfit?

[AHuxley]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnair_Flight_394
Specifications are that they look and 'feel' the same. How they work is not really an issue for the seller.
Use counterfeit parts and you risk mid air fall apart.
Security cleared, fit, healthy, g force rated crews vs what an aerospace company can lobby a US politician over allowing legal imports...

in my brief govt job

[decora]

i wore a uniform made in mexico, sat on furniture produced by inmates at federal prisons, and drove around in a truck fueled by oil from god knows where.

none of the people who built this stuff had 'freedom' by any modern definition of the word.

Can the US trust Chinese military parts?

[TwineLogic]

I would think that installing Chinese-sourced electronics in F-15s might lead to a compromise of the F-15s availability in war time.
I thought the US had experience in supplying sabotage parts to the former USSR, I am surprised we would buy parts from a nation that is less than our best friend.

Re:Can the US trust Chinese military parts?

[WindBourne]

It is amazing how low America has sunk over the last 10 years. You would think that a president that was a history major would know better than to have gutted our manufacturing capability. Now, we need to bring this back.

Whats the different between

[AHuxley]

an Iranian Tomcat and a modern US military system?
Iran knows where its jets came from.

Re:Whats the different between

[donscarletti]

Whats the different between an Iranian Tomcat and a modern US military system?

40 years?

Short answer: no.

[khasim]

There used to be lots of chipmakers in the United States. It costs to much to do business in the United States.

Bullshit. As is demonstrated by TFA.

You want it done right then you pay for it to be done right.
Finding someone who will do it cheaper and do it wrong is easy.

Re:Short answer: no.

[AdrianKemp]

Ah but see the problem is that, in a very broken way, it *is* cheaper.

You get a lower initial cost buy buying shit from skeevy chinese shops that you know are likely to screw you. But by the time the investigations and reporting is over the product is already in use and it's no longer a matter of getting the budget approved on a new bit of equipment. Once it's in the field it becomes much easier to get funding to fix a problem.

Why?

[rrohbeck]

Why would the US military buy parts made in China?
And if they do, why wouldn't they do it with strict specs and quality controls?
Everybody knows that you get crap from China if you don't look very closely. We have quality people traveling to China all the time.
Those backplanes that started to overheat and smolder from ions left in the material due to rinsing with tap water and the resultant 100% recall were fun.

It's the second one.

[khasim]

If the government is going to spend hard earned tax dollars, they might as well buy from American companies who operate factories in America. Or does "Buy American" mean buying from companies who outsource jobs to China?

It's the second one.

The companies want bigger profits.
So the companies outsource whatever they can, wherever they can.
And our government decides that that supply chain is "good enough".

All the government has to do is require that the parts be made 100% in the USofA and there would be a huge change.

History repeating itself.

[sethstorm]

As China did so amongst themselves a while ago(heavy bags of rice where cannons should be), they do to others today.

US centric thinking is the problem, not China

[BurstElement]

If the US DoD are purchasing electronic components on the secondary market from marketplaces like ICSource, IC2IC and posting RFQ's with NATO part numbers expecting the Chinese vendors to decipher them and then interpret the MIL standards they specify with complete accuracy then they need their heads checked.
Vendors peddling re-manufactured / recycled stock or stock with modified date codes will be the least of their worries.

If they expect that level of accuracy and QC with no effort on their part then they should stick to buying components directly from the original manufacturer.
And if the manufacturer EOL's a critical component for your $10B aircraft then make damned sure you stock up before the last buy production run is gone!

Re:US centric thinking is the problem, not China

[gl4ss]

were they counterfeit produced "pirate" products or just plain _wrong_ parts? big difference there.

Who Gains?

[sociocapitalist]

I suspect that this comes down to American weapons manufacturers losing business and getting their cronies in the government to make some noise about it.

That being said, I do think that the military shouldn't be buying anything (a) off the Internet from unknown entities and (b) from anyone but the original equipment manufacturer. Seems surprising in fact, that they could do so. Perhaps there are middle man providers who are supposed to be selling OEM parts but who themselves are buying on the Internet.

Next step

[shiftless]

China: "offer" to sell.
Some Guy in Boeing/Lockheed/USAF: I'll take it.

American overconfident arrogance + WWIII + China/Russia pushes magic button and all our fancy gadgets go dark at the right moment = US fucked beyond belief.

China and Russia new world superpowers.

Bright (?) future ahead.

(...Profit?)

Re:whoa it takes two to tango

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty close. Also got to consider the environment in which the government has made it pretty lucrative for subcontractors to get in on the action. (Qualifications schmalifications... Women owned this, minority owned that, get both to look good on the incentive programs. Also these companies have "owner" execs. as a figurehead to look good on paper and meet criteria while shots are called elsewhere. Plenty of pork tossed around here and there.) Too many middlemen. So it's like Boeing going through some company out of Langley, which then sources through another company in Galesburg, who actually gets his stuff from a shipping supply company out of a suburb of San Diego, and from there maybe Shanghai? As long as the money's good and part A gets to location B on time, nobody checks, keeping records of supply sources past a certain point and doing proper quality control be damned. Not to mention that in some cases a few palms are greased along the way so that some vendors are more preferred than others, despite past issues they may have had.

And it's not parts. A lot of contracting to do services too. Many things get sent out of the military chain to get remanufactured. Crap parts that wouldn't pass out on the field or make it into the normal supply chain finds its way in then.

But now somebody is actually bothering to do the checks. (And it's likely overdue.) Fixing it will be a much bigger challenge.

The China parts problem is only a symptom of what's actually wrong. Can't blame them for using an easy 'sploit in the system when too much is obviously broken and not actually secure.

Not to mention that logistics is one of the keystones of a modern military's operational effectiveness, strategically it would be dumb for China to not take advantage of a weakness there. The biggest, baddest, latest and greatest weapons don't mean much if they're seeing more than 50% downtime due to servicability issues.

Only 16 items?

[AxeTheMax]

They set up a sting that bought just 16 items. Did they also ensure that the purchases were made from sources that they expected to get fakes from or did they carry out a genuine 'best value' procurement? If they did the former, this sounds trivial. Any good purchasing decision should ensure a check on the reputation and record of the vendor.

Not impossible, just difficult

[CdBee]

I'm European. We have different views over here, while still being free-market capitalists.

Our EU parliament and commissioners have been working for a while to even up the regulatory shortfall by assessing the likely economic benefits per product of not complying with environmental legislation and adding that cost as an import tax, the idea being to require suppliers making products for EU markets to produce them to EU environmental standards, or pay a tax that would be designed to cancel out the economic benefits of using polluting options.

Ways it would work include factoring in the electrical cost and taxing a carbon charge on the difference between net pollution per KwH here and per KwH there. We're planning to levy the same idea on aviation to the EU, at which point it wil suddenly become news in the USA as I dont imagine your long-haul airlines will be very pleased. You could do it too, based mainly at China.

When you;re as big as either the EU collectively or the USA singly, little things like pre-existing agreements can be overridden or overwritten, its just a matter of willpower and courage.

Re:Not impossible, just difficult

[WindBourne]

Thats funny. I have been screaming that America needs to do the same here. And there is a MUCH simpler way to solve this. Quit trying to look at what the parts are. Instead, simply charge all items based on the CO2 (or other pollutants) that are produced from said area. The reason is that companies and nations will go to great lengths to avoid documenting these. So, for carbon, the best way is to use a satellite that views the CO2(out over the border) and subtract CO2(in over the border). For items like Mercury, simply assume that it is the highest content unless the nation allows air monitoring on borders.

Bear in mind that none of this solves the issues with fake military parts. That is a totally different issue.

Re:Not impossible, just difficult

[thejynxed]

US airlines are already responding to this by cutting the number of flights to Europe, as well as attempting to lobby the folks in Brussels.

Communist Party owned those companies actually

[ben4528]

Those companies making parts are owned by communist party, they can do whatever they want in China. Countfieit ? What counterfeit ? The Chinese government actually encourages companies to use reverse engineering to produce parts for they weaponry.

Re:Communist Party owned those companies actually

[FhnuZoag]

Citation needed.

Re:ACTA marketing

[FhnuZoag]

Yeah, this investigation seems like utter bullshit. They set up a fake company to investigate chinese products. They found chinese companies willing to offer to sell to this fake company. Is this supposed to be a surprise?

Then, when they purchase from these cheapo companies that do not do any checks for their front company's genuineness, they get substandard product. Again, is this supposed to be a surprise?

No one questions that it is possible to buy bad product from any country, including China. The important question is whether it is possible to purchase, reliably, good genuine product from China if all reasonable measures and safeguards are taken. That's the realistic case, and the only truly relevant one. That a GAO investigation specifically seeking to purchase substandard items succeeded in doing so should not be 'troubling' at all. It should be completely freaking obvious to everyone.

O .... M .... F .... G !!!!

[eyenot]

Maybe we need to hold a hunger games for the brass. Shake em up a little, get them back to reality.

Of course for a lot of brass reality starts at academy and they're coddled and protected all the way to the top. Just like the 1%.

This should be a huge wake-up call for Americans. Now, I'm not on the whole OWS bandwagon thing. I think it's bonkers, but I don't disagree there's a 1% and that they do us major damage as if they're an invasive enemy combatant on our soil getting the upper hand.

Only here we see them militarized. SO stupid, SO profit-driven, SO heads-up-their-asses, that they WOULD COMMISSION WAR MATERIALS FROM THE COUNTRY THAT THREATENED TO NUKE THEM OVER TAIWAN'S UNTAPPED NATURAL RESOURCES.

Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!!?!!!

I think we have a pretty good case, here, IF any war materials were acquired in good faith FROM China, to take any number of generals and majors and wring their fucking necks for treason!

Re:O .... M .... F .... G !!!!

[eyenot]

And I say that in the entire spirit of "YOU'RE FIRING A GUN AT YOUR IMAGINARY FRIEND NEAR 400 GALLONS OF NITROGLYCERINE!!!"

Nobody should be surprised

[WindBourne]

America's manufacturing has been giving up their ability. At the same time, China is in a cold war with the west and is using the very same technique that America used against USSR. This is not about profits. It is about knowing what we are up to and gleaning what information they can. It would be in the west's interest to return the military/intel back to the security that we had during the USSR cold war. That includes bringing back our electronic manufacturing and steel work. Likewise, America needs to address the massive trade deficits with China. That should be done via a scaled tariffs. Per WTO rules, once 2 nations have more than 10% deficits, then corrective actions can and should be taken.

Re:Hell yeah

[flyneye]

I agree, we know China to be bigger liars than a fleet of Nigerian spammers, yet we somehow feel compelled to continue to do ANY business with them.
Just think without China we would be forced to find plastic products elsewhere, Walmart would just die.( O.K. lost a bunch of congress and senate on that one)
We'd have to fire up our old rare earth mine and focus some money on it. ( lost a few more) We'd quit selling chunks of the U.S. to China.( Wow, emptied out half the room) Probably have to consider Iraq and Afghanistan conquered and turn them over to China as payment on loans, but who could really care, there's more oil in the world. Let the mideast sweat having China accumulating territory at their borders while looking hungry for more ( Omama left and the crickets can be heard) See ,liars attract their own kind like flies to shit.
          Yeah, fuck China, let's see how well they do without us, that will put the world on more equal footing everywhere.

Re:Hell yeah

[craigminah]

"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

and?

[ericartman]

news flash... Governments lie, all governments all the time.. new around here?

Re:Hell yeah

[jonamous]

That worked well for the USSR, eh?

Or you can preserve US jobs by killing offshoring.

[sethstorm]

Business is choosing to offshore, not government - thus business is at fault for such choice. Cut off the means to go offshore and the problem disappears; businesses learn to adapt to receiving the pain that they formerly gave through offshoring.

Re:Hell yeah

[morgauxo]

"consider Iraq and Afghanistan conquered and turn them over to China as payment on loans" Wow, I love it!

Haha

[jduhls]

Military Industrial Complex too big, make too dumb.

No, you (and indirect labor) are the problem.

[sethstorm]

You are right about government meddling having a lot to do with that.

The only entity that is meddling with anything, is the business. Businesses are using their position of influence to effect force, which is constructed out of the ability to remove choice.

The administrative cost of an employee to a business owner beyond what an employee immediately sees in many businesses is due to regulations and requirements that prevents companies from hiring more people. In turn they simply demand more of the people they do have. This is part of the reason staffing firms are so popular, they put the burden of the employment paperwork and benefits on someone else and remove much of the legal liability that can be associated with firing someone.

That is the very reason why staffing agencies need to die a sudden, painful death. This can be done via requiring cost/liability parity for all forms of labor, in any function or form, making it illegal to perform such liability/benefit circumvention, or a full ban on non-FTE labor for anything. In addition, kill offshoring while removing all forms of non-citizenship residency.

They simply tell the staffing firm they don't need this person anymore and the staffing firm is free to lay someone off with the justification their position is gone, even if they're replacing that person with someone else.

Since businesses and staffing firms have conducted themselves in this manner, they cannot be trusted to act in good faith.

The only valid action is for the government to make this dishonesty impossible, amongst the other forms of dishonesty that exist. Such dishonesty is why providers of indirect or non FTE labor have no place.

Re:No, you (and indirect labor) are the problem.

[pecosdave]

You really want some of the most dishonest people out there to make dishonesty impossible?

I'm 100% for the legality of off-shoring, I'm very much against policies at home making the idea more appealing than it needs to be. The more you ask the government to do (and it sounds like you want them to do a lot) the bigger they become and the greater our problems are.

Staffing agencies wouldn't even be necessary - most of the time - if the regulations that make them desirable would either go away or become less complicated.

Re:No, you (and indirect labor) are the problem.

[sethstorm]

More dishonest or closer to the public? It is business that shields a politician from the majority of their own constituents.

The largest reason staffing agencies exist, is to provide a worker-hostile regulatory firewall. It allows business to do to workers what business would oppose for unions. To restore consistency, a Right To Directly Work law must be established - such that it discourages staffing agencies in the same manner that Right To Work discourages unions.

As for offshoring, it is only a distortion on the US labor market. Absent offshoring, or at least the absence of its ability to distort labor markets, businesses would have to respond to the people around them versus being able to use some foreign despotic regime as leverage.

If you understand that staffing agencies are the employer-side equivalent of the labor union, the rest should follow logically. Until offshoring ceases to work against US citizens in any visible or invisible manner, I cannot support it.

Missile parts or $375 toilet seats??

[retroworks]

OK I read all 3 links... can't tell whether these are specificly counterfeited weapons parts or whether these are standard parts (e.g. sound card) that may be used in a military application. There's a bit of a difference. Specific parts made specifically for a military use is a different problem than military purchases of standard grade electronics. Did the GAO simply type "sound card wanted" into Alibaba.com? Difficult to tell from the GAO report whether this is hype, but the two stories ABOUT the GAO report definitely have a hype-ish tint.

There is a big cultural difference in how "patent violation" is perceived in China. The concept of "shanzai", which is taking something someone else made and copying it or adding a touch of flair (improvement) to it is a kind of "underdog" applause-line. Shanzai Isn't Necessarily Directed at US. Like a guitar riff, Chinese tend to laugh and smile when someone tries to one-up a bigger company, and make something as good or better than the original. Like the IPhone V. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2011/10/shanzai-vs-patents-future-stock.html

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned, it's just that you find this everywhere in China, directed at everybody and at no one in particular. The page from GAO just doesn't give enough information whether we should rally or whether it's a false flag put up by USA military contractors who are known to sell $375 toilet seats for submarines.

You're blaming the wrong party.

[sethstorm]

You want all those jobs back from China?

Ironclad regulation would restore work by eliminating the avenues for which businesses could avoid citizens.

The reason why those things aren't made here anymore is because of comparative advantage. We can still manufacture those things as good or better as China, but we do other things even better. And because we focus on those other things, and because we can't do everything at once, those manufacturing jobs moved overseas.

Comparative advantage is a stack of fallacies:

* That we can't do everything at once
* That there is something better that we can do
* That everyone is suited to the new task

The US has the people and the resources to do all the manufacturing required and to modern-day standards. The problem rests with business - for they are the cause of sub-par conditions via their preference for slavery.

We should buy cheap parts from China, and the Air Force should buy their tankers from Airbus. Why? Because those countries foolishly subsidize those products; China with the blood and sweat of their population; Europe with hard currency. So its basically a hand-out for us. We'd be fools not to buy those things, and in the tanker case we actually are being supremely foolish. All this hand waving about patriotism and security will just end up lining the pockets of defense contractors, without any proven improvements in security.

While you hand the enemy sensitive plans to defense products and compromise national security. The product is made worse for it being unduly internationalized.

Buying from a proven enemy such as China has no good for civilian or military goods.

Re:Hell yeah

[craigminah]

I don't know how problems with Communism have anything to do with the problems inherent with Capitalism. They each have different issues they must contend with . I was trying to point to the root of one of the problems with Capitalism (e.g. we'll do anything for a buck, even become dependent on Chinese manufacturing so long as we get inexpensive goods). I think Capitalism is the best of what we've got but it needs a lot of care and feeding to work.

the ultimate irony here being

[nimbius]

China is a country to which we keep a nuclear deterrence, in the eyes of many members of congress. When they approve a new start treaty or an arms bill, theyre thinking of china when once they thought of russia.

the cautious approach to china, that is accepting its slave labour with one hand and readying yourself for war with the other, is the ultimate hypocrisy of american capitalism. That you can simultaneously consider a country an enemy and a trading partner shows just how far free market economics can go toward making your country utterly contradictory.

have butter or have guns, but for god sake dont turn around and complain about counterfeit parts for the weapons you procure with your trading partner as consideration for their target. Equally, dont complain about the "slave labor" practices and "harsh crackdowns" from the government that basically stocks the shelves of every walmart in the country.

Re:Hell yeah

[sycodon]

Some enterprising young politician could build a career on this:

1. WTF are we buying our products from a country with a political system that, at its very core, seeks the destruction of our political system?
2. We should be building all the parts we use in our military right here and I'm passing a law that requires it.
3. U.S. manufacturers bring product back from China.
4. Something about profit is supposed to go here I think.

Whatever. No one is reading this anyway.

Re:Hell yeah

[davcorp]

In Soviet Russia, manufacturers bring China to diner.... Your right, no one is reading this far down.. I think....

There was a much simpler test...

[alien-alien]

A much simpler test would have been to put out a purchase req. for parts for a certain stealth helicopter. The disproportionate response to fill parts for the tail rotor assembly would have been a dead giveaway.

Not just mil parts

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Scary thing is fake parts also find their way into commercial aircraft as well. There is a large black market for cloned aircraft parts and low budget airlines cant resist buying them and they are hard to tell if they are real or not.

I'm confused

[viperidaenz]

If you're building fighter jets, nuclear reactors and submarines, why would you buy parts from anywhere but direct from the manufacturer?

Re:Hell yeah

[craigminah]

Communism isn't what's driving Chinese economic growth. China is growing in spite of Communism and due in large part to the "needs" of consumers like the USA. Communism will be tolerated in China only as long as they are prosperous economically, then they'll follow the path all societies take (e.g. Feudalism --> Capitalism --> Socialism --> Communism --> Feudalism --> etc. forever).

Why were they ordering from Chinese vendors?

[theinvisibleguy]

I thought critial level parts like the ones they were ordering were not allowed to be purchased from China to begin with?