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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."
China looks out for China, nobody else.
I thought there was security issues from buying parts in countries we don't particularly trust.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
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?
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Turns out, the capitalists won't be selling the rope with which they'll be hanged. They'll be paying for it themselves.
These aren't expensive handbags. What does counterfeit mean? Do the parts meet the specifications?
-Dave
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.
an Iranian Tomcat and a modern US military system?
Iran knows where its jets came from.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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.
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. ,liars attract their own kind like flies to shit.
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
Yeah, fuck China, let's see how well they do without us, that will put the world on more equal footing everywhere.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin