Engineering News

This is kind of old news. I first heard of this almost 10 years ago.

There was talk in some military circles that some of the programmable parts may have been designed to shut down or fail in order to render some military equipment dysfunctional.

The same counterfeit designed components could be used to aid or augment malicious attacks via the internet, which seems a little farfetched, but then again...

The processor to this was the relaxation of laws that required all military components must be USA sourced.

If you think about it: they should not have relaxed this law and forced the suppliers to keep their production in the US if they want to supply to the US army.

It would have saved a lot of US jobs.

But the short term profit was much more important for the decision makers.

I think I get your point. However, the US government does not make a profit. I guess it would be better said that the decision was an attempt for cost cutting measures in the defense budget and to increase supply.

The cost to sole source US is probably high, but I can't imagine what this will cost long term to weed out all of the counterfeit parts (at least the ones that are critical) and replace them with certified parts.

Pure on paper it would be a huge cost cut if the US would simply close down NASA and outsource the complete activities to China.

But that would result in no work for thousands of US citizens, no money for all of them. No spin off companies any more. (= no tax income for the US states)

All the money invested in these organisation flows back into your society, at least if you organise it well.

If you let the financial decision makers decide on how to spend the money, they will do more with less and at the end create a big humanitarian disaster as they forgot the flow back loop in the society. At the end of the story there is no money anymore to spend: all is in china and the middle east.

...if you think this (above) is a problem, just imagine all the headaches with such items getting to our Star Wars and Missile Defense System electronics!