Originally Posted by
FlightGear
The conspiracy: if you research this backwards back to Cambridge University very little is revealed about the details of the chips. Some might say this is to keep vulnerabilities out of the hands of 'terrorsits'. I think what may be closer to the truth is many western governments, including the US government, whilst on one hand is attempting to smite down all ye citizens that steal a song of the radio... oh i mean- "copy intellectual property without authorization of owner of said intellectual property". On the other hand the administration is taking advantage of cheap chimese chips, that are, for the most part pirate chips. I wonder how much stolen material is spread around the planet and I wonder when the anti anti piracy movement will stumble upon this?
Neither the administration nor the DoD is "taking advantage" of cheap chinese chips...most chips are a global commodity, and defense manufacturers (along with everyone else) typically buy them in bulk from brokers at the going rate.
The brokers may be making a buck by sourcing cheaper products.
The DoD (and certainly not the "administration") is not specifying chinese parts...they just have performance specifications for the finished product.
But the DoD probably needs to forbid the use of IC chips from certain countries in critical applications...too easy to build in "bonus features", and too hard to catch all of them.