US buying China Chips for Military...

I just read an article in Business Week about the US military buying faulty chips from China and putting them in our defense matrix in either weapon, aircraft or computer technology.

The Chinese are stripping motherboards and selling the salvaged chips as military grade and the military is buying them up.

My problem is not with the Chinese stripping the chips or labeling them as military grade when they could have come out oa Commodore 64... My problem is this:

What exactly is the military doing by buying something from another country when it is ment and intended to protect ours. What sort of spur do the Chinese have to sell top grade chips if they know they will be used on our jets, tanks and missles. If there is any logic to this... I cannot locate it.

The going joke while I was in the military was "Remember... This stuffs made by the lowest bidder." That's not bad enough but now I know it was made by another country as well as the lowest bidder.

Am I alone by being disturbed by this?

not to be rude

do you have an article or site?

Yes, a source would be good.

You may want to look at this thread by Mr. Old School which leaks the FBI's expose of the backdoor computer manufacturing of such items (computer systems rather than chips etc).

But I don't think that the US will directly buy from China given recent spy operations and cyber attacks.

Breifne

Since the OP is somewhat new, maybe he didn't realize that he may get hit up for sources around here quickly. So I took it upon myself to actually look in Business Week.

While they dont have a written story, they DO have a video.

feedroom.businessweek.com...


AB1

I remember a while ago a discussion about China possibly actually engineering 'backdoors' and various other flaws into chips that they thought could end up in either military or financial organisations - an example would be making the chips vunerable to Emp attack... not all of them, just say 1 in every 100, that way you could have a good chance of getting through testing - you can't destructively test ALL your chips can you??

Another one was trogen viruses actually built into things like hard drives, I believe thay actually found cases of this

reply to post by Now_Then


If memory serves me, I think that false "replicas" of Cisco equipment was being made in China, with backdoors and all, and being sold WAY under-market to Third Party Vendors who did contract work for the Governmental facilities.

Thus not only giving them the ability to turn a profit, but also giving them insight into some of our workings by our OWN demise. Cheap isn't ALWAYS cheap.


AB1

I appologize to all. I was reading this months issue of the magazine. I did not know I had to source it. However, I can see why. I will search for a scource. This is only the second thread I started. Again; I appologize.

Sorry folks... Try here...


www.businessweek.com...

I believe that Micro-Processing is Now in Emirate Hands, that is the latest I read in the Wahsignton post.

www.economyincrisis.org...

www.washingtonpost.com...

Move Over US -- China To Be New Driver Of World's Economy And Innovation

Right now US depend of the technology of Foreign countries to maintain its most importan weapons bringing the issue of security.

www.sciencedaily.com...

Yes we may no longer be ahead of the techonology like we thought we were.



[edit on 10-10-2008 by marg6043]

The military should not be buying anything like this from a foreign country.

Imagine, sometime in the future, we at war with a country that has been furnished with Chinese weapons.

They press a button and all the Chinese made chips suddenly malfunction.

Is it possible?

Is this a seperate incident to the fake cisco router fiasco? How can the US Military buy any hardware from a foreign nation, ally or not? You never know what ally today can become tomorrows enemy. Not clever guys, in these situations you don't look at the 'bottom line' as such, and try save a buck.

reply to post by TortoiseKweek


Well, the Cisco router replica's were bought from Chinese companies by Third party vendors who thought they were getting high quality equipment on the cheap, which they WERE. They just didn't realize that it wasn't real and had backdoors all over the place.

These 3rd party vendors then secured Government contracts and WERE reliable to the feds. So, the Government itself was not really aware of the situation until they had a reason to need to find out.


AB1

thanks for the great post!

also, thanks to a reply by Alphabetaone, who located the video documentation by BusinessWeek.

How did BusinessWeek get that video made? ...it's like a international criminal outfit invited BusinessWeek to get the evidence to prosecute them? It goes to show that there's NO FEAR in China of fraud ... which implies it is CONDONED by the powers that be, who are probably the ones doing it.

Fraud in China appears to be the same as drug-running in the U.S. -- condoned and run at the top.

I can't imagine a totally fake chip being used by the U.S. military and for soldier's lives to depend on CHINESE FRAUD at the top condoned by AMERICAN FRAUD at the top.

Man, what a joke!

Thanks again to both of you for your posts.

reply to post by counterterrorist


No need to thank brother, this is what we're all here for!

AB1

WOW! Thank you all for your replys! It was great to see that I wasn't the only one upset by the thought of this!

I owned a Manufacturing company in California from the late 70's to the early 2000. These were days of Military hardware, NASA and star wars, desert storm and iraqi war...defense contracting is an ugly business. Kickbacks, greed, graft, material and substandard part substitution, contract rigging, bid fixing, its a sordid mess and i left it. There were good companies and groups to work with ; EGG, Standford, UC Berkeley, Sandia Laboratories, Ratheon, Argosystems, but too many others were just flat out corrupt.

What is going on now due to the massive outlays in spending in Iraq, money that is flushed down the toilet. Add the horrible environment
( Desert is second only to salt corrosion) for moving parts...the Military is looking at complete rebuilding anything that went to Iraq.

The Bush adminstration has backed the US military into a no win situation, it must rebuild and purchase new technologies, but the funds for the next decade have already been spent in Iraq. so it will buy the cheapest part it can buy...and purchases on a worldwide network...there are certain parts that can only be purchased in the USA, but even then companies get around those restrictions...I am surprised there are not more planes and vehicles simply falling out of the sky or just shutting down on the battlefield...

what the Govt must do is clean up defense contracting. Too few companies control 80% of the market and therefore control senators and congressman. It may come to tragic loss of life or catastrophic failure of an entire system before someone stands up and questions the status Quo.



[edit on 20-10-2008 by Hallberg Rassy]