GAO Sting Finds More Fake Military Parts From China 180
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."
The government can blame itself. (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lenin was wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Turns out, the capitalists won't be selling the rope with which they'll be hanged. They'll be paying for it themselves.
Re:The government can blame itself. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know, USA Today [usatoday.com] seems to agree with me, as does Hilary Clinton and Obama. Here's another. [economicpopulist.org]
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:... and nobody is surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
counterfit? (Score:4, Insightful)
These aren't expensive handbags. What does counterfeit mean? Do the parts meet the specifications?
Re:... and nobody is surprised. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Not sourced in the US? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:... and nobody is surprised. (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Hell yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
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.