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Seems like the article disagrees with you, do you have a more reliable source for what you're saying? > Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Irani

Seems like the article disagrees with you, do you have a more reliable source for what you're saying? > Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment. > The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment. > According to the Ukrainian assessment, among the US-made components found in the drone were nearly two dozen parts built by Texas Instruments, including microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers; a GPS module by Hemisphere GNSS; a microprocessor by NXP USA Inc.; and circuit board components by Analog Devices and Onsemi. Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox. So less than 12 of the components were manufactured in Asia, while 40 have been manufactured by US companies. The article also finishes by linking together components with US companies who seem (at a glance / without digging deeper) to manufacture said components within US borders.

waihtis 4y ago
I live in Finland, and Russians have been found looting electronics from the recycling centers over here, supposedly because they need the components back in the motherland. So theoretically they are also using western components but it is not like anyone actually sold these components to the russians.
- bbbbb5 4y ago
  This is an obviously fake story. Similar to the consumer drone panic that's been going on in the Nordics. A few months ago all the Nordic medias seemed convinced that this guy with his "4 terabytes of encrypted data" must have been a Russian spy, of course that turned out to not be true. (Russia has satellites, the idea that they'd need people to go scout out Nordic infrastructure with consumer drones was and is preposterous) https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xgJ238/dronedoemt-russer-til-vg-rart-at-ingen-sa-stopp https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xgJ238/dronedoemt-russer-til-vg-...
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    Except Russia has had spies do precisely that in the past in Estonia? They even did a prisoner exchange for a guy who got caught. > An unredacted five-page document tells a fuller story than anything Zinchenko offered in our four hours together. Vasily was one of three different handlers over the space of his eight years as a GRU agent. (Zinchenko would tell me only that Vasily introduced him to another man with whom he’d sometimes communicate.) He’d meet with each one face-to-face at liaisons in St. Petersburg, only a five-hour car or bus ride from Tallinn. Each handler tasked him with surveilling Estonia’s “objects of national defense” and its “vital services,” defined under Estonian law as critical infrastructure, power and electricity, telecommunications and banking services. > Zinchenko spied on Paldiski, a garrison town where Estonia’s elite Scouts Battalion, a veteran unit of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, was stationed. He also spied on Vasalemma, where NATO’s Ämari Air Base is located. https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-ex-russian-spy-flees-to-the-nato-country-that-captured-him-delivering-another-embarrassing-blow-to-moscow-010049616.html https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-ex-russian-spy-flees-to-the...
    - bbbbb5 4y ago
      This is typical busy work given to agents to make them feel important, to test their loyalty and ability to accomplish tasks provided. For the most part, it's not actually supposed to result in useful intelligence. Also there's a huge difference between tracking military equipment movements and power infrastructure. Power infrastructure doesn't move and can't really be hidden.
      - mannerheim 4y ago
        Apparently valuable enough to do a prisoner exchange for. I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
        ithkuil 4y ago
        Nepotism can provide an alternative explanation for prisoner exchange even if the actual task was literally busywork
ceejayoz 4y ago
Just because it's an American company doesn't mean it's not made in China. https://pandaily.com/american-semiconductor-maker-texas-instruments-to-finish-packaging-and-testing-plant-in-chengdu/ https://pandaily.com/american-semiconductor-maker-texas-inst... > Texas Instruments entered China in 1986 and set up R&D centers and product line teams in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing. The company also established a manufacturing base in Chengdu and two product distribution centers in the country. Chips are cheap, lightweight, and often made outside the US. They're pretty trivial to divert.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  They don't need to be diverted. I don't think there's any restrictions on shipping to Iran these kinds of low level components. Are there?
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    US companies are generally banned from doing any business with Iran, period. That, of course, won't stop someone in China from ordering a million chips from TI and shipping them to Iran (or Russia).
  - lazide 4y ago
    The nominal ‘manufacturers’ of the chips (TI) are forbidden from doing business with Iran. They’re so far from what happens on the ground though, who actually ends up with one of the chips in their hand has pretty much nothing to do with them.
- trasz3 4y ago
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- Maursault 4y ago
  This is a straw man argument. It is irrelevant where the parts are made. American companies sold them. Their logos are on the them. If Russians can get these parts anywhere, then let them get them elsewhere. American companies don't need to be accessories to killing Ukrainians.
deleted 4y ago
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Goz3rr 4y ago
Half the parts listed here you would probably find in a dishwasher or car radio as well, they're called jellybean parts. It might not even mean they bought these parts from a legitimate source. They might have been reclaimed or salvaged from legitimate electronics, or they might even be counterfeit chips (which often come from Asia) that were labelled to look like the genuine part.
- bjt2n3904 4y ago
  People just don't get this. A voltage regulator is the equivalent of a $15 steel pipe at Home Depot. Ok. You can get some REALLY FANCY ultra low noise insanely efficient radiation hardened space qualified bleeding edge switch mode power supplies. I don't expect they're using those.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    Yep, and buying even 10.000 voltage regulators is a very common thing, so much, that they even have a reduced price for >10k orders already listed on many sites. Even if you tried to regulate it, someone could just go on farnell/digikey/..., order 10k pieces put them in a pocket and carry them over the border.
    - m4rtink 4y ago
      Still, I guess you could catch some of these smugglers ? They will be fined/jailed/both, which could influence others doing the same & at least would drive up the price of components.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        But who and why? A company in china can legally buy them, ignore american regulations, since well.. they're not from america, and export them at a higher price to russia. Russians can even open a company in russia that deals with importing foreign components and then exporting them to russia. Most of the world doesn't care about american regulation and why should they?
adrian_b 4y ago
An US label on a component means nothing. Even when the silicon chips are really made in USA, in most cases the packaging and testing are done in SE Asia, from where they go to the customers.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Even if they are made in USA, a company can buy them and resell them at will, because US regulation doesn't apply outside of US... so someone from china can order 10k chips and do whatever they want with them.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > An US label on a component means nothing. Don't be so naive. It means everything, because when American company logos are found on parts in drone wreckage surrounded by dead and mutilated Ukrainians, it makes those companies accessories to this illegal Russian war, and by extension and association, the United States, and me and you!
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    If you steal a knife from my house, and stab someone with it, am I an accessory to the crime because it's my knife? No. Texas Instruments isn't at fault if someone buys their chips legally, but turns around and resells them to the Russians. That'd be an insane standard to set, both ethically and legally. If an American company is deliberately selling components to Russia, by all means, nail them to the wall for violating sanctions. That's not what has happened here, though.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      > If you steal a knife from my house, and stab someone with it, am I an accessory to the crime because it's my knife? No. You are employing the fallacy of poor analogy. These parts weren't stolen. And if you sold a weapon to a murderer, or even if you failed to reasonably secure your weapon and it was stolen, then by common morality and even case law, you bear some responsibility.[1] [1] https://archive.ph/66H7Q https://archive.ph/66H7Q
deleted 4y ago
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sschueller 4y ago
"No weapon or weapon systems One of the central pillars of the u-blox Code of Conduct is our position on the non-integration of our products into weapons and weapon systems. This policy is in place since 2002." https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct Well someone f'd up but it probably was a resale later down the chain.
- diydsp 4y ago
  And probably done through a chain of shell companies and other laundering and smuggling methods. We can't keep them all out of Russia/Iran. It's just about minimizing.... ... and writing your code with best practices so it can be ported to whatever hardware trickles over the border ;)
- ilyt 4y ago
  Well if anything it shows how utterly fucking useless code of conduct is
- bsder 4y ago
  U-Blox modules aren't just random parts. Someone is going to get found and is going to jail.
dlgeek 4y ago
Not OP, but TI manufactures in both the US and Asia and they also outsource some of their manufacturing. I assume the other companies are the same. I recognize about half of those manufacturers, and I'm not even into hardware. "Microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers" are very much commodity parts that companies buy in huge bulk and are available pretty much everywhere. I'm not surprised to see them in a drone (Iranian or otherwise) because I'd expect to see them in ANY sort of complex electronics device - drone, car, washing machine, computer, child's interactive toy, you name it. Ditto for most of the other stuff.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure American companies are forbidden from selling things to Iran, regardless of where geographically those things are manufactured. Obviously just finding these parts doesn't mean necessarily they were sold directly by TI to Iran, for example, but it does raise questions that are not answered by "they were physically manufactured in China."
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > I'm pretty sure American companies are forbidden from selling things to Iran... Sure, but they're most certainly permitted to sell to several billion other people on the planet, most of whom aren't under American jurisdiction. Some of those will be willing to shove the chips in a shipping container and send that on a boat to Iran for a reasonable fee. It'd be pretty insane for TI to be selling to Iran directly, and finding TI chips in Iran isn't evidence of it.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Finding TI chips in Iranian drones actually is evidence of it, albeit very very weak. On the flip side, "it'd be pretty insane" is not evidence at all. Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!
      - ceejayoz 4y ago
v8xi 4y ago
I think the assumption that manufactured by US companies = within US borders is wrong. The US is no longer a manufacturing powerhouse. For example, from TI's website (https://careers.ti.com/locations/ https://careers.ti.com/locations/): "TI’s only comprehensive manufacturing site (is) located in Chengdu"
- Maursault 4y ago
  American companies literally sold these parts. Their logos are in the wreckage. That's the problem and not where things are made.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Chinese manufacturers frequently make counterfeit parts and stamp fake US company logos on them. Even if the parts were authentic, they certainly weren't sold directly to Iran. Middlemen in other countries not under sanctions buy them, and then re-export them. There is literally no way for US companies to prevent this, they don't have that kind of reach or power.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      It is astounding how posters here are bending over backwards to deny all responsibility. Russia is using American parts to kill Ukrainians. It doesn't matter where the parts were manufactured or how they got the parts. Why doesn't anyone here understand this?
      - lazide 4y ago
        If someone picks up a brick and smashes someone’s head in, does it particularly matter who made the brick? Statistically, the most widely made bricks would be ‘at fault’. But how does that matter, exactly? You can try to ban bricks from your country, which hey, maybe it could happen. But if they were having a brick shortage, couldn’t they just buy the same bricks from a neighboring country, since these items are so cheap and common, it’s not like it’s possible to serialize and track each one. These are the electronic equivalents of bricks.
miroljub 4y ago
> Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment. > The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment. Not a single component produced in Russia? Somehow strange that a country that can send people to space and back is not capable of producing a single component for a military drone. > According to the Ukrainian assessment Ah, ok. So the source is trustworthy and objective, not a war party telling whatever they have to tell to support their cause.
- cpursley 4y ago
  This article is talking about the Iranian made drones not the domestic Russian ones. The Russian made stuff still has western parts but also domestic.
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Russia and the USSR before it has never had the ability to manufacture good electronics. iirc their smallest process node is 65nm. Modern optics are absolutely out of the question, which is why their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics.
  - practice9 4y ago
    > their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics As well as more advanced Thales thermal imaging systems that were installed in combat vehicles (tanks, IFV). AFAIK they were produced in Russia under a license from Thales (a French company) till at least 2016. Thales was likely evading sanctions
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    That might explain why their film-based spy sats[0] used to return the camera as well as the film, unlike their US counterparts[1][2] that just returned the film capsule. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon
coredog64 4y ago
I can speak directly to onsemi as I’m a former employee. While ONN is a US company, they manufacture a significant number of parts in Malaysia. ONN does have onshore fabs, but they’re expensive and are only used for their specialized, high cost components. When I was there, the US fabs were selling parts used in iPhones, Zunes, and XBoxen.
ilyt 4y ago
Most of them were probably manufactured in Asia just for american companies. Also nothing here really looks like something irreplaceable. A bunch of compute[1], the standard supporting chips (power, sensor interfaces etc.), I think only thing that might be problematic to replace are some high end analog stuff. The microcontroller on the photo Point being they could probably get by just with chinese chips, just picked the "vanilla option" because it's easier to read datasheet in english than in chinese. About only thing that would be hard to get off top of my head would be fast thermal cameras, as US for the long time limits anything consumer/export to low framerate and I'm not sure whether china does any of their own that are available. > Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox. I'm guessing first one is some diodes/power transistors and such (easily replaceable) and U-blox I think just provides ready-to-go modules so less of a "part" more of a "module" made of stuff also from asia. Point being blocking exports wouldn't exactly do much unless China also closed borders; it would be far too easy for 3rd party company to just... buy what is needed and get it in via china with other chips. * [1] https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28232/part-details/TMS320F28232PGFA https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28232/part-details/TMS320F...
- edgyquant 4y ago
  > Most of them were probably manufactured in Asia just for american companies. Again, do you have an actual source for this?
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Here is TI fab map https://www.ti.com/content/dam/ticom/images/themes/facilities/ti-manufacturing-map.jpg https://www.ti.com/content/dam/ticom/images/themes/facilitie... https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance.html https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance.html for example Onsemi have a bunch of locations everywhere https://www.onsemi.com/company/about-onsemi/locations https://www.onsemi.com/company/about-onsemi/locations Hemisphere and ublox aren't even making chips in first place, they are making modules out of other people's chips Now of course company having factory in china (or just buying capacity there) doesn't mean that particular chip was made in china but article doesn't really give much details about the chips aside from shitty picture of one (that is just generic MCU with some DSP IIRC)
atkailash 4y ago
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Gordonjcp 4y ago
So stuff you can just buy in big bags for a couple of quid from eBay or Aliexpress?
cdkmoose 4y ago
I don't think that "manufactured by 13 different American companies" necessarily means manufactured in America. Apple "manufactures" IPhones, but not in America
hulitu 4y ago
And where do you think Texas Instruments, NXP USA Inc, Analog Devices and Onsemi, International Rectifier manufacture components ? And Digikey, for example. Can ship to a lot of countries.
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
What is meant by 'manufactured'? Like Apple being an american company, but products manufactured by whomever, whereever? Dig deeper!

waihtis 4y ago

I live in Finland, and Russians have been found looting electronics from the recycling centers over here, supposedly because they need the components back in the motherland. So theoretically they are also using western components but it is not like anyone actually sold these components to the russians.

bbbbb5 4y ago
This is an obviously fake story. Similar to the consumer drone panic that's been going on in the Nordics. A few months ago all the Nordic medias seemed convinced that this guy with his "4 terabytes of encrypted data" must have been a Russian spy, of course that turned out to not be true. (Russia has satellites, the idea that they'd need people to go scout out Nordic infrastructure with consumer drones was and is preposterous) https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xgJ238/dronedoemt-russer-til-vg-rart-at-ingen-sa-stopp https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/xgJ238/dronedoemt-russer-til-vg-...
- mannerheim 4y ago
  Except Russia has had spies do precisely that in the past in Estonia? They even did a prisoner exchange for a guy who got caught. > An unredacted five-page document tells a fuller story than anything Zinchenko offered in our four hours together. Vasily was one of three different handlers over the space of his eight years as a GRU agent. (Zinchenko would tell me only that Vasily introduced him to another man with whom he’d sometimes communicate.) He’d meet with each one face-to-face at liaisons in St. Petersburg, only a five-hour car or bus ride from Tallinn. Each handler tasked him with surveilling Estonia’s “objects of national defense” and its “vital services,” defined under Estonian law as critical infrastructure, power and electricity, telecommunications and banking services. > Zinchenko spied on Paldiski, a garrison town where Estonia’s elite Scouts Battalion, a veteran unit of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, was stationed. He also spied on Vasalemma, where NATO’s Ämari Air Base is located. https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-ex-russian-spy-flees-to-the-nato-country-that-captured-him-delivering-another-embarrassing-blow-to-moscow-010049616.html https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-ex-russian-spy-flees-to-the...
  - bbbbb5 4y ago
    This is typical busy work given to agents to make them feel important, to test their loyalty and ability to accomplish tasks provided. For the most part, it's not actually supposed to result in useful intelligence. Also there's a huge difference between tracking military equipment movements and power infrastructure. Power infrastructure doesn't move and can't really be hidden.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      Apparently valuable enough to do a prisoner exchange for. I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
      - ithkuil 4y ago
        Nepotism can provide an alternative explanation for prisoner exchange even if the actual task was literally busywork

ceejayoz 4y ago

Just because it's an American company doesn't mean it's not made in China. https://pandaily.com/american-semiconductor-maker-texas-instruments-to-finish-packaging-and-testing-plant-in-chengdu/ https://pandaily.com/american-semiconductor-maker-texas-inst... > Texas Instruments entered China in 1986 and set up R&D centers and product line teams in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing. The company also established a manufacturing base in Chengdu and two product distribution centers in the country. Chips are cheap, lightweight, and often made outside the US. They're pretty trivial to divert.

jvanderbot 4y ago
They don't need to be diverted. I don't think there's any restrictions on shipping to Iran these kinds of low level components. Are there?
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  US companies are generally banned from doing any business with Iran, period. That, of course, won't stop someone in China from ordering a million chips from TI and shipping them to Iran (or Russia).
- lazide 4y ago
  The nominal ‘manufacturers’ of the chips (TI) are forbidden from doing business with Iran. They’re so far from what happens on the ground though, who actually ends up with one of the chips in their hand has pretty much nothing to do with them.
trasz3 4y ago
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Maursault 4y ago
This is a straw man argument. It is irrelevant where the parts are made. American companies sold them. Their logos are on the them. If Russians can get these parts anywhere, then let them get them elsewhere. American companies don't need to be accessories to killing Ukrainians.

deleted 4y ago

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Goz3rr 4y ago

Half the parts listed here you would probably find in a dishwasher or car radio as well, they're called jellybean parts. It might not even mean they bought these parts from a legitimate source. They might have been reclaimed or salvaged from legitimate electronics, or they might even be counterfeit chips (which often come from Asia) that were labelled to look like the genuine part.

bjt2n3904 4y ago
People just don't get this. A voltage regulator is the equivalent of a $15 steel pipe at Home Depot. Ok. You can get some REALLY FANCY ultra low noise insanely efficient radiation hardened space qualified bleeding edge switch mode power supplies. I don't expect they're using those.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Yep, and buying even 10.000 voltage regulators is a very common thing, so much, that they even have a reduced price for >10k orders already listed on many sites. Even if you tried to regulate it, someone could just go on farnell/digikey/..., order 10k pieces put them in a pocket and carry them over the border.
  - m4rtink 4y ago
    Still, I guess you could catch some of these smugglers ? They will be fined/jailed/both, which could influence others doing the same & at least would drive up the price of components.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      But who and why? A company in china can legally buy them, ignore american regulations, since well.. they're not from america, and export them at a higher price to russia. Russians can even open a company in russia that deals with importing foreign components and then exporting them to russia. Most of the world doesn't care about american regulation and why should they?

adrian_b 4y ago

An US label on a component means nothing. Even when the silicon chips are really made in USA, in most cases the packaging and testing are done in SE Asia, from where they go to the customers.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Even if they are made in USA, a company can buy them and resell them at will, because US regulation doesn't apply outside of US... so someone from china can order 10k chips and do whatever they want with them.
Maursault 4y ago
> An US label on a component means nothing. Don't be so naive. It means everything, because when American company logos are found on parts in drone wreckage surrounded by dead and mutilated Ukrainians, it makes those companies accessories to this illegal Russian war, and by extension and association, the United States, and me and you!
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  If you steal a knife from my house, and stab someone with it, am I an accessory to the crime because it's my knife? No. Texas Instruments isn't at fault if someone buys their chips legally, but turns around and resells them to the Russians. That'd be an insane standard to set, both ethically and legally. If an American company is deliberately selling components to Russia, by all means, nail them to the wall for violating sanctions. That's not what has happened here, though.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    > If you steal a knife from my house, and stab someone with it, am I an accessory to the crime because it's my knife? No. You are employing the fallacy of poor analogy. These parts weren't stolen. And if you sold a weapon to a murderer, or even if you failed to reasonably secure your weapon and it was stolen, then by common morality and even case law, you bear some responsibility.[1] [1] https://archive.ph/66H7Q https://archive.ph/66H7Q

deleted 4y ago

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sschueller 4y ago

"No weapon or weapon systems One of the central pillars of the u-blox Code of Conduct is our position on the non-integration of our products into weapons and weapon systems. This policy is in place since 2002." https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct Well someone f'd up but it probably was a resale later down the chain.

diydsp 4y ago
And probably done through a chain of shell companies and other laundering and smuggling methods. We can't keep them all out of Russia/Iran. It's just about minimizing.... ... and writing your code with best practices so it can be ported to whatever hardware trickles over the border ;)
ilyt 4y ago
Well if anything it shows how utterly fucking useless code of conduct is
bsder 4y ago
U-Blox modules aren't just random parts. Someone is going to get found and is going to jail.

dlgeek 4y ago

Not OP, but TI manufactures in both the US and Asia and they also outsource some of their manufacturing. I assume the other companies are the same. I recognize about half of those manufacturers, and I'm not even into hardware. "Microcontrollers, voltage regulators, and digital signal controllers" are very much commodity parts that companies buy in huge bulk and are available pretty much everywhere. I'm not surprised to see them in a drone (Iranian or otherwise) because I'd expect to see them in ANY sort of complex electronics device - drone, car, washing machine, computer, child's interactive toy, you name it. Ditto for most of the other stuff.

ethanbond 4y ago
I'm pretty sure American companies are forbidden from selling things to Iran, regardless of where geographically those things are manufactured. Obviously just finding these parts doesn't mean necessarily they were sold directly by TI to Iran, for example, but it does raise questions that are not answered by "they were physically manufactured in China."
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > I'm pretty sure American companies are forbidden from selling things to Iran... Sure, but they're most certainly permitted to sell to several billion other people on the planet, most of whom aren't under American jurisdiction. Some of those will be willing to shove the chips in a shipping container and send that on a boat to Iran for a reasonable fee. It'd be pretty insane for TI to be selling to Iran directly, and finding TI chips in Iran isn't evidence of it.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Finding TI chips in Iranian drones actually is evidence of it, albeit very very weak. On the flip side, "it'd be pretty insane" is not evidence at all. Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!
    - ceejayoz 4y ago

v8xi 4y ago

I think the assumption that manufactured by US companies = within US borders is wrong. The US is no longer a manufacturing powerhouse. For example, from TI's website (https://careers.ti.com/locations/ https://careers.ti.com/locations/): "TI’s only comprehensive manufacturing site (is) located in Chengdu"

Maursault 4y ago
American companies literally sold these parts. Their logos are in the wreckage. That's the problem and not where things are made.
- nradov 4y ago
  Chinese manufacturers frequently make counterfeit parts and stamp fake US company logos on them. Even if the parts were authentic, they certainly weren't sold directly to Iran. Middlemen in other countries not under sanctions buy them, and then re-export them. There is literally no way for US companies to prevent this, they don't have that kind of reach or power.
  - Maursault 4y ago
    It is astounding how posters here are bending over backwards to deny all responsibility. Russia is using American parts to kill Ukrainians. It doesn't matter where the parts were manufactured or how they got the parts. Why doesn't anyone here understand this?
    - lazide 4y ago
      If someone picks up a brick and smashes someone’s head in, does it particularly matter who made the brick? Statistically, the most widely made bricks would be ‘at fault’. But how does that matter, exactly? You can try to ban bricks from your country, which hey, maybe it could happen. But if they were having a brick shortage, couldn’t they just buy the same bricks from a neighboring country, since these items are so cheap and common, it’s not like it’s possible to serialize and track each one. These are the electronic equivalents of bricks.

miroljub 4y ago

> Of the 52 components Ukrainians removed from the Iranian Shahed-136 drone, 40 appear to have been manufactured by 13 different American companies, according to the assessment. > The remaining 12 components were manufactured by companies in Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, and China, according to the assessment. Not a single component produced in Russia? Somehow strange that a country that can send people to space and back is not capable of producing a single component for a military drone. > According to the Ukrainian assessment Ah, ok. So the source is trustworthy and objective, not a war party telling whatever they have to tell to support their cause.

cpursley 4y ago
This article is talking about the Iranian made drones not the domestic Russian ones. The Russian made stuff still has western parts but also domestic.
mannerheim 4y ago
Russia and the USSR before it has never had the ability to manufacture good electronics. iirc their smallest process node is 65nm. Modern optics are absolutely out of the question, which is why their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics.
- practice9 4y ago
  > their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics As well as more advanced Thales thermal imaging systems that were installed in combat vehicles (tanks, IFV). AFAIK they were produced in Russia under a license from Thales (a French company) till at least 2016. Thales was likely evading sanctions
- m4rtink 4y ago
  That might explain why their film-based spy sats[0] used to return the camera as well as the film, unlike their US counterparts[1][2] that just returned the film capsule. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon

coredog64 4y ago

I can speak directly to onsemi as I’m a former employee. While ONN is a US company, they manufacture a significant number of parts in Malaysia. ONN does have onshore fabs, but they’re expensive and are only used for their specialized, high cost components. When I was there, the US fabs were selling parts used in iPhones, Zunes, and XBoxen.

ilyt 4y ago

Most of them were probably manufactured in Asia just for american companies. Also nothing here really looks like something irreplaceable. A bunch of compute[1], the standard supporting chips (power, sensor interfaces etc.), I think only thing that might be problematic to replace are some high end analog stuff. The microcontroller on the photo Point being they could probably get by just with chinese chips, just picked the "vanilla option" because it's easier to read datasheet in english than in chinese. About only thing that would be hard to get off top of my head would be fast thermal cameras, as US for the long time limits anything consumer/export to low framerate and I'm not sure whether china does any of their own that are available. > Also discovered were components built by International Rectifier – now owned by the German company Infineon – and the Swiss company U-Blox. I'm guessing first one is some diodes/power transistors and such (easily replaceable) and U-blox I think just provides ready-to-go modules so less of a "part" more of a "module" made of stuff also from asia. Point being blocking exports wouldn't exactly do much unless China also closed borders; it would be far too easy for 3rd party company to just... buy what is needed and get it in via china with other chips. * [1] https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28232/part-details/TMS320F28232PGFA https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320F28232/part-details/TMS320F...

edgyquant 4y ago
> Most of them were probably manufactured in Asia just for american companies. Again, do you have an actual source for this?
- ilyt 4y ago
  Here is TI fab map https://www.ti.com/content/dam/ticom/images/themes/facilities/ti-manufacturing-map.jpg https://www.ti.com/content/dam/ticom/images/themes/facilitie... https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance.html https://www.ti.com/about-ti/company/ti-at-a-glance.html for example Onsemi have a bunch of locations everywhere https://www.onsemi.com/company/about-onsemi/locations https://www.onsemi.com/company/about-onsemi/locations Hemisphere and ublox aren't even making chips in first place, they are making modules out of other people's chips Now of course company having factory in china (or just buying capacity there) doesn't mean that particular chip was made in china but article doesn't really give much details about the chips aside from shitty picture of one (that is just generic MCU with some DSP IIRC)

atkailash 4y ago

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Gordonjcp 4y ago

So stuff you can just buy in big bags for a couple of quid from eBay or Aliexpress?

cdkmoose 4y ago

I don't think that "manufactured by 13 different American companies" necessarily means manufactured in America. Apple "manufactures" IPhones, but not in America

hulitu 4y ago

And where do you think Texas Instruments, NXP USA Inc, Analog Devices and Onsemi, International Rectifier manufacture components ? And Digikey, for example. Can ship to a lot of countries.

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

What is meant by 'manufactured'? Like Apple being an american company, but products manufactured by whomever, whereever? Dig deeper!