tl;dr holy moly! In late '80s US government prevented Japan exporting cheap DRAM into US (free trade anyone?). DRAM prices went through roof. Atari covered holes in its own finances by reselling DRAM to major manufacturers (SUN etc). The DRAM they resold was "smuggled" in outside the official agreements. The sites owner has this from FOI requests.

This seems plenty plausible - and is one of many many reasons the WTO was a good idea.

But boy, Atari smuggled DRAM ... Weird