Standard Apple cables already have a chip inside, and USB 3.1 cables are also supposed to have chips inside.

I would also assume they are not paying enough attention to even notice, there is no regulation against them so there is no reason to even train to notice differences in USB cables.

> They probably see thousands of cables and it'd be pretty easy to spot the difference.

If anything seeing thousands of cables will make them less likely to notice anything, change blindness is a real problem in jobs like that.

They see thousands of cables and probably don't give any a second glance for the bare few seconds they gaze at each bag, an extra IC or two in the connector or not.

The sheer volume of bags that get run through those x-ray machines in a shift, and the time given to look at each one precludes too much fine grained inspection, especially for something as minor as cables.

Airport security is pretty dismal at detecting actual weapons or contraband, why should they be any better at noticing a slightly different cable?

The TSA agent making $25/hr who was formerly a line chef or retail worker or correctional officer or whatever is not sophisticated enough to tell the difference. Suspicious computer cables don't cause planes to fall out of the sky, and that's about all that agency even pretends to care about.

Yes, perhaps. And so the day (after) someone brings down a plane with a non-standard cable, they'll start looking for cables that 'look kind of weird'.