These aren't really "from" the US companies. They're commodity parts that US & other Western companies design that are manufactured in Asia and sold around the world. The parts are used way too widely to be tracked in any meaningful way.
> 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.
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.
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.
some 5/3.3V linear one? Sure.
Few generic switch mode power supply low current ones ? Eh, sure, there are few chips that are very popular but they're generally old and not super efficient.
Anything else ? Sure you can replace existing one but that requires redesigning the device so if you used part A but now can get only part B sure, you might get your 3.3V 5A out of it but you might need different sized capacitors/inductors, and you will certainly need a different board layout.
Even something simple as transistor used in power regulator (if it is big enough to have separate controller and transistors) might have same/higher amps but different other characteristics so you have to tweak the design a bit to get to the performance.
Simple microcontroller ? Even if any similar one on market fits the requirements, unless you get part from same family (just having more memory) you ain't fitting same code on it even if it is same architecture, the register map and their function can be different even within same family of chips, let alone different lines so you're up for the recompile at the very least, rewrite of parts at worst. And again board needs to be changed
I wonder how close we are to a world where global conflict becomes impractical simply due to a lack of parts.
http://www.righto.com/2020/03/looking-inside-vintage-soviet-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_integrated_circuit_desi...
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Original-In-Stock...
This can probably run all the software needed for a simple drone, control, navigation, etc.
Here is an EU supplier:
https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Lumissil/IS31CS8977-QFLS...
They cost less than nails, how are you gonna track this shit?
The same happens with microcontrollers. Take the STM32F103 from ST Micro, before the chip shortages this was a chip you could find in in heaps of random low cost electronics that required a bit of smarts. Same thing happens there, there are some chinese clones that are cheaper and almost perfect copies. The "legit" sellers will sell these as GD32F103 or CH32F103 for instance, but if you try to buy a genuine part from a less trusty source there's a decent chance you're paying the higher prices for the same chip, just someone laser marked it as a genuine one instead to make some profit.
Ref: https://theknowledgeaccelerator.com/2016/04/16/jellybean-com...
"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.
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."
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.
This is some kind of fantasy? I can go to a million websites or into a store with cash and I can buy microchips for $0.08 without signing any contract. What's next, you are going to keep track of nuts and bolts?
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/New-Original-In-Stock...
https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Lumissil/IS31CS8977-QFLS...
But iran.. I don't know what their customs rules are but if you pay import fees, probably unlimited amounts.
How much you can buy? A lot.. eg. 10k voltage regulators is such a common order size, that they have a predefined lowered price even in online stores (without having to contact sales):
eg: https://si.farnell.com/stmicroelectronics/l78l05acutr/v-reg-...
How hard would it be for Iran to open a shell company in third-party country like, say, Iraq to mask the transaction?
Even more fun when the US gets another country to do the arresting dirty work.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/meng-wanzhou-us-court-1.618...
Edit: Not Xiaomi, it was ZTE. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...
On the flip side, "it'd be pretty insane" is not evidence at all. Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!
TI chips in Iran doesn't support the proposition that TI is directly violating sanctions by deliberately selling to Iran in violation of sanctions. There is no evidence of that.
Hate to admit it, but that's some damning evidence. Very, very weak fortunately.
What? My DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily eliminate alternative possibilities, but it's still evidence.
This evidence eliminates the possibility that Bob doesn't go to restaurants. Ladies and gentlemen, clearly Bob is the killer!
The costs of violating OFAC far exceed ANY gain TI would see from selling to Iran. You're wrong. Stop posting and go read about the semiconductor supply chain.
And in any case, I agree with you. I am extremely doubtful that this is what's happening, I just think "the penalties are substantial" and "they were likely manufactured in China" are not evidence it's not happening. TI components in Iran are evidence (weak, weak, completely non-actionable!) evidence that it is happening.
They sell 100’s of millions of these parts to pretty much everyone, and they’re dirt cheap.
That TI ‘made them’ (not really, outsourced usually) then ‘sold them’ (not really, almost certainly. TI doesn’t do direct deals like that for pretty much anyone!) is a narrative that is pretty implausible considering how the supply chains actually work for these components.
Major brands already make a huge fuss what content their adds are displayed next to.
So repeatedly having chips with your logo being pulled from the wreckage of a drone that just demolished an apartment building can't be good for PR either.
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.
That, of course, won't stop someone in China from ordering a million chips from TI and shipping them to Iran (or Russia).
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.
First, we don't know that. It's not uncommon for Chinese manufacturers to make extra parts and sell them themselves. It's also not impossible that Iran or Russia obtained these from taking apart other devices, theft, or other means.
Even if these chips generated revenue for TI, TI almost certainly didn't sell them to Iranian or Russian companies or representatives. They'll have been sold to an intermediary in a legal fashion, as far as TI was aware (or at the very least, with plausible deniability) at the time.
You're saying these parts could be designer imposters, like a Gucci purse. Chinese manufactures might copy the part. They wouldn't copy the logos because there is no reason to copy the logos.
> It's also not impossible that Iran or Russia obtained these from taking apart other devices, theft, or other means.
I need you to prepare yourself to be wrong, because this is just as unlikely. Russia doesn't think they're bad, so they're not going to try to make America look bad by associating with them. From Russia's point of view, that would be trying to make America look good, which they would never do.
> Even if these chips generated revenue for TI, TI almost certainly didn't sell them to Iranian or Russian companies or representatives. They'll have been sold to an intermediary in a legal fashion, as far as TI was aware (or at the very least, with plausible deniability) at the time.
If you sold ovens to an intermediary in 1941, and they sold them to a contractor who installed your ovens at Auschwitz, you'd really feel good about the money you made? Trust me, you wouldn't. It would make you sick, as it should if you are a member of our species.
I'm sorry, but that's simply ignorant. They literally do this all the time. Counterfeit chips are everywhere.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/chip-shortages-lead-...
> Russia doesn't think they're bad, so they're not going to try to make America look bad by associating with them.
That wouldn't be the motivation. Russia is desperate for chips. They'll use any they can get their hands on.
> If you sold ovens to an intermediary in 1941, and they sold them to a contractor who installed your ovens at Auschwitz, you'd really feel good about the money you made?
If I had zero reason to believe they'd make their way to Germany when I sold them to someone in town, I'd be sad, but I certainly wouldn't feel culpable.
In the case of Ukraine, pretty hefty sums of my taxes paid are being used to support them. I feel pretty OK with the balance of things there. Some thousands of dollars of microchips to Iran (unwillingly) versus tens of billions in weaponry and supplies to Ukraine (happily) maths out just fine.
And even if they somehow exclude those, who stops someone in any other country from just setting up shell company and reexporting the chips ?
For example, from TI's website (https://careers.ti.com/locations/): "TI’s only comprehensive manufacturing site (is) located in Chengdu"
"Chip" is the layman term for an integrated circuit, or IC.
Socrates was a man. I am a man. I am Socrates.
CPUs are a type of IC, commonly known as a ‘chip’ in this context. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit]
That’s called ‘not knowing what the definition of something is’.
Also, there are many voltage regulator ICs (and hence chips), and a great many other ICs (and hence chips) used in pretty much every piece of electronic equipment now a days.
Motor controllers, microprocessors, etc.
Literally even children’s stuffed toys have them.
But while yes these companies should bear responsibility if they are selling their parts to sanctioned countries, this is unlikely. There is just no way to track the real-time user of every commodity product - even if there were would you really want to live in that world?
*edit grammar
This is somewhat of a tu quoque argument much like the many others here claiming these products are commonly supplied by many companies worldwide, and it will have absolutely no bearing on the reputations of the companies involved, nor can it remove their involvement in the violent deaths of innocent lives.
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.
TI not manufacturing those chips won’t stop Iran using identical chips though. It’s one of many ‘try all the things’ tactics from a belligerent at war. And I can’t blame them for trying. I’m sure it will cause some minor issues here and there for Iran and Russia, and every little bit helps.
It’s still transparent bullshit and manipulation of the public.
The part I have to laugh at is arguments like this that take the manipulation at face value, and go after folks pointing out it’s bullshit on a technical site.
It would be like going on a Gun forum and going after folks pointing out the Remington smear campaigns (or any number of other manufacturers) was transparent bullshit to try to get cash or force them out of business by those ideologically opposed to them.
Like what do you expect but a bunch of folks going ‘that’s bullshit’?
They chose to settle after sufficient pressure and wild accusations were brought to bear publicly no?
If the lawsuit was kept confidential and not turned into a high profile socio-political football being used to target them, then I think you might have a point, as the case could be about matters of law and fact.
But it wasn’t, was it?
One would call that ‘forced’ in most contexts. If it wasn’t in the context of an active lawsuit, perhaps even extortion. But lawyers get a pass for this, of course.
Pretty sure no one would think they did.
But it does have their logo on it!
Unless of course Apple sent a container of free iPhone’s after they’d laid out their genocidal plan. So far zero indication that’s happened though, right?
Or is that too much to ask now a days?
This entire thread is the height of ridiculous absurdity.
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-...
> 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...
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.
I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
Uh, why? I can understand doubting the electronics in their satellites, but the mirrors? Why do you think Russia can't polish mirrors?
Yeah, but physics isn't. Good resolution requires large mirrors. Large mirrors require large satellites. These aren't cubesats we're talking about; optical American spy satellites have 2.4 meter wide mirrors and are more than 10 meters long. The only non-US/Chinese/Russian rocket that can launch such a satellite in principle is the Ariane 5, but AFAIK they don't fly that to polar orbits.
In any case, not many people have the equipment laying around to make such large mirrors, or the expertise, or a stockpile of such mirrors. Russia likely has all three, or certainly once did.
You don't do prisoner exchanges because of the valuable contributions of that agent, you do prisoner exchanges to ensure future contributions by other agents.
>I also doubt the quality of the optics in Russian satellites.
They're just fine. What kind of quality do you think they need to hit a power plant with a missile? Most of their missiles aren't that precise anyway.
There's only an extremely limited set of circumstances where drone footage of power infrastructure could be useful.
Doesn't Leica have a reputation for world-beating optics?
Yet you provide no data to convince anyone otherwise. Outside of scrap, also electronics stores over here have signs now which denote the amount of electronics you can carry over the border into the Russia (not exceeding the value of 300€) which suggests there is a reason to do so.
Related to your article, if something sounds ridiculous it's the explanation given in your article of the unemployed man travelling from Russia to take drone pictures of a cottage for a friend. Very reminiscient of the two "tourists" "just visiting" Salisbury.
Yeah, sanctions. Luxury goods are limited to 300 euros. https://tulli.fi/en/-/import-and-export-sanctions-on-goods-a...
The purpose is not to disrupt Russian military supply chains, but to make Muscovites pay higher prices for their grey market iPhones.
>Related to your article, if something sounds ridiculous it's the explanation given in your article of the unemployed man travelling from Russia to take drone pictures of a cottage for a friend. Very reminiscient of the two "tourists" "just visiting" Salisbury.
The Norwegian government agreed that his story checked out. Also, I'd suppose that wealthy unemployed men make up a decent chunk of tourism in general.
You generally can't buy the mentioned dual-use goods in your local electronics store. Look up the "EU dual use control list", it mostly covers exotic stuff like electronics adapted to operate in extreme (temperature, radiation) environments.
Could be due to culture, skill or poverty/economics. Or all three.
At least on aliexpress, reviews for random spare parts/components are often from Russians.
When I was there, the US fabs were selling parts used in iPhones, Zunes, and XBoxen.
https://www.u-blox.com/en/code-of-conduct
Well someone f'd up but it probably was a resale later down the chain.
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/TMS320F...
Again, do you have an actual source for this?
Onsemi have a bunch of locations everywhere 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)
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.
Until you are regulated by ITAR.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/23/2020-00...
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!
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.
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]
We actually don't know that, yet.
> And if you sold a weapon to a murderer, or even if you failed to reasonably secure your weapon and it was stolen
There's no indication either of these things happened, either.
As the article says:
"There is no evidence suggesting that any of those companies are running afoul of US sanctions laws and knowingly exporting their technology to be used in the drones. Even with many companies promising increased monitoring, controlling where these highly ubiquitous parts end up in the global market is often very difficult for manufacturers, experts told CNN."
The part pictured is a TMS320F28335PGFA. You can get 'em in trays of 240 for $10/chip on Alibaba and any number of other places that a) aren't TI and b) don't care about US law.
OK, but you said this:
> it makes those companies accessories to this illegal Russian war
Is being an accessory to the Russian aggression not wrong?
> American parts in wreckage of Russian drone strikes is undeniable.
I mean, sure, but the Russians are using Ukranian-made arms and aircraft, too; that doesn't make the Ukranians complicit in the Russian aggression. Ukraine used to be a major arms supplier to the entire Soviet and post-Soviet sphere of influence.
Your standard for "responsibility" is bizarre. The balance of US involvement in Ukraine is extremely heavily on the side of good, and it'd stay that way even if TI had knowingly had anything to do with these drones.
And Digikey, for example. Can ship to a lot of countries.
Dig deeper!
> 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.
The most advanced microchip produced in East Germany was the '1-MBit chip' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U61000), but AFAIK this suffered from terrible yields and didn't really go into mass production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(Czechoslovak_company)
Here in Brno they also made world class electron microscopes & some of the leading electron microscopy companies still come from Brno or at least operate there (Delong Instruments, FEI, Thermo Fisher, etc.).
Modern optics are absolutely out of the question, which is why their Orlan drones have been found with consumer cameras for their optics.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit_(satellite)
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
Soyuz (as in both rocket and capsule) has had multiple failures over the last decade. The most recent was the coolant leak a few weeks ago that made the capsule unusable for a safe return to Earth. Under Rogozin their space industry degraded very quickly (probably one of the reasons why Rogozin was fired last year).
It's been known for some time that Russia gets components for its hi-tech weapons via a network of proxy companies in EU.
> So the source is trustworthy and objective, not a war party telling whatever they have to tell to support their cause.
US and Israel officials are clearly taking these reports seriously
It's tricky. It would require a huge amount of surveillance to prevent it from happening, or an even more aggressive physical blockade of Iran. And of course there's always the possibility of China->Russia->Iran shipment by air.
>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.