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Comment by dlgeek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

> 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.

Purchasers and users of US made parts are obligated to sign a contract that prohibits them from trading with North Korea and Iran (and Cuba?). That includes selling your iPhone.

> Purchasers and users of US made parts are obligated to sign a contract that prohibits them from trading with North Korea

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...

It might be fantasy or it might be the mighty reach of the US government. The US has a trade org that controls EVERYTHING about materials made with US licensed or US developed technology. I think it is the US International Trade Commission.

I live in europe, and I bought many US chips (eg TI ones)... your regulation means nothing here, and i didn't sign any contract. You can literally go to a physical store and buy them off the shelf.

How much can you buy and ship to NK until it raises a flag somewhere ?

NK is different.. you cannot even travel there normally without going through an agency.

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-...

Sorry, my dumb-ass brain somehow pictured you walking in a supermarket, buying a bunch of TI calculators to rip off the interesting parts and ship them. Totally misread the conversation.

Haha, no no, TI makes components too, and sells them by the thousands+ even to small customers :)

Cool. How enforcable is that contract in China on a non-American citizen operating a company that only exists for a few weeks on paper to facilitate the transaction?

How hard would it be for Iran to open a shell company in third-party country like, say, Iraq to mask the transaction?

Not very. And the second you arrest a Chinese exec involved with that, China will arrest some of your citizens and await your call for the exchange.

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...

Several years back, a company in China got in trouble for selling US controlled technology to Iran. The company ended up getting sanctioned. It was not until they changed the board, CEO, and other offices and paid a bunch of fees, that the company was able to operate freely again. The sanctions got so bad, that the company could not repair their toilets anymore. I believe it was Xiaomi.

Edit: Not Xiaomi, it was ZTE. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...

You're thinking of Huawei. They're doing fine: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-huawei-sees-2022-r...

I was thinking of ZTE. CA 2012.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2160515/cisco-said-to-c...

That only affects the first purchaser. Once it's available from a street vendor in Shenzhen, anyone can get it.

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!

Evidence supports a proposition.

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.

Evidence eliminates alternative possibilities. The presence of any of these components eliminates the possibility that there are no TI components in Iran. And to reiterate: this is obviously nowhere near the standard required to take any action whatsoever, thus the "very very weak" designation.

I have some large trees that produce a meaningful quantity of moles of oxygen and I've gotten wind that some of those particles are taking a circuitous route into the combustion engines of these drones.

Hate to admit it, but that's some damning evidence. Very, very weak fortunately.

> Evidence eliminates alternative possibilities.

What? My DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily eliminate alternative possibilities, but it's still evidence.

A month ago there was a murder in a nearby restaurant. Bob and doesn't cook, and hasn't starved to death yet.

This evidence eliminates the possibility that Bob doesn't go to restaurants. Ladies and gentlemen, clearly Bob is the killer!

That’s an incredible stretch of the term “evidence” when these are commodity parts involved in tens of thousands of not hundreds of thousands of parts of the supply chain. If the US found cutting edge components from US companies that were actually specialized and more rare you might have a point, but these are parts you can find in literally any electronic good. They are defined as electronics by using these electronic components.

> albeit very very weak

>> Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!

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.

I suppose this is why we never see examples of criminality where the possible penalties outweigh the possible gains?

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.

The more plausible story is that some distributor somewhere sold a couple shipping containers worth of these commodity parts from a place that doesn’t really give a damn what the US says (except for making sure to fake some paperwork or whatever), like China. Or some random county in Eastern Europe. Or Africa.

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.

Yeah - that can't be a good marketing and for positive brand recognition.

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.

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