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What you describe would be a broken charger, not a broken cable.

The charger is supposed to interrogate the cable and only offer 5A if a) the cable responds and b) responds with a 5A capability.

That's what's *supposed to* happen, but some of the bad cables omit that and the charger is actually talking to the device, not the cable.

Huh? That's not how the PD protocol works, it's a multidrop bus, and the device won't respond to requests addressed to the cable.