Russia's Military Found a Surprisingly Simple Way to Buy US Chips | Hacker News Reader

Russia's Military Found a Surprisingly Simple Way to Buy US Chips

bloomberg.com

16 pointspinewurst11 comments

This sort of story illustrates why I think so poorly of the mainstream news media.

Smuggling of small, high-value goods was old when President Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in 1971. It was old when the US gave up on Prohibition (of alcoholic beverages) in 1933. It was old when King Edward I of England was trying to collect his duty on the export of wool in the late 1200's. It was old when Rome was still a one-horse town.

Bloomberg is supposedly a real business publication - not "Noob Newz, for Today's 10K". When the Western sanctions and export restrictions on Russia were announced, all the grown-ups understood that they were performative politics, and would only add some costs and friction to Russia's supply chains.

If mainstream journalists don't want to be viewed with contempt and distrust by the public, then why are they working so hard to earn those sentiments?

Adding costs to Russia's military procurement isn't performative, but I do broadly agree with your sentiment. Pretending that Russia would acquire none of what was restricted was/is foolish.

Moreover, informing about the actual realities of export restrictions doesn't seem useless or condescending (I'm not commenting about the actual article here, which... seems hacking in technical savvy ... to be generous - but news about the topic in general).

Supply chains are complex, rife for corruption at many levels and giving some understanding how it happens seems a worthy news item for me, especially to understand the effectiveness of such sanctions, and as an educated citizen, either clamor for tighter supply-chain control, or be OK with the status quo, or ask for less control or for alternatives.

> among the most sought-after TI products are flip-flop chips, used to protect devices from electric power flowing in the wrong direction when they go into sleep state

oh, dear... i appear to have been confused about what flip-flop chips actually did.

is this an AI hallucination? or just a liberal-arts-major hallucination?

Maybe they are used to track state ina specific circuit? Even then, weird.

    journalist (staring at his sandals) > flip-flops? you mean like the ones with the strap thingy that goes between your big toe?

    ti communications director > well, no. not that kind of flip-flop. a flip-flop is a circuit which maintains a single bit of state.

    journalist (furiously scratching out some unseen notes) > what kind of state, like state of matter or like in government?

    ti communications director > for example, lets say we need to keep track of whether the state of some electronics is in sleep or power-down state or not. you could store that information in a flip-flop.

    journalist > so the power knows which way to go?

    ti communications director > sure. why not.

Sounds like a layperson's poor understanding of an explanation from someone else who also doesn't really get it.

https://archive.ph/38Iiq

Russia can buy US chips, but I can’t read this article.

TIL large organizations actually use the 'TI Store' rather than go via a 3rd party distributor

So apparently there are .ru websites where Russian military contractors can simply place the order for the chips they want. Orders are proxied through non Russian companies. But the websites themselves pull inventory information straight from the is chip manufacturers. Sounds like nobody is looking and nobody cares. Which is a shame because technology sanctions actually could have worked.

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