Is this really a surprise to anyone? If there’s anything you can rely on Western capitalism for, it’s unbridled, greed and corruption. Of course they’re gonna sell their top secret technology to the enemy. They need their 875th yacht!

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It's also difficult to keep third parties from reselling parts to a sanctioned country.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is what's primarily happening. A third-party imports the chips to a random country for [perfectly valid use], then resells them to Russia at a markup.

It's one of the reasons you see more and more sanctions packages. Some of those are sanctioning perpetrators of industrial level sanctions evasion as described here.

[–] DragonSidedD@monero.town 2 points 5 days ago

And modern high tech parts are actually pretty traceable. Everything has a serial number and a digital trail.

People compare sanctions to the War on (some) Drugs but really nobody grows custom CMOS chips in their basement

[–] khannie@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah there was a big hullabaloo after parts from some tiny Irish lawnmower engine manufacturer were found in a Russian drone. Government take the sanctions seriously here. Big investigation and it turned out to be exactly that.

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