Combating fake chips by controlling supply chain

George Karalias, Rochester Electronics
EETimes (10/24/2012 9:06 AM EDT)

In December 2011, President Barack Obama signed the fiscal year 2012 US National Defense Authorization Act. The budget bill also encourages the implementation of procedures to mitigate the possibility of obtaining counterfeit components by making members of all tiers of the defense supply chain accountable. The meaning of the term counterfeit in this context includes fake, substandard, damaged, or mismarked components.

In the fall of 2011, for the first time in history, U.S. Federal Courts prosecuted an individual for trafficking in counterfeit integrated circuits, many of which were targeted for the U.S. military. Others were to be used in brake systems in high-speed trains and instruments used by firefighters to detect nuclear radiation. The administrator of the company that sold the components was sentenced to 38 months in prison and assessed fines of $166,141 for selling almost $16 million worth of semiconductors falsely marked as military, commercial or industrial grade.

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