>Counterpoint: even if we ignored the fact that you cannot possibly produce the volumes of chips necessary at the price necessary in your country rather than in "we don't have to acknowledge all the human rights violations" countries, why would you believe this problem goes away if chip manufacturing were done in your own country, rather than another?

It's certainly easier to enforce laws and observe manufacturing processes at domestic factories than it is at factories thousands of miles away in a country that actively encourages IP theft and other wrongdoings, don't you think?

Not really, no. Why do you think it be easier to police? In concrete terms: who do you expect to do the policing? Because this is the kind of work that requires an expert, to catch an expert, messing with a product created by people 100% ignorant of _what_ they're making. Just _that_ they're making them. Where are you going find enough experts to check the work of even a single production line?

Because "thousands of miles away in a country that actively encourages IP theft and other wrongdoings". It makes perfect sense. If you don't think that, try to run any business in another country. It's just obvious that it would be easier to do domestically. You just list other set of problems. Those problems only get compounded if we'are talking about another country.

Not all societies are equally corrupt.

But no societies are free from organized crime. And last time I checked, no western country was free from card skimmers either.

You can prosecute someone in your home country and even change policies with enough political support. Best of luck doing this in China without getting 're-educated'.

But note that as always: that's too late. By then, the damange has already been done, and the person you take out of the system is simply replaced by anyone else. Card skimmers sure as hell haven't gone away just because we wised up to them: we now just pay A LOT MORE on law enforcement, and all that gets us is law enforcement now at least staying in lockstep with the skimmer's increased sophistication.

Now imagine how much it'll cost to stay in lockstep when the level of sophistication becomes "a single component the size of half a grain of rice".

"Free", no. Much less affected, yes. Organised crime in Mexico and Italy is a much greater problem than in, say, the UK or Germany.

You're letting the perfect become the enemy of the good here

Not really: I'm letting the practical dictate the process. Catching this kind of inflitration requires experts to scrutinise the work of people who know nothing about what they're making, to catch experts with a much more vested interest in success, and you aren't going to find enough experts to take that job, at a good pay, to check the output of even a single plant. Let alone an entire industry.

If the question is "why don't we move chip production to the US, so this doesn't happen" the answer is "because you might be able to do that for one or two plants. And it'll probably drive up the price by an order of magnitutde, so they'll go out of business soon after. And you sure as hell can't move the entire industry because of prohibitive cost and shortage of manpower to do the bit that you want tacked on that can't be trusted to be done abroad".