That’s an incredible stretch of the term “evidence” when these are commodity parts involved in tens of thousands of not hundreds of thousands of parts of the supply chain. If the US found cutting edge components from US companies that were actually specialized and more rare you might have a point, but these are parts you can find in literally any electronic good. They are defined as electronics by using these electronic components.

> albeit very very weak

Evidence supports a proposition.

TI chips in Iran doesn't support the proposition that TI is directly violating sanctions by deliberately selling to Iran in violation of sanctions. There is no evidence of that.

Evidence eliminates alternative possibilities. The presence of any of these components eliminates the possibility that there are no TI components in Iran. And to reiterate: this is obviously nowhere near the standard required to take any action whatsoever, thus the "very very weak" designation.

I have some large trees that produce a meaningful quantity of moles of oxygen and I've gotten wind that some of those particles are taking a circuitous route into the combustion engines of these drones.

Hate to admit it, but that's some damning evidence. Very, very weak fortunately.

> Evidence eliminates alternative possibilities.

What? My DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily eliminate alternative possibilities, but it's still evidence.

A month ago there was a murder in a nearby restaurant. Bob and doesn't cook, and hasn't starved to death yet.

This evidence eliminates the possibility that Bob doesn't go to restaurants. Ladies and gentlemen, clearly Bob is the killer!

>> Companies do apparently insane things for money all the time!

The costs of violating OFAC far exceed ANY gain TI would see from selling to Iran. You're wrong. Stop posting and go read about the semiconductor supply chain.

I suppose this is why we never see examples of criminality where the possible penalties outweigh the possible gains?

And in any case, I agree with you. I am extremely doubtful that this is what's happening, I just think "the penalties are substantial" and "they were likely manufactured in China" are not evidence it's not happening. TI components in Iran are evidence (weak, weak, completely non-actionable!) evidence that it is happening.

The more plausible story is that some distributor somewhere sold a couple shipping containers worth of these commodity parts from a place that doesn’t really give a damn what the US says (except for making sure to fake some paperwork or whatever), like China. Or some random county in Eastern Europe. Or Africa.

They sell 100’s of millions of these parts to pretty much everyone, and they’re dirt cheap.

That TI ‘made them’ (not really, outsourced usually) then ‘sold them’ (not really, almost certainly. TI doesn’t do direct deals like that for pretty much anyone!) is a narrative that is pretty implausible considering how the supply chains actually work for these components.