Pentagon orders stores to ban certain Chinese phones amid spying concerns

Thank you for doing your homework. Most people don’t you know.

What I do for a living is “supply chain management” of products from China. So, um I actually do know quite a bit about this subject.

In all manufacturing environments, you have the core company and a team of suppliers. The suppliers provide parts and assemblies to the main company for final assembly. Those suppliers, in turn, have suppliers themselves. They are known as 2nd tier suppliers. This goes on further down the supply chain into third tier and fourth tier.

No company today makes EVERYTHING themselves.

ASUS is a good product with a solid supply chain. They do final assemblies in both Taiwan and the Mainland. All packaging originates out of China. All IC chips also originates out of China as does the monitor subassemblies.

I cannot go through the entire list, but I would daresay that the vast bulk of the parts and a sizable percentage of the final assemblies are made in the mainland.

That’s neither good nor bad. What I do know is that the Chinese EPA restrictions on processing has affected their delivery times and will most certainly result in price increases.

Look, I think that this is a global world that we live in. America has thrown away it’s industry and others have taken up the slack. You can get good high quality parts and assemblies made in China. It’s just that they are NEVER MARKETED as out of China when they are sold in the USA.

I would advise purchasing all American made parts, bought locally out of a mom and pop store before you go ahead and use the internet or a big company like Walmart.

Yes ASUS is a great laptop. I have four in the house, and my work PC is also an ASUS laptop. Going Chinese has it’s advantages as all the NSA backdoors are suppressed (or replaced) by Chinese backdoors.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to do some homework and respond to my comment. Most people do not. All that I can say is that I am in China and I work and live here. I know more about China than just about anyone on FR. It’s not that I think the USA sucks and China is better... no not at all.

It’s that I went where the work was. If you are in the industry, you go to where the factories are. Obama and Bush / Clinton years were lean times let me tell you.

I had wondered about final fabrication being done on the mainland. I knew the chips came from else where. An Intel engineer(former) told me most CPU chips actually fly out of the US and are put into mother boards overseas then the mother boards may be shipped to China or else where for final unit assembly and sent back out for sale It might be cheaper in terms of cost to do it that way per the bean counters but what is the cost and money lost if war or politics causes disruptions in these supply chains? Are there intrinsic cost savings in keeping supply chains short in terms of distances or keeping things “within country” even if per unit costs are say a third higher or after cost profit a third lower?(as the source of profit will continue at a longer time as political and economic conditions will remain more secure and predictable)

Yes, good point.

The answer is that there are different chip sets depending on the export destination.

Those PC’s going to the United States have to have specially installed chip sets. They cannot have non-approved chip sets. The chips installed are all certified by the American government and have “special” pre-programming installed.

Want to see something funny...

When I go through customs in the United States (entering), they always make me to to a separate room and pull out my computer. Then they are unable to access it when they plug it into their “diagnostics machine”. So they ask me for my password.

Of course I give it to them. I have nothing to hide.

But the DHS, and NSA cannot break the Chinese encryption on any of my PC and cell phones.

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