You watch entirely too much start trek. Yes, Jordy. During a dogfight the chinese pilot will flip a switch and all chinese made 5kOhm resistors will activate an internal program and suddenly morph into 4kOhm resistors and....something.
you do realize systems can be compromised, right? not all components are just duds or software viruses stealing your game account.
embedding systems that will respond under certain criteria would be ideal. imagine a chip that sits idle until it receives a signal. then it just ‘pings’ it’s location. sounds innocent enough... unless the chip is in your sincgars handset, which you thought was in ‘quiet’ mode. oops... you just told them where you are, so much for stealth.
that same signal could be used for homing... leading a weapon system (missile, drone, whatever) right to you
btw, ‘start trek’ never did anything like this. i believe the new ‘battlestar galactica’ series started off this way.