This risks hardware sabotage causing catastrophic failure in critical infrastructure and DOD weapons systems

the University of Maryland Carey School of Law “Debugging the Trademark Laws: The Lanham Act and Counterfeit

Microelectronics,” 31 TEX. INTELL. PROP. L.J. 211 (2023). Hein Online. Accessed via University of Michigan //DH

More recently, clones and tampered parts with malicious insertions have become part of the counterfeiting problem, leading to national security concerns.68 Clones, or unauthorized reproductions of authentic parts, may be produced through reverse engineering, resulting in exact duplicates of the original part, or they may be form-fit-function equivalents (i.e., conforming products, but not exact duplicates) that are passed off as authentic products. 69 In either case, one concern is that the clone might function in ways that the original product did not, potentially leading to extremely dangerous results. For example, a timer could be inserted that would cause the chip to fail at a certain time, or it could be programmed to fail in response to certain stimuli .70

Tampered parts, on the other hand, are parts which have been intentionally modified for sabotage or malfunction.71 Tampered parts pose advanced threats to critical infrastructure and national security:

Parts of this category would likely be state sponsored by adversary countries and could have dangerous or catastrophic consequences for systems that incorporate them. Consequences include but are not limited to denial of service of a critical function of the system, side-channel attacks that enable loss of sensitive or critical information, premature or latent failure, or unauthorized access to proprietary data or system functionality. 72

It is somewhat unclear whether tampered microelectronics have already infiltrated the supply chain,73 or whether the current dangers associated with tampering are still limited to software residing on more complicated assemblies and equipment such as servers.74

The U.S. government recently acknowledged that it faces potentially catastrophic risks from all types of counterfeit electronic parts:

Counterfeits are not produced to meet higher-level quality standards required in mission critical applications and are a significant risk in causing failure to systems vital to an agency's mission. For weapons, space flight, aviation, and satellite systems, these failures can result in the [sic] death, severe injuries, and millions of dollars in system damage or loss. For example, if counterfeits are installed in a missile's guidance system, such missile may not function at all, may not proceed to an intended target, or may strike a completely unintended location resulting in catastrophic losses. Critical nonconforming and counterfeit items may cause failures in navigation or steering control systems, planes and flight control. Counterfeits can create "backdoors" into supposedly secure programmable devices which could be exploited to insert circuit functions to steal information and relay it to third parties or command or prevent the device from operating as designed. Defense, space, and aviation systems in particular must meet rigorous component specifications: failure of even a single one can be catastrophic causing serious problems and placing personnel and the public in harm's way.75