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As Ukrinform reports, this is stated in a journalistic investigation by the Bloomberg news agency.
The documents, obtained by the agency, reveal the operation of a persistent supply chain from Silicon Valley in Russia, including the multi-step actions of Russian defense industry suppliers to purchase components from American chip maker Texas Instruments Inc. (TI), based in Dallas.
American high-tech products are used for the production of drones, guided aerial bombs, communication systems, Iskander missiles, etc.
The purchase process is surprisingly simple, the investigation is ongoing. Some Russian distributors have integrated information from the Texas Instrument online store into their trading platforms, which allows customers to familiarize themselves with the range of semiconductor circuits and prices to form an inquiry.
In Moscow or St. Petersburg, they can purchase TI components with a few mouse clicks, placing an order that will be delivered via companies outside of Russia.
Goods arrive in the Russian Federation via Hong Kong or other countries.
The Russian portal with a catalog, available for viewing only after registration of the customer company, contains millions of products, including TI products.
Experts believe that this portal collects information through an application programming interface (API), which allows programs to interact and exchange data with each other.
Access to TI's corporate website (TI.com) is possible in Russia through a VPN connection that hides location data and Internet addresses.
Many goods purchased in the TI store enter Russia from third countries without the knowledge of the manufacturer. It's hard for TI to keep track of where its chips end up because the company sells large volumes of components at a relatively low price.
When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US and the EU imposed export controls on dozens of goods, electronics and technologies used to make weapons. But many supply routes cross multiple jurisdictions before reaching Russia, making inspections difficult.
In the US, the activities of Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Infineon and Analog Devices, in particular, were investigated, but only TI was held accountable. While other companies use risk management databases early in the sales process to block illegitimate buyers, TI implements such procedures "much later in the customer vetting process, and sometimes does not use" them at all, according to a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on investigations In addition, TI allows companies to buy chips on its website without disclosing the end user of the products - unlike most other chip makers.
Among the resellers that will ship TI products are Sure Technology, Chipower Electronics and Horseway Tech in Hong Kong, according to the documents. The public register shows that they are subsidiaries of trading companies based in Shenzhen, China, and one of them has announced the recruitment of Russian-speaking employees.
Goods are delivered from Hong Kong to Russia mainly through the transport company Sea Global SCM Ltd and the Russian airline Aeroflot.
At the end of the supply chain is a group of distributors, including Arvis Group, Alternativa and Getchip. According to the Russian register of companies, all of them are registered on Khokhryakova Street in Yekaterinburg.
It is from this group of companies that TI products are delivered to end customers, including enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Russia.
Last year, Russia imported chips from the USA and Europe worth more than $1 billion.
Ukrainian investigators have found more than 4000 Western components used in Russian weapons since the beginning of the invasion, with Texas Instruments being one of the main sources of the parts.
Among the TI products most in demand in Russia are trigger chips used to protect devices from power leakage in the wrong direction when they go into standby mode, and step-down power modules for communications equipment.
