Is there a link between the illegal shipment of E-waste from the US and Canada to China via Hong Kong and the counterfeit microchip trade as reported in Business Week? Due to lax US military procurement procedures, their military purchase microchips from brokers who in some case simply Google the Internet for the part number and are connected to suppliers in China. The suppliers harvest chips from old computers which have to be the higher end desktops in order to contain the required chips from reputable manufacturer. The suppliers sand off the labels from the chips and relabel them with the counterfeit Mil Spec serial numbers etc. This could explain why they need E-waste from Canada and the US.