That kerning issue is so distinctive that I knew where the document was from from the preview snapshot which didn’t show the ISTA header. It is actually funny how horrible their Pdfs on their website are and how nobody cares to fix it.

The real issue here is that the systems that car manufacturers use for their vehicles are insecure and outdated. The Flipper Zero is just exposing their bad design decisions.

Other’s here have covered the why’s of how China became a manufacturing powerhouse, but it is also interesting about how they continue to build things even though China is no longer the cheapest place to make things and hasn’t been for awhile.

One of the most amazing things about manufacturing in China is how extensive their supply chain infrastructure is. This allowes your suppliers to react quickly and do things in days or hours that would take weeks elsewhere in the world. I’ve got suppliers in China that I know will get it right the first time, and will build a brand new product in 6-8 weeks rather than 12 weeks anywhere else in the world. The way the supply chain worldwide revolves around China is both amazing and scary. There are many items today that are nearly impossible to get outside of China at any price.

The other thing is people. Due to the years of experience China is the place where the best tooling and manufacturing engineers are. There are so many people concentrated in the manufacturing centers that if you need to hire 1000 people in a couple days to assemble widgets then you could feasibly do that.

That said, there is definitely a push to diversify manufacturing outside of China and I wouldn’t be surprised if they lose some of these advantages in the coming years. This started with the original US tariffs against China, continued due to how China locked down during the pandemic, as well as the current round of US tariffs.

This is the result of kicking the can down the road continually rather than spending tax money on maintaining and building the infrastructure needed by the populace. Everything ends up in a failure state but at least you paid $50 less in tax each year!