When contracting with Chinese manufacturers, it's very hard to avoid forced labor

We certainly aren’t so vehemently opposed to it as we might like to imagine; but the fact that the prison labor commonly shows up a couple of deniable subcontractors down the stack doesn’t suggest whole-hearted support.

One can debate whether it suggests a frankly hypocritical willingness to be mollified by implausible but convenient lies or a more legitimate issue of imperfect information and finite processing capacity in a high complexity modern procurement environment; but the more opaque arm’s-length stuff going on the less plausible it is that everyone involved is OK with what is happening, or satisfied that other parties will be OK with it if they find out.

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