Ignoramus5827 wrote:

Pretty much everyone over there is shocked at this. I was, too. It
reminded of of the Soviet Union, where that sort of waste abounded and
"not giving a ****" was the new religion. The only difference was that
in the Soviet Union, all that stuff would certainly be stolen there,
and here I am sure that everyone honestly played their part and
everything that was supposed to be destroyed, would be destroyed.

Sadly this has been going on forever in the US.

When I was a kid, the telephone company installed
a new dial switching center and junked the manual
system. Every relay, tube, patch panel and power
supply was smashed before it was auctioned off to
the scrapmonger.

I remember reading an editorial about 30 years ago
urging US manufacturers to smash and scrap obsolete
machine tools so they wouldn't end up in China making
stuff that competed with us. Guess that didn't work
so well.