Finally a decent point of view
"Even if the AliExpress chips were genuine, you can't really compare it like this. Don't forget the US costs of labor, electricity, shipping by UPS, customer service, warranty, etc. that you pay in the Digikey price. That stuff isn't for free and shows up in the price of the product."
It's obvious that Digikey labor, cost is an order of magnitude higher than any China company, Also in USA a company need to expand a huge money on attorneys due to how people love to sue others there, and this is why China components are cheaper.
The fools like to point as is fake, but this isn't what really what happens, is very easy to find real and original component cheaper in China. Of course, the ones extra cheap( I mean less than average in a China) have a probability of having sort kind of problems, China component volume is 2 orders of magnitude higher than any other country, and is quite easy to find high-quality components on sale for less than high volume factories price for an immense sea of reasons other than being fake.