Your fixation on fork failures is interesting. Do you drive a car? Have you ever experienced a front wheel bearing or steering linkage failure? These can and do lead to complete loss of control and almost always cause a crash but you still drive 60+ MPH for thousands and thousands of miles and neve give it a thought, event though these failures can happen. It's just that they are truly rare events as are fork failures from reputable makers.

As to "Gold Standard" components, I think the big name manufacturers are far more likely to do adequate testing and insist on (and inspect) proper QC procedures from their in-house plants or outside suppliers. They have a reputation to maintain and much more financial liability than a garage operation in Asia.

Cannondale, Trek, Specialized, Surly (a division of QBP), Easton, Fuji, Bontrager (aka Trek), etc are all reliable and careful companies. That said, anyone can and will make a defective part on occasion. It's just far less likely from one of the well-known companies.