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Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says

169 points by Jerry2 8y ago

kylec 8y ago
Duplicate of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hkmurakami 8y ago
I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” after having worked at DENSO HQ (Toyota group supplier) where a Chinese natiuonal engineer stole 30,000 design documents in the early 2000s (it made national headlines when it happened). Because it’s only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all the good actors.
- blahblahblogger 8y ago
  > I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” > Because it’s only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all the good actors. Damn I came in here to say the same thing and feel sad at myself now too. So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China. For the first, they are American, their family is here, their life is here - where would they flee to? For the latter, they're here temporarily most likely. So why not take the risk and get a big reward?
  - thatfrenchguy 8y ago
    That's true for any nationality though. And Snowden was American and technically fled to Russia ?
    - jerkstate 8y ago
      That's quite a stretch in your comparison there, I don't think that stealing industrial trade secrets for profit is the same thing as whistle-blowing the fact that tinfoil hat sci-fi conspiracy theories were actually being carried out by the US government.
  - fraudsyndrome 8y ago
    >So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China. Well the issue is because of this stereotype, companies may not differentiate between the two, or may even pass up an amazing engineer from China because of their racial (well nationality) bias. I remember reading about a couple incidences of American engineers(?) being falsely accused of stealing secrets which led to them being fired and shamed.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  >good actors >People doing their job and not committing international espionage Those are just people, let's not lower our standards
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ShardPhoenix 8y ago
    "Good actors" isn't some term of high praise, it just means those who aren't "bad actors" (who do harmful things).
- abalone 8y ago
  Respectfully I submit that this reveals a racial bias that you should reflect upon. Why did your mind go to this case from 15 years ago and not Anthony Levandowski? He's an engineer that stole thousands of design documents just last year. From an autonomous vehicle startup in Silicon Valley. Yet his case apparently did not "cause prejudice and disdain" for all the good-acting white American engineers.
sam0x17 8y ago
Sort of dumb that he told Apple about his intentions to switch jobs. He would have easily gotten away if he hadn't. Guilty conscience?
- mjcl 8y ago
  I’m sort of surprised they don’t have automated flagging for activity like downloading a years worth of documents in an evening.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Benign instances of that happen all the time. Picking out actionable anomalies from event data like this is one of the big problems in information security.
  - rockinghigh 8y ago
    They do, according to the article: “Apple grew more suspicious after seeing his increased network activity and visits to the office before he resigned, according to the complaint.”
- batteryhorse 8y ago
  Yes, poor judgement. I also think it's sort of dumb to steal self driving "tech" from Apple. Might as well steal Uber's self driving "tech" as well.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sjroot 8y ago
Disclaimer: I am speaking from personal experiences and know that, despite these experiences, there are tons of Chinese engineers who work their ass off and maintain great professional integrity. That said...my experience with Chinese graduate students has been incredibly disappointing. While they made up the majority of our graduate computer science program, most had no respect for academic conduct guidelines. I experienced this both as a student and a teacher, even having to meet with two Chinese students during my office hours to explain that they couldn’t turn in assignments they copied from others. They had explicitly asked me if this was okay, so I was happy to inform them. I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I obviously cannot speak from experience, but it seems the political atmosphere in China probably contributes to this a lot. I would love to learn more about how Chinese engineers (in the USA and abroad) feel about this. Last note: has anyone looked at the website or Twitter account of the company this person is moving to? Their website is completely devoid of any actual information, and their Twitter account is a mix of horrible car mock-ups and announcements about their company raising millions in venture capital. ???
- Shank 8y ago
  > I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I would much more strongly link it to the fact that academic success and workplace success leads to high economic again and societal standing. This is fostered at an early age and progresses all throughout life. The gaokao [0] is a striking example of just how much pressure goes into academics in particular: > Suicides are a regular feature of every exam season; a 2014 study claimed that exam stress was a contributing factor in 93% of cases in which school students took their own lives. Last year, a middle school in Hebei province fenced off its upper-floor dormitory balconies with grates, after two students jumped to their deaths in the months leading up to the gaokao. Given that many classes don't have an impact on the end career (or at least, many feel this way), it's unsurprising that students would rather cheat on the "less important" work that they just need to pass, versus what they actually find valuable. I don't think it's correlated to IP. Just societal expectations and norms. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/gaokao-china-toughest-school-exam-in-world https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/gaokao-china-t...
product50 8y ago
Can China not innovate at all? Why are they so keen on stealing IP? Their other homegrown products such as WeChat and Xiaomi seem pretty competitive and very catered to the local market. This is just giving such a bad name to the country and supporting Trump's broad claims that China thrives on IP theft.
- adventured 8y ago
  They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to be the dominant power. It's dramatically faster and cheaper to steal than to invest decades and countless billions of dollars doing it the hard way. The only way China can fully stand toe to toe with the US in the next two decades or so, is to aggressively plunder beneficial IP wherever they can. There has been no serious consequence for them doing so the past 30 years of their rise. It's not below their dignity, because the mission overrules all. They'll continue doing it until the cost is too high; their calculation is probably that by that point they will already be fully self-sustaining as a superpower. At that point they'll show you the door if you have a problem with it (or worse). China very carefully plays by the hide your power and bide your time strategy. Xi recently admonished state media about bragging too heavily; that's all about playing down their strength. China's ideal is to play it down until they're strong enough so as to be beyond a reasonable challenge by other powers (at least in their sphere of influence, Asia broadly).
  - taurath 8y ago
    > They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to be the dominant power. I'd argue they're probably right, barring some massive financial crisis. There are more middle class people in china than there are in total in the US - they're buying cars, taking vacations, and generally being a huge driver of consumer goods throughout the world. I don't see the US keeping up except at being 1. already rich, and 2. generally home to new innovations. We'll be the R&D lab of the world, but we won't be the primary economic driver.
  - 8y ago
karaokeforfood 8y ago
It’s good that US has finally decided to punish China for these IP thefts Trump administration announces list of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/07/10/trump-china-trade-tariffs-708707 https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/07/10/trump-china-tr...
Theodores 8y ago
I do not wish to question the veracity of this story, however it plays into a narrative where the West is advanced and China is merely stealing I.P. from hard working folks in the West. I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to discover that our friends in China have been innovating. We have had this already with internet infrastructure. Whilst half of the USA and rural UK struggle along with internet served over fifty year old copper cables, in Eastern Europe, after the fall of the wall, countries such as Estonia were able to leapfrog typical Western infrastructure and lay fibre to the door for everyone. They might not have done so with Estonian made Cisco routers, however having this leapfrogged infrastructure in place fostered an environment of innovation - Skype being from Estonia. In automotive there is a real risk for Western auto companies that they will not be able to compete with the electric cars that will be coming out of China. Chinese electric cars could be cosy and a really nice space to be in during one's commute, like an extension of one's living room and a good place to get work done. Meanwhile Western alternatives might still be trying to be yesteryear's status symbols, e.g. 'sporty' cars where the fake exhaust note, theoretical time around the Nurburgring and whatever else excites geriatric Top Gear presenters 'matters'. A new generation of Western consumer might not want these 'dad cars' and just might prefer whatever comes out of China. There may be cheap plastics in these cars, they may not even have self-driving, but the sum of the parts, price and reliability might trump Western alternatives. We have had this before with VW and Japanese compact cars gouging out the U.S. Big Three. There was no rocket science in the VW Beetle but it was a better buy than what Detroit was offering at the time. Putting up tariffs and complaining about the Japanese merely copying didn't really help.
- FLUX-YOU 8y ago
  >I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to discover that our friends in China have been innovating. As much as we'd all like if every country to got along with one another, if we find ourselves in that position I'm sure the intel agencies will get it in gear. Maybe the war on terror has to die before we really turn and see the threat that China poses.
- est 8y ago
  I think ex-employees steal previous company data all the time. It's just happens that add "china" to the title these days can grab more attention.
skaul 8y ago
Fascinating how none of the Hacker News comments on a similar story some months back (employee defecting to another company with driverless-technology trade secrets) talked about Anthony Levandowski's nationality or race.
Jerry2 8y ago
If anyone's interested, here's the PDF of the indictment: https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=73455ddecba090e8f06b8161e4d7deae https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=734... It's quite an interesting read.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
djrogers 8y ago
I worked for a company that got acquired by a larger company who happened to have a JV with a Chinese company. A few months after the acquisition, one of us stumbled across a shockingly blatant copy of our product on the Chinese firm’s website. Same box, same ports, same darned WebUI but translated to Chinese. Now this was a hardware product with a weekly data feed, so not only did someone at the JV feed all the specs and source code to the Chinese company, they sent them weekly updates. Needless to say, when confronted about this the company didn’t seem too surprised we found out, nor did the understand why everyone was so upset...
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  How do you reconcile this with idea that copyright and IP laws are too strong?
  - Buge 8y ago
    The common argument "copyright period should be shortened from 95-120 years down to 10-20 years" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities took place in less than 10 years. The common argument "there should be no anti-circumvention provisions" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would violate other provisions besides anti-circumvention provisions. The common argument "patents should be weaker" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would be illegal due to copyright laws, trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. It's not even clear if there were any patents involved in this situation. The less common argument "copyright should be abolished" could still be compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities could be illegal due to trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. I don't often hear criticism of trade secret laws or trademark laws.
  - djrogers 8y ago
    A) I never claimed to have that position (I probably do, but take exception to your intimation that I do or should) B) I find nothing morally wrong with the idea that the company that finances, and the dozens of engineers that build an industry leading hardware appliance should be the ones who profit from it’s sale. I also don’t find any moral problems with the idea that an ongoing intelligence feed requiring the work of 6-8 highly trained specialists in their field also generate money solely for those engineers and the company. Both of the above statements completely ignore the fact that this was an incident of trade secret theft. I don’t believe I ever mentioned copyright, nor do I see that as a primary violation here.
throwaway955555 8y ago
test
Fricken 8y ago
Adam Smith thought intellectual property rights were an 'unnecessary evil'.
rajekas 8y ago
I am neither East Asian nor a westerner, but the subtle and not so subtle glorification of "western" values is amusing. How did the British gain control over China? By selling them opium. How did they dominate the textile industry? By chopping off the thumbs of weavers in Bengal. As for the United States, it's path to industrialization was paved by slavery and genocide. And let's not forget the massive amount of "IP" stolen in that process. It's the nature of capitalist expansion throughout history; it's just that the west is now being exposed to actors who are successfully copying their own innovations in this bloody race.
throwaway955555 8y ago
(posting from a throwaway for obvious reasons) I currently sell to autonomous vehicle (AV) companies and spoke to a number of them. I believe that (most) chinese-money backed AV startup set up "R&D" offices in silicon valley purely for the tech/IP transfer back to China. Just to give you an example, an engineer at one of them boasted to me how his colleague, who used to work at a brand-name-AV-company-you've-heard-of, copied code & provided access to all of it internally. Although innovation in China might seem like a wild west to many Westerners, there's plenty of it happening there. It's impressive, extremely fast paced (10xSV), and deadly cut-throat. They know they're behind the US in AV and are playing catch up, with VC certainly knowing of & backing such approach. Circling back to this story - just check who's backing XiaoPeng Motors/xmotors.ai: $700M in funding from GGV, Alibaba, IDG, Foxconn & others. All their R&D is in China, with a very small office in Palo Alto. What do you think the office here is for? I don't believe this fellow Xiaolang Zhang acted without Xiaopeng's "encouragement". All of this being said, there are plenty of smart and honest engineers working on both sides of the Pacific to push the humanity forward. One could think though, maybe the more know-how transfer, the better for the entire world?
- abledon 8y ago
  I wonder how Tesla will setup their "security" in their Tesla Factory in China. Considering how a worker recently misconfigured their factory software in a malicious manner... They better have some good failsafes ready!
mozumder 8y ago
So did the Chinese company actually acquire the stolen data?
noobermin 8y ago
Seriously HN, every time these posts come up, it becomes a fest for racists to pin their one off experience with Chinese people onto the entire race of people, the definition of racism. I do want to hear an ex-Apple employee doing corporate espionage may be, but I don't want to hear about your Chinese grad students. That has nothing do do with the story other than the race of the individuals. I'm almost at the point where I want to just flag articles like this because they have in recent months become a sordid data point pulling down the signal to noise ratio that is usually commendable on this site.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  If you’re afraid of tigers because tigers tend to bite, is that speciesism? If it is, then is speciesism bad or just rational?
- MikeAmelung 8y ago
  So if the normally extremely anti-racism posters of HN have concerns about Chinese people, we should automatically assume it’s racism.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    There was an article a while back about Chinese cultural attitudes. That might have been tangentially related to "concerns about Chinese people." This article has nothing to do with Chinese culture, it has to do with corporate espionage. It just so happens that this fellow is Chinese and was moving to work at a Chinese firm. That's it. Occam's razor suggests that the person was motivated by greed, either his or the new firm's. Somehow, cultural attitudes about "cheating" being somehow explanatory here is absurd but that has become a key topic in this section. Why?
    - sparkpeasy 8y ago
      Counterfeit goods are made and sold at a scale unseen in the West in China. There are markets the size of football fields hawking these rip offs. How is it racist to suggest the Chinese have a laissez faire attitude about copying others' work?
abalone 8y ago
The anti-Chinese sentiment on this thread is T H I C K. May I remind everyone that not so long ago another guy was caught red-handed downloading autonomous vehicle IP from a major SV firm to take with him to a new company. He was a white American.[1] I don't recall hearing much about rampant cheating at top U.S. universities as a cultural norm[2] where "note-sharing and consulting teaching fellows was widespread."[3] Or how lack of respect for academic conduct guidelines at top technical universities was so deeply ingrained in the culture that "many students... turned in identical solutions" while seeming confused by the very concept of "what constitutes cheating."[4] I don't recall hearing anecdotes from ex-TAs about how while they are of course encountered tons of honest white guys, frat bros as a group have a reputation for being notorious cheaters that just don't seem to hold themselves to the same standards of intellectual honesty that we do. Must be the high-pressure, status-obsessed cultures they come from. No, the commentary here was mostly focused on just that one white guy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski [2] https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates-cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009 https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-gradua... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal [4] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over-cheating-at-mit-stirs-debate-on-limits-of-teamwork.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over-c...
- candiodari 8y ago
  The issue is what the result will be long-term of these actions. Currently we allow innovative firms to pay a lot of money for engineers who then develop unique and great products that carry a premium. This applies pretty much across the developed world. If "IP theft" is allowed to occur at any decent scale, every market will rapidly become a race to the bottom, and premium products will simply cease to exist, with a lot of casualties in both the companies involved and the engineers doing development. So what does it have to do with China, and Chinese nationals ? Well simple: the Chinese government has large-scale corporate espionage as a stated goal [1] and has gotten caught red-handed in more than a few cookie jars, for example [2] ... that is seriously at odds with the goals of, frankly, every engineer and company worldwide (even Chinese ones). Note that in most cases, this appears to be not "actual" corporate espionage, but it is actually the state organizing large-scale corporate espionage (and sabotage in some cases), then going out to Chinese companies and actually forcing them to use the stolen data. The predictable response is of course that engineers, companies, management and even unions will start systematically boycotting anything to do with the Chinese state, and that includes Chinese nationals' job prospects. This does not reflect on them, except insofar as they support this disgraceful state policy, but there is no alternative. The ideal solution would be that Chinese people start sabotaging and striking and ... until the Chinese state gets the message. That's what SHOULD happen. After that, trust can be earned again. When the Chinese state starts cooperating and imposing large scale fines on companies caught duplicating products with stolen data, then this can end. Obviously the current situation cannot exist for any real length of time without ever more serious consequences. Now I get it, the Chinese state is trying very hard to confuse acting against their spying with "racism" (funny that given their ethnic and religious policies in China that that is not considered disgraceful. This is Hitler berating countries for not treating Jews well (which, incidentally, he did do, hell, he even had a point)) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite... [2] https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-robot-chinas-answer-boston-dynamics https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-ro...
kaneroberts963 8y ago
I would love to share my testimony to all the people in the forum cos I never thought i will have my girlfriend back and she means so much to me. The girl I want to get marry to left me few weeks to our wedding for another man. When I called her she never picked my calls, She blocked me on her facebook and changed her facebook status from engage to Single, when I went to her place of work she told her boss she never want to see me. I lost my job as a result of this cos I couldn't get myself anymore, my life was upside down and everything did not go smooth with my life. I tried all I could do to have her back to all did not work out until I met a Man when I travel to East to execute some business that I have been developing some years back. I told him my problem and all I have passed through in getting her back and how I lost my job, he told me he gonna help me, I didn't believe that in the first place. But he swore he will help me out and he told me the reason why my girlfriend left me and also told me some hidden secrets’ was amazed when I heard that from him...he said he will cast a spell for me and I will see the results in the next couple of days..then I travel back, the following day and i called him when I got home and he said he’s busy casting those spells and he has bought all the materials needed for the spells, he said am gonna see positive results in the next 14 days that is Thursday. My girlfriend called me at exactly 12:35pm on Thursday and apologies for all she had done. She said, she never knew what she was doing and her sudden behavior was not intentional and she promised not to do that again. It was like am dreaming when I heard that from her and when we ended the call, I called the man and told him my girl friend called and he said I haven’t seen anything yet… he said I will also get my job back. And when its Sunday, they called me at my place of work that I should resume work on Monday and they gonna compensate me for the time limit I have spent at home without working...My life is back into shape have my girlfriend back and we are happily married now with a baby boy and I have my job back too. This man is really powerful...if we have up to 20 people like him in the world, the world would have been a better place...He has also helped many of my friends to solve many problems and they are all happy now...Am posting this to the forum for anybody that is interested in meeting the man for help. You can mail him to erika_raven_temple@ religious. com, I can’t give out his number cos he told me he don’t want to be disturbed by many people across the world...he said his email is okay and he also have a web site if you want to visit him there’ he will replied to any emails asap..Hope he helped u out too...good luck. His web site is ericaraventemple. webs. com

169 points by Jerry2 8y ago

kylec 8y ago

Duplicate of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hkmurakami 8y ago

I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” after having worked at DENSO HQ (Toyota group supplier) where a Chinese natiuonal engineer stole 30,000 design documents in the early 2000s (it made national headlines when it happened). Because it’s only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all the good actors.

blahblahblogger 8y ago
> I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” > Because it’s only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all the good actors. Damn I came in here to say the same thing and feel sad at myself now too. So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China. For the first, they are American, their family is here, their life is here - where would they flee to? For the latter, they're here temporarily most likely. So why not take the risk and get a big reward?
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  That's true for any nationality though. And Snowden was American and technically fled to Russia ?
  - jerkstate 8y ago
    That's quite a stretch in your comparison there, I don't think that stealing industrial trade secrets for profit is the same thing as whistle-blowing the fact that tinfoil hat sci-fi conspiracy theories were actually being carried out by the US government.
- fraudsyndrome 8y ago
  >So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China. Well the issue is because of this stereotype, companies may not differentiate between the two, or may even pass up an amazing engineer from China because of their racial (well nationality) bias. I remember reading about a couple incidences of American engineers(?) being falsely accused of stealing secrets which led to them being fired and shamed.
wavefunction 8y ago
>good actors >People doing their job and not committing international espionage Those are just people, let's not lower our standards
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ShardPhoenix 8y ago
  "Good actors" isn't some term of high praise, it just means those who aren't "bad actors" (who do harmful things).
abalone 8y ago
Respectfully I submit that this reveals a racial bias that you should reflect upon. Why did your mind go to this case from 15 years ago and not Anthony Levandowski? He's an engineer that stole thousands of design documents just last year. From an autonomous vehicle startup in Silicon Valley. Yet his case apparently did not "cause prejudice and disdain" for all the good-acting white American engineers.

sam0x17 8y ago

Sort of dumb that he told Apple about his intentions to switch jobs. He would have easily gotten away if he hadn't. Guilty conscience?

mjcl 8y ago
I’m sort of surprised they don’t have automated flagging for activity like downloading a years worth of documents in an evening.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Benign instances of that happen all the time. Picking out actionable anomalies from event data like this is one of the big problems in information security.
- rockinghigh 8y ago
  They do, according to the article: “Apple grew more suspicious after seeing his increased network activity and visits to the office before he resigned, according to the complaint.”
batteryhorse 8y ago
Yes, poor judgement. I also think it's sort of dumb to steal self driving "tech" from Apple. Might as well steal Uber's self driving "tech" as well.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sjroot 8y ago

Disclaimer: I am speaking from personal experiences and know that, despite these experiences, there are tons of Chinese engineers who work their ass off and maintain great professional integrity. That said...my experience with Chinese graduate students has been incredibly disappointing. While they made up the majority of our graduate computer science program, most had no respect for academic conduct guidelines. I experienced this both as a student and a teacher, even having to meet with two Chinese students during my office hours to explain that they couldn’t turn in assignments they copied from others. They had explicitly asked me if this was okay, so I was happy to inform them. I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I obviously cannot speak from experience, but it seems the political atmosphere in China probably contributes to this a lot. I would love to learn more about how Chinese engineers (in the USA and abroad) feel about this. Last note: has anyone looked at the website or Twitter account of the company this person is moving to? Their website is completely devoid of any actual information, and their Twitter account is a mix of horrible car mock-ups and announcements about their company raising millions in venture capital. ???

Shank 8y ago
> I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I would much more strongly link it to the fact that academic success and workplace success leads to high economic again and societal standing. This is fostered at an early age and progresses all throughout life. The gaokao [0] is a striking example of just how much pressure goes into academics in particular: > Suicides are a regular feature of every exam season; a 2014 study claimed that exam stress was a contributing factor in 93% of cases in which school students took their own lives. Last year, a middle school in Hebei province fenced off its upper-floor dormitory balconies with grates, after two students jumped to their deaths in the months leading up to the gaokao. Given that many classes don't have an impact on the end career (or at least, many feel this way), it's unsurprising that students would rather cheat on the "less important" work that they just need to pass, versus what they actually find valuable. I don't think it's correlated to IP. Just societal expectations and norms. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/gaokao-china-toughest-school-exam-in-world https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/12/gaokao-china-t...

product50 8y ago

Can China not innovate at all? Why are they so keen on stealing IP? Their other homegrown products such as WeChat and Xiaomi seem pretty competitive and very catered to the local market. This is just giving such a bad name to the country and supporting Trump's broad claims that China thrives on IP theft.

adventured 8y ago
They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to be the dominant power. It's dramatically faster and cheaper to steal than to invest decades and countless billions of dollars doing it the hard way. The only way China can fully stand toe to toe with the US in the next two decades or so, is to aggressively plunder beneficial IP wherever they can. There has been no serious consequence for them doing so the past 30 years of their rise. It's not below their dignity, because the mission overrules all. They'll continue doing it until the cost is too high; their calculation is probably that by that point they will already be fully self-sustaining as a superpower. At that point they'll show you the door if you have a problem with it (or worse). China very carefully plays by the hide your power and bide your time strategy. Xi recently admonished state media about bragging too heavily; that's all about playing down their strength. China's ideal is to play it down until they're strong enough so as to be beyond a reasonable challenge by other powers (at least in their sphere of influence, Asia broadly).
- taurath 8y ago
  > They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to be the dominant power. I'd argue they're probably right, barring some massive financial crisis. There are more middle class people in china than there are in total in the US - they're buying cars, taking vacations, and generally being a huge driver of consumer goods throughout the world. I don't see the US keeping up except at being 1. already rich, and 2. generally home to new innovations. We'll be the R&D lab of the world, but we won't be the primary economic driver.
- 8y ago

karaokeforfood 8y ago

It’s good that US has finally decided to punish China for these IP thefts Trump administration announces list of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/07/10/trump-china-trade-tariffs-708707 https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2018/07/10/trump-china-tr...

Theodores 8y ago

I do not wish to question the veracity of this story, however it plays into a narrative where the West is advanced and China is merely stealing I.P. from hard working folks in the West. I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to discover that our friends in China have been innovating. We have had this already with internet infrastructure. Whilst half of the USA and rural UK struggle along with internet served over fifty year old copper cables, in Eastern Europe, after the fall of the wall, countries such as Estonia were able to leapfrog typical Western infrastructure and lay fibre to the door for everyone. They might not have done so with Estonian made Cisco routers, however having this leapfrogged infrastructure in place fostered an environment of innovation - Skype being from Estonia. In automotive there is a real risk for Western auto companies that they will not be able to compete with the electric cars that will be coming out of China. Chinese electric cars could be cosy and a really nice space to be in during one's commute, like an extension of one's living room and a good place to get work done. Meanwhile Western alternatives might still be trying to be yesteryear's status symbols, e.g. 'sporty' cars where the fake exhaust note, theoretical time around the Nurburgring and whatever else excites geriatric Top Gear presenters 'matters'. A new generation of Western consumer might not want these 'dad cars' and just might prefer whatever comes out of China. There may be cheap plastics in these cars, they may not even have self-driving, but the sum of the parts, price and reliability might trump Western alternatives. We have had this before with VW and Japanese compact cars gouging out the U.S. Big Three. There was no rocket science in the VW Beetle but it was a better buy than what Detroit was offering at the time. Putting up tariffs and complaining about the Japanese merely copying didn't really help.

FLUX-YOU 8y ago
>I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to discover that our friends in China have been innovating. As much as we'd all like if every country to got along with one another, if we find ourselves in that position I'm sure the intel agencies will get it in gear. Maybe the war on terror has to die before we really turn and see the threat that China poses.
est 8y ago
I think ex-employees steal previous company data all the time. It's just happens that add "china" to the title these days can grab more attention.

skaul 8y ago

Fascinating how none of the Hacker News comments on a similar story some months back (employee defecting to another company with driverless-technology trade secrets) talked about Anthony Levandowski's nationality or race.

Jerry2 8y ago

If anyone's interested, here's the PDF of the indictment: https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=73455ddecba090e8f06b8161e4d7deae https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=734... It's quite an interesting read.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

djrogers 8y ago

I worked for a company that got acquired by a larger company who happened to have a JV with a Chinese company. A few months after the acquisition, one of us stumbled across a shockingly blatant copy of our product on the Chinese firm’s website. Same box, same ports, same darned WebUI but translated to Chinese. Now this was a hardware product with a weekly data feed, so not only did someone at the JV feed all the specs and source code to the Chinese company, they sent them weekly updates. Needless to say, when confronted about this the company didn’t seem too surprised we found out, nor did the understand why everyone was so upset...

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
How do you reconcile this with idea that copyright and IP laws are too strong?
- Buge 8y ago
  The common argument "copyright period should be shortened from 95-120 years down to 10-20 years" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities took place in less than 10 years. The common argument "there should be no anti-circumvention provisions" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would violate other provisions besides anti-circumvention provisions. The common argument "patents should be weaker" is compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities would be illegal due to copyright laws, trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. It's not even clear if there were any patents involved in this situation. The less common argument "copyright should be abolished" could still be compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described activities could be illegal due to trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws. I don't often hear criticism of trade secret laws or trademark laws.
- djrogers 8y ago
  A) I never claimed to have that position (I probably do, but take exception to your intimation that I do or should) B) I find nothing morally wrong with the idea that the company that finances, and the dozens of engineers that build an industry leading hardware appliance should be the ones who profit from it’s sale. I also don’t find any moral problems with the idea that an ongoing intelligence feed requiring the work of 6-8 highly trained specialists in their field also generate money solely for those engineers and the company. Both of the above statements completely ignore the fact that this was an incident of trade secret theft. I don’t believe I ever mentioned copyright, nor do I see that as a primary violation here.

throwaway955555 8y ago

test

Fricken 8y ago

Adam Smith thought intellectual property rights were an 'unnecessary evil'.

rajekas 8y ago

I am neither East Asian nor a westerner, but the subtle and not so subtle glorification of "western" values is amusing. How did the British gain control over China? By selling them opium. How did they dominate the textile industry? By chopping off the thumbs of weavers in Bengal. As for the United States, it's path to industrialization was paved by slavery and genocide. And let's not forget the massive amount of "IP" stolen in that process. It's the nature of capitalist expansion throughout history; it's just that the west is now being exposed to actors who are successfully copying their own innovations in this bloody race.

throwaway955555 8y ago

(posting from a throwaway for obvious reasons) I currently sell to autonomous vehicle (AV) companies and spoke to a number of them. I believe that (most) chinese-money backed AV startup set up "R&D" offices in silicon valley purely for the tech/IP transfer back to China. Just to give you an example, an engineer at one of them boasted to me how his colleague, who used to work at a brand-name-AV-company-you've-heard-of, copied code & provided access to all of it internally. Although innovation in China might seem like a wild west to many Westerners, there's plenty of it happening there. It's impressive, extremely fast paced (10xSV), and deadly cut-throat. They know they're behind the US in AV and are playing catch up, with VC certainly knowing of & backing such approach. Circling back to this story - just check who's backing XiaoPeng Motors/xmotors.ai: $700M in funding from GGV, Alibaba, IDG, Foxconn & others. All their R&D is in China, with a very small office in Palo Alto. What do you think the office here is for? I don't believe this fellow Xiaolang Zhang acted without Xiaopeng's "encouragement". All of this being said, there are plenty of smart and honest engineers working on both sides of the Pacific to push the humanity forward. One could think though, maybe the more know-how transfer, the better for the entire world?

abledon 8y ago
I wonder how Tesla will setup their "security" in their Tesla Factory in China. Considering how a worker recently misconfigured their factory software in a malicious manner... They better have some good failsafes ready!

mozumder 8y ago

So did the Chinese company actually acquire the stolen data?

noobermin 8y ago

Seriously HN, every time these posts come up, it becomes a fest for racists to pin their one off experience with Chinese people onto the entire race of people, the definition of racism. I do want to hear an ex-Apple employee doing corporate espionage may be, but I don't want to hear about your Chinese grad students. That has nothing do do with the story other than the race of the individuals. I'm almost at the point where I want to just flag articles like this because they have in recent months become a sordid data point pulling down the signal to noise ratio that is usually commendable on this site.

ggg9990 8y ago
If you’re afraid of tigers because tigers tend to bite, is that speciesism? If it is, then is speciesism bad or just rational?
MikeAmelung 8y ago
So if the normally extremely anti-racism posters of HN have concerns about Chinese people, we should automatically assume it’s racism.
- noobermin 8y ago
  There was an article a while back about Chinese cultural attitudes. That might have been tangentially related to "concerns about Chinese people." This article has nothing to do with Chinese culture, it has to do with corporate espionage. It just so happens that this fellow is Chinese and was moving to work at a Chinese firm. That's it. Occam's razor suggests that the person was motivated by greed, either his or the new firm's. Somehow, cultural attitudes about "cheating" being somehow explanatory here is absurd but that has become a key topic in this section. Why?
  - sparkpeasy 8y ago
    Counterfeit goods are made and sold at a scale unseen in the West in China. There are markets the size of football fields hawking these rip offs. How is it racist to suggest the Chinese have a laissez faire attitude about copying others' work?

abalone 8y ago

The anti-Chinese sentiment on this thread is T H I C K. May I remind everyone that not so long ago another guy was caught red-handed downloading autonomous vehicle IP from a major SV firm to take with him to a new company. He was a white American.[1] I don't recall hearing much about rampant cheating at top U.S. universities as a cultural norm[2] where "note-sharing and consulting teaching fellows was widespread."[3] Or how lack of respect for academic conduct guidelines at top technical universities was so deeply ingrained in the culture that "many students... turned in identical solutions" while seeming confused by the very concept of "what constitutes cheating."[4] I don't recall hearing anecdotes from ex-TAs about how while they are of course encountered tons of honest white guys, frat bros as a group have a reputation for being notorious cheaters that just don't seem to hold themselves to the same standards of intellectual honesty that we do. Must be the high-pressure, status-obsessed cultures they come from. No, the commentary here was mostly focused on just that one white guy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski [2] https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates-cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009 https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-gradua... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal [4] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over-cheating-at-mit-stirs-debate-on-limits-of-teamwork.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over-c...

candiodari 8y ago
The issue is what the result will be long-term of these actions. Currently we allow innovative firms to pay a lot of money for engineers who then develop unique and great products that carry a premium. This applies pretty much across the developed world. If "IP theft" is allowed to occur at any decent scale, every market will rapidly become a race to the bottom, and premium products will simply cease to exist, with a lot of casualties in both the companies involved and the engineers doing development. So what does it have to do with China, and Chinese nationals ? Well simple: the Chinese government has large-scale corporate espionage as a stated goal [1] and has gotten caught red-handed in more than a few cookie jars, for example [2] ... that is seriously at odds with the goals of, frankly, every engineer and company worldwide (even Chinese ones). Note that in most cases, this appears to be not "actual" corporate espionage, but it is actually the state organizing large-scale corporate espionage (and sabotage in some cases), then going out to Chinese companies and actually forcing them to use the stolen data. The predictable response is of course that engineers, companies, management and even unions will start systematically boycotting anything to do with the Chinese state, and that includes Chinese nationals' job prospects. This does not reflect on them, except insofar as they support this disgraceful state policy, but there is no alternative. The ideal solution would be that Chinese people start sabotaging and striking and ... until the Chinese state gets the message. That's what SHOULD happen. After that, trust can be earned again. When the Chinese state starts cooperating and imposing large scale fines on companies caught duplicating products with stolen data, then this can end. Obviously the current situation cannot exist for any real length of time without ever more serious consequences. Now I get it, the Chinese state is trying very hard to confuse acting against their spying with "racism" (funny that given their ethnic and religious policies in China that that is not considered disgraceful. This is Hitler berating countries for not treating Jews well (which, incidentally, he did do, hell, he even had a point)) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite... [2] https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-robot-chinas-answer-boston-dynamics https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-ro...

kaneroberts963 8y ago

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