3 ms·

> I'm pretty sure the Chinese government would be capable of planting two or three sleepers in Apple's software division if they decided to. I'm not interested

• Spooky23 8y ago
  Is it? The valley is a pretty incestuous place and people with specific skills are pretty small in number. It doesn’t seem wacky that someone with nation state budget wouldn’t have a network of influence to get someone hired somewhere. People do it for their friends all of the time.
  • jsmthrowaway 8y ago
    That’s like saying “we hired the getaway driver, we can rob the bank now, right?” You’ve identified the first step of the plan. There are about nineteen more, and the theoretical network of conspirators required to accomplish this Oscar-winning screenplay would be quite large, which always spells trouble. To that end, I’m amazed it took that long for the FBI to take down the network in the article. The more people who are read in to criminal activity, the risk exponentially increases, as anybody who has been on either end of investigative leverage can tell you. I’m stunned one person in the early days of this scam, particularly when it started involving colorful people, didn’t flip as a bargaining tool for other things they were into.
    • Spooky23 8y ago
      It’s happened. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/29/fbi-breaks-up-alleged-russian-spy-ring-deep-cover https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/29/fbi-breaks-up-...
    • badpun 8y ago
      It's not uncommon to plant your own puppet as a president/prime minister of a country to make that country's policies favourable to you (CIA has done it numberous times). Planting a software developer cannot be harder.