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To at least attempt to think about this critically, and to try to ignore the amount of frankly shocking things people are saying here, can I ask, maybe from peo

To at least attempt to think about this critically, and to try to ignore the amount of frankly shocking things people are saying here, can I ask, maybe from people in the field, is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world? We live in a global world where scientists in various institutions are constantly trading papers, findings. Why are we so worried that the U.S. might be doing something so different from China, that this level espionage would even be viable? Surely, everyone is working on different things here and there, but this idea that there is such critical intellectual property the US that needs to be guarded so intensely in this like James Bond scenario, just feels a little wacky. Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" Are actual scientists concerned? Or just the state, and apparently most of the fellow commenters?

coliveira 5y ago
This is a paranoia induced reaction that is being fostered by the media and the war industry, who are interested in creating a new cold war scenario.
- howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
  Incorrect. It is a MORAL issue. Technology stolen from the US companies is advancing the national security agendas of countries with no regard for human rights and the rule of law. It is immoral to turn a blind eye to this very real threat.
  - StreamBright 5y ago
    It is kind of curious fact that the US is not a member of ICC. Could you guess why?
    - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
      There are good reasons why geopolitics cannot be held to strict interpretation of laws, not the least of which is the enforceability paradox, whereby countries more likely to break the norms are less susceptible to enforcement action. This, and attaching the name 'court' on something does not make it any less arbitrary or politically motivated
  - aceazzameen 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure US companies aren't thinking about the morality of it at all. Only $$$ lost and shareholders' emotions.
    - WillPostForFood 5y ago
      We know US companies aren't thinking about the morality, nor are US universities, which is why the government is stepping in. If this was happening during the cold war, CEOs and University Presidents would be being indicted for treason.
  - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
    Well, many military technologies developed by the US companies are being used to manufacture weaponries used to kill foreign civilians... what's the moral of that story? Also, by your logic what if totalitarian regimes are to steal medical technologies from US companies to develop medicines for their citizens? Is that moral or immoral?
    - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
      false equivalence. If you actually cared you would acknowledge the vast difference between China's human rights record and that of the United States.
      - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
        Interesting. So you think morality is quantifiable? Like it's fine to violate X amount of human rights but not X + 1. I'd like to hear your criteria.
        howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
        If you think genocide, ethnic cleansing, natural resource exploitation on a global scale, modern day slavery & deadly global pathogen release are equivalent to US misconduct I wouldn't know where to begin in engaging with you.
        RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
        I can spin this too if you allow me: "genocide" of Muslims via constant war-waging; "ethnic cleansing" of native Americans; natural resource exploitation on a global scale; "modern day slavery" (i.e. extreme capitalism) both domestically by trapping workers into lifetime debts, and overseas by outsourcing to sweat shops; "deadly global pathogen release" by politicising pandemic responses while failing at it. Rivalry states smear each others all the time. Also no contender for hegemony is morally superior than another.
  - tharne 5y ago
    > It is a MORAL issue. Technology stolen from the US companies is advancing the national security agendas of countries with no regard for human rights and the rule of law. It is immoral to turn a blind eye to this very real threat. This 100%.
  - Banana699 5y ago
    With all due respect, this is completely irrelevant. This same technology and better is being sold out to countries like Saudi Arabia[1] and Israel[2], which are not exactly shining beacons of human rights. What seems to be the argument here ? "If China wants to use US tech to oppress and kill people with no regard for human rights and the rule of law... they have to PAY for it first, like all respectable totalitarians do"? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel
    - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
      Your point being: since the US provides aid to countries whose human rights records are controversial China should be free to steal and misuse US intellectual property. Great argument. Have fun in a world where China's views on human rights prevail. I'm sure you & your family and their families will be very happy.
      - Banana699 5y ago
        >Your point being: since the US provides aid to countries whose human rights records are controversial China should be free to steal and misuse US intellectual property. That's not my point at all. My point is that it's hypocritical to worry about China using stolen US tech to augment and cement it's oppressive regime when there are countries whose entire dark existence is carved out of US tech and support. Quantitatively speaking, the marginal utility that China gets from each stolen piece of US tech is probably lower than what they get from each million dollar the US government borrows from them, or each 100000 teenager who downloads tiktok, or from each 100 customer who buy their phones. What I'm trying to say here is that China is not dependent on stolen R&D to opress and brutalize people, they can opress and brutalize people perfectly fine without it, it's just an added bonus on what they already can do. On the other hand US support for the 2 countries that I mentioned is literally keeping them together against astounding resistence, I would gladly bet my life they would fall apart in <= 10 years if the US was taken out of all geopolitical equations in front of everybody's eyes. If you knew the sheer amount of tyranny and evil the US is single-handedly pumping into the Middle East through those 2 countries alone, you wouldn't be able to sleep at night or day. So to sum up : I don't think your offense at China's use of US tech is proportional to the amount of damage that tech actually ends up doing. There are other countries where US tech and arms are at least 2 orders of magnitude more destructive and suffering-inducing. >human rights records are controversial What a creative way to understate the fact that one of the countries mentioned cut a journalist in half with a chainsaw, while the other bombs civilians on a yearly basis and kills literal babies. "Controversial" is how you describe an things where there are credible differences of opinion on; not raw, pure evil.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    If your problem is with human rights and the rule of law, you should stop US violations first, because the US the most powerful country. The American military continues its aggression on human rights around the world.
mberning 5y ago
I worked in cyber security at a major industrial company for 5 years. Yes “insider threat” is a very real concern and people get busted exfiltrating company data all the time.
andreilys 5y ago
is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world Yes. It completely bankrupted and destroyed the Canadian company Nortel [1]. Sure there were other problems that led to the downfall of Nortel, but this was a major contributing factor and has had a big impact on the Canadian tech ecosystem. https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-military-attack-on-nortel/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  So in the years before this hack, Nortel had already laid off more than 2/3rds of it's workforce, received a massive government bailout, and had top execs like their CEO fired for an "accounting mistake" that cost billions. "Other problems" is an understatement.
- chalst 5y ago
  That story revolves around Brian Shields's account, which, while I don't doubt the details, I think lacks the business perspective and doesn't really explain Nortel's demise. Nortel was maximising growth during the the dot-com boom, spending heavily on acquisitions and not paying attention to its profitability. It couldn't have been worse placed to handle the dot-com bust when its main market shrunk hugely. Huawei and ZTE were not really major competitors internationally at the time.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  It's dismaying to see history rewritten so brazenly. Nortel collapsed because it made bad investments during the tech bubble, and then was hit by the nosedive in investment in network expansion when the bubble burst. On top of that, Nortel was terribly led, resorted to fudging its finances, and got caught. That's what caused Nortel to collapse, not supposed Chinese spying. Huawei, the alleged beneficiary of the spying (which is just an unproven allegation at this point), was not even a major rival to Nortel when Nortel began to collapse. Huawei had barely even begun to expand out of China at that point. Nortel had much larger international competitors. Yet somehow, almost two decades after Nortel began to implode, a rewritten history of Nortel's collapse, somehow premised on Chinese spying, has begun to become popular. I think this has much more to do with the recent increase in tensions between China and Canada than with any new information about how Nortel went under.
jason-phillips 5y ago
> Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" There are a number of issues at play here and I can speak to several of them, having either helped the federal government directly or having knowledge of industrial espionage in my industry at the time (semiconductors). Some technology is export-controlled in the United States, full stop. Semiconductor research may absolutely be export-controlled and thus may not leave the United States or be shown to foreign nationals. Any researcher's talk, paper, research, materials, etc. must undergo an export controls review first before it leaves the United States or is shown to a foreign national. This is SOP at every research lab in the United States. If you do not disclose information when asked by the federal government as part of an investigation impacting national security, then woe be unto you. I don't know what else to say there. It appears that this may be what caused this gentleman the issues outlined by the NY Times. Industrial espionage is absolutely a thing in the semiconductor industry. I was once told how Hynix pilfered fab designs from Samsung. The loss was estimated to be $1 billion. I am personally aware of other lesser IP loss through the hands of careless engineers. I hope this helps answer your question. It is absolutely a thing in 2022.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  > The estimated loss was estimated to be $1 billion. I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. Not saying Hynix did nothing wrong, only that that number assumes a lot of factors that are in no way guaranteed (stability of the market, no third player independently developing innovations that would create an attractive alternative for customers, the ability of the stealing company to implement the design they've acquired, etc.).
  - jason-phillips 5y ago
    > I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. That's a perfectly valid but also somewhat trivial point. Some number has to be assigned as human nature requires it. Maybe the best representation of the situation is to present it as a question. When fabs cost $xx billion and take almost a decade to reach fruition from R&D to the point where they start shipping a viable product, if you were able to shave two to four years off that process, what does that number look like to you?
lettergram 5y ago
What’s the primary export of the United States? > Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" Are actual scientists concerned? Or just the state, and apparently most of the fellow commenters? It’s intellectual property. The majority of the worlds cutting edge research are designed, developed, tested, and eventually marketed in the United States. That’s the advantage of free markets and gives the US first mover advantage. Yes, it’s exceedingly important that is maintained (to the United States). If that stops occurring... manufacturing is gone, mining and energy sectors are regulated to oblivion. There’s not much left. Food and services? Healthcare? None of those produce enough wealth to maintain the nation, only information and advanced / advancing technology can support US growth.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  >That’s the advantage of free markets The large amounts of research done for and funded by the US government helps a lot too as do the various methods to give R&D tax advantages.
- juanani 5y ago
- dannyw 5y ago
  The majority, really? TSMC's fabs are in Taiwan, using ASML machines from the Netherlands. Much of their chips run ARM, from Cambridge. As I look at my tabs, I see Google Maps (invented by an Australian in Sydney), and Spotify (from Sweden). The world is far, far, bigger than the USA; and as an Australian, I'd say it's extremely pretentious or naive to think the US has a 'majority' of cutting edge tech.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Google Maps and Spotify are not cutting edge tech.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
Symbiote 5y ago
A friend of mine is a scientist in a relevant field, and has caught Chinese PhD students photographing documents in one case, and taking a video recording of a sensitive part of a laboratory in another case. In both cases, what they were recording was not related to their own work. Not everything is published openly. Some research is kept quiet until the economic value has been realized, and sometimes the "what" is published but not so much the "how".
- namelessoracle 5y ago
  This happens so often and so frequently that it makes me wonder if there is some official part of the Chinese government set up to consume and distribute this information. I mean if an American went to a prestigious university or worked a job where they got access to sensitive information for a random company like lets say Ferrari. They wouldnt immediately know who to sell this info too or have a buyer. But it seems like we hear constant stories in such a way that makes me think they were already briefed on who to tell and get this info too. Idk, maybe im being naive, maybe the CIA sends emails or reaches out to American nationals who work on sensitive projects.
- Siira 5y ago
  Is that illegal? If not, their actions are not exactly nefarious. Sharing unpublished knowledge is a boon to humanity. (Not that the Chinese are publishing their “findings” openly.)
prionassembly 5y ago
Scientists do not necessarily see the global picture here -- if anything, they'll be inclined to downplay geopolitical and nat-security issues (or at look the other way) if it produces more and better science. This is excluding any consideration of funding -- just what a scientist is supposed to care about. Some people need to take science more seriously, but there's a kind of crowd that needs to stop worshipping scientists.
- ngc248 5y ago
  >>> if it produces more and better science Its not even about science anymore, its all about money and prestige [0]. I am not saying there are no principled scientists, but money and prestige makes the world go around. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/science/charles-lieber.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/science/charles-lieber.ht...
synergy20 5y ago
Two sides of the sword: The reason China got nuclear weapon so fast is that USA pushed the top nuclear scientist back to China. This could happen to semiconductor or other fields. I don't see any solution though, if you don't control, you will lose valuables faster, if you do, you will overdo it sometimes. Nothing is perfect, if things went too far in the process, let's trust the legal system to sort it out.
jollybean 5y ago
The opposite of 'wacky' - key R&D and especially know-how is critical to the development of specific industries and in some cases, it should be guarded. It can take decades of effort, R&D, product development to develop the key understanding towards making for example, jet turbines, high speed trains, chip fabs etc.. Economic espionage is real and part of China's industrial strategy. It should be noted that 'everyone else' will also steal R&D to the extent that it's related to weapons, but generally not industrial information. That said - probably most research isn't that important, and this kind of thing can easily turn into 'Witch Hunt'. Paradoxically, the CPP will also use an overbearing posture by the US on this issue as part of propaganda efforts. The CCP right now is fighting a 'narrative war' with all the touchy issues: they are circulating information indicating that COVID started in Europe, and in response to stern words by Canada PM Trudeau, China is telling it's citizens the a recent outbreak is due to 'frozen food from China'. Controlling information means being able to tell their citizens whatever they want and having them believe it for the most part. That a few independent thinkers want to 'VPN out' and form their own opinions isn't that important if you can tell 99% of people what the truth is. CCP is playing 'full court press competition' - they are engaging and comprising students on campus [1] , seeking information from well placed ex-patriots [2], planting spies everywhere [3], grabbing people and re-patriating Chinese citizens abroad by force [4], running disinformation campaigns [5], compromising state officials [6] and more. So it's important that our 'values' of true justice, equality, transparency etc. are not compromised, and we don't want to regress to early 20th century racism, but at the same time, it's a 'war' of sorts and it's incredibly naive to operate on the basis that this is not happening and affecting everyone. Probably it will take more than just a simple plan, but a major new way of thinking about China, and a whole series of changes in that regard. Even things such as governments new 'Trustless' IT policy published here yesterday, are a step in the right direction. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china-cracks-down-on-students-who-speak-out https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china... [2] https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/survey-chinese-linked-espionage-united-states-2000 https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/surv... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-spy-sen-feinstein/2018/08/09/0560ca60-9bfd-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-... [4] https://thethaiger.com/news/world/china-forced-nearly-10000-nationals-to-return-home-since-2014-ngo-report https://thethaiger.com/news/world/china-forced-nearly-10000-... [5] https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/chinas-disinformation-campaign-in-italy/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/chinas-disinformation-campai... [6] https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Barbara-Boxer-China-foreign-agent-Uighur-Muslims-15865511.php https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Barbara-Boxer-China-...
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cm2012 5y ago
You can't be serious about opsec and not take seriously the risk of an internal bad actor with access to your systems.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  Yeah, that was my thought - they treat everybody like a spy, because that's literally their job description.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  The majority of the cases I'm familiar with had an internal bad actor. If you don't take that into account when formulating your security policy and threat model then you have not done your homework.
ren_engineer 5y ago
>Surely, everyone is working on different things here and there, but this idea that there is such critical intellectual property the US that needs to be guarded so intensely in this like James Bond scenario, just feels a little wacky lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? Protecting IP isn't some new thing, humans have done it for thousands of years >As Constantine Porphyrogennetos' warnings show, the ingredients and the processes of manufacture and deployment of Greek fire were carefully guarded military secrets. >The technological advantage it provided was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from the first and second Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  > lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? I don't know, ask Alexander Fleming maybe. To save lives? Make the life better for scores of other people, no matter their nationality or class? Why do you even do research, just for the bilions?
  - ren_engineer 5y ago
    >Alexander Fleming not a great example, Penicillin was only made possible due to government funding to refine the manufacturing process for war >As to the chemical isolation and purification, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford took up the research to mass-produce it, which they achieved with support from World War II military projects under the U.S. and British governments and you could make the case that if the Allies just handed that research over to their enemies it would prolong the war
hazelmatic 5y ago
I'd like to point out that the majority of replies to this comment are about industrial espionage, and not academic research.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Academic research tends to run some time ahead of industrial applications.
  - hazelmatic 5y ago
    But the discussion we're having right now is about academic research, which gets published openly. Professors move between institutions all the time. Has Harvard sued MIT because some professor didn't get tenure and took their research and students with them? I think that there's a difference if the professor in question were consulting for US companies, or specifically in projects within the DoD(versus receiving a grant, which again is a different situation), and shared those with Chinese entities. But as far as I can tell, nobody in this comments section is looking into that and we're just having arguments about other situations instead of what has actually happened. That obfuscates the matter at hand.
tharne 5y ago
> ... is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world? Yes
83 5y ago
Industrial espionage can be an existential matter for companies. They rarely make the headlines but there's plenty of court cases like AMSC vs Sinovel, where Sinovel (China) stole the control software AMSC had developed and pretty much ruined them as a company.
sidlls 5y ago
I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS). I've been on the defensive end of attacks by employees (all Chinese citizens, living in China) in our Chinese organization attempting to breach data and infrastructure firewalls. Once upon a time my work touched some sensitive, classified areas. I was more or less constantly harassed by rather hilarious and obvious attempts by Chinese individuals to gain access to the classified bits for a time. We don't live in a world where scientific and technological advances are all to the good for humanity. There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  > There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are. Don't you think this group of politically powerful people might include the ones you research for?
  - sidlls 5y ago
    Of course it would: but I'm struggling to understand the relevance, here. We do this stuff. They do this stuff. We each want to stop the other from doing it. There's nothing contradictory about it, as I'm not making an absolutist statements regarding ethics or morality.
- dekhn 5y ago
  "I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS)." Well, I've personally witnessed american students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require, too. That included me! Thank goodness the attitude of my leaders was "smart people should have access to more tools than their job requires". that included chinese nationals who were in my program. Certainly, my goal was the capture the hearts and minds of chinese people who were in my PhD program, so that they would move here, become US citizens, and contibute to our economy. It never even occurred to me that people could have a "dual scientific citizenship" and sort of hold positions in china and the us at the same time, and exploit that.
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mirkules 5y ago
One of my favorite college professors got nabbed for secretly collaborating with the Japanese government: https://voiceofoc.org/2014/02/former-uci-professor-pleads-guilty-to-felony-conflict-of-interest/ https://voiceofoc.org/2014/02/former-uci-professor-pleads-gu... It does happen, even at university level.
Cullinet 5y ago
The only critical approach is to begin with the beginning and the trigger event, refusal to provide the passwords requested to his devices. In the UK it's a crime to refuse law enforcement request for your passwords. If the similar is true in the USA, or there's critical details involved - which frankly only CCTV footage could possibly reveal - about this incident, then there's your cause and effect from whence forward everything looks like semantic disassembly to me on the academics part and a desperate need to show substantive accusations on the governments part.
- mrtweetyhack 5y ago
lenkite 5y ago
A history of espionage and theft of trade secrets demonstrates the necessity of concern. "Xiaoqing Zheng who holds dual-citizenship in the United States and China, used elaborate and sophisticated methods to steal countless digital files containing trade secrets from General Electric regarding their wind turbine technology" https://blog.twinstate.com/news/ge-trade-secrets-theft https://blog.twinstate.com/news/ge-trade-secrets-theft Jizhong Chen and Xiaolang Zhang indicated in theft of trade secrets https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/apple-has-deep-concerns-that-ex-employees-accused-of-theft-will-flee-to-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/apple-has-deep-concerns-that... https://www.digpu.com/business-and-finance/chinese-man-jizhong-chen-stole-apples-future-car-secrets-for-company-in-china https://www.digpu.com/business-and-finance/chinese-man-jizho... "According to today’s conviction, Xu attempted to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s exclusive composite aircraft engine fan – which no other company in the world has been able to duplicate – to benefit the Chinese state." https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/jury-convicts-chinese-official-espionage-crimes-attempting-steal-trade-secrets https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/jury-convicts-chinese-o... " A notable example is the 2014 lawsuit by T-Mobile, in which Huawei was accused of, among other conduct, sending an engineer to a T-Mobile facility to see "Tappy," the company's computer driven robot with a mechanical arm used to test smartphone screens to improve the reliability of its handsets. The engineer slipped one of the robot's fingertips into his laptop bag but was caught on camera" https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/trade-secrets/1052104/the-china-pivot-closing-the-back-door-to-trade-secret-and-ip-theft https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/trade-secrets/1052104/th... "A former associate scientist was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison in federal court today for stealing proprietary information worth more than $1 billion from his employer, a U.S. petroleum company." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-stealing-trade-secrets-worth-1-billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-st... There are dozens of such visible cases. The vast majority of trade-secret theft is uncaught.
splitstud 5y ago

coliveira 5y ago

This is a paranoia induced reaction that is being fostered by the media and the war industry, who are interested in creating a new cold war scenario.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
Incorrect. It is a MORAL issue. Technology stolen from the US companies is advancing the national security agendas of countries with no regard for human rights and the rule of law. It is immoral to turn a blind eye to this very real threat.
- StreamBright 5y ago
  It is kind of curious fact that the US is not a member of ICC. Could you guess why?
  - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
    There are good reasons why geopolitics cannot be held to strict interpretation of laws, not the least of which is the enforceability paradox, whereby countries more likely to break the norms are less susceptible to enforcement action. This, and attaching the name 'court' on something does not make it any less arbitrary or politically motivated
- aceazzameen 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure US companies aren't thinking about the morality of it at all. Only $$$ lost and shareholders' emotions.
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    We know US companies aren't thinking about the morality, nor are US universities, which is why the government is stepping in. If this was happening during the cold war, CEOs and University Presidents would be being indicted for treason.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
  Well, many military technologies developed by the US companies are being used to manufacture weaponries used to kill foreign civilians... what's the moral of that story? Also, by your logic what if totalitarian regimes are to steal medical technologies from US companies to develop medicines for their citizens? Is that moral or immoral?
  - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
    false equivalence. If you actually cared you would acknowledge the vast difference between China's human rights record and that of the United States.
    - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
      Interesting. So you think morality is quantifiable? Like it's fine to violate X amount of human rights but not X + 1. I'd like to hear your criteria.
      - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
        If you think genocide, ethnic cleansing, natural resource exploitation on a global scale, modern day slavery & deadly global pathogen release are equivalent to US misconduct I wouldn't know where to begin in engaging with you.
        RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
        I can spin this too if you allow me: "genocide" of Muslims via constant war-waging; "ethnic cleansing" of native Americans; natural resource exploitation on a global scale; "modern day slavery" (i.e. extreme capitalism) both domestically by trapping workers into lifetime debts, and overseas by outsourcing to sweat shops; "deadly global pathogen release" by politicising pandemic responses while failing at it. Rivalry states smear each others all the time. Also no contender for hegemony is morally superior than another.
- tharne 5y ago
  > It is a MORAL issue. Technology stolen from the US companies is advancing the national security agendas of countries with no regard for human rights and the rule of law. It is immoral to turn a blind eye to this very real threat. This 100%.
- Banana699 5y ago
  With all due respect, this is completely irrelevant. This same technology and better is being sold out to countries like Saudi Arabia[1] and Israel[2], which are not exactly shining beacons of human rights. What seems to be the argument here ? "If China wants to use US tech to oppress and kill people with no regard for human rights and the rule of law... they have to PAY for it first, like all respectable totalitarians do"? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Israel
  - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
    Your point being: since the US provides aid to countries whose human rights records are controversial China should be free to steal and misuse US intellectual property. Great argument. Have fun in a world where China's views on human rights prevail. I'm sure you & your family and their families will be very happy.
    - Banana699 5y ago
      >Your point being: since the US provides aid to countries whose human rights records are controversial China should be free to steal and misuse US intellectual property. That's not my point at all. My point is that it's hypocritical to worry about China using stolen US tech to augment and cement it's oppressive regime when there are countries whose entire dark existence is carved out of US tech and support. Quantitatively speaking, the marginal utility that China gets from each stolen piece of US tech is probably lower than what they get from each million dollar the US government borrows from them, or each 100000 teenager who downloads tiktok, or from each 100 customer who buy their phones. What I'm trying to say here is that China is not dependent on stolen R&D to opress and brutalize people, they can opress and brutalize people perfectly fine without it, it's just an added bonus on what they already can do. On the other hand US support for the 2 countries that I mentioned is literally keeping them together against astounding resistence, I would gladly bet my life they would fall apart in <= 10 years if the US was taken out of all geopolitical equations in front of everybody's eyes. If you knew the sheer amount of tyranny and evil the US is single-handedly pumping into the Middle East through those 2 countries alone, you wouldn't be able to sleep at night or day. So to sum up : I don't think your offense at China's use of US tech is proportional to the amount of damage that tech actually ends up doing. There are other countries where US tech and arms are at least 2 orders of magnitude more destructive and suffering-inducing. >human rights records are controversial What a creative way to understate the fact that one of the countries mentioned cut a journalist in half with a chainsaw, while the other bombs civilians on a yearly basis and kills literal babies. "Controversial" is how you describe an things where there are credible differences of opinion on; not raw, pure evil.
- coliveira 5y ago
  If your problem is with human rights and the rule of law, you should stop US violations first, because the US the most powerful country. The American military continues its aggression on human rights around the world.

mberning 5y ago

I worked in cyber security at a major industrial company for 5 years. Yes “insider threat” is a very real concern and people get busted exfiltrating company data all the time.

andreilys 5y ago

is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world Yes. It completely bankrupted and destroyed the Canadian company Nortel [1]. Sure there were other problems that led to the downfall of Nortel, but this was a major contributing factor and has had a big impact on the Canadian tech ecosystem. https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-military-attack-on-nortel/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...

boomboomsubban 5y ago
So in the years before this hack, Nortel had already laid off more than 2/3rds of it's workforce, received a massive government bailout, and had top execs like their CEO fired for an "accounting mistake" that cost billions. "Other problems" is an understatement.
chalst 5y ago
That story revolves around Brian Shields's account, which, while I don't doubt the details, I think lacks the business perspective and doesn't really explain Nortel's demise. Nortel was maximising growth during the the dot-com boom, spending heavily on acquisitions and not paying attention to its profitability. It couldn't have been worse placed to handle the dot-com bust when its main market shrunk hugely. Huawei and ZTE were not really major competitors internationally at the time.
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
It's dismaying to see history rewritten so brazenly. Nortel collapsed because it made bad investments during the tech bubble, and then was hit by the nosedive in investment in network expansion when the bubble burst. On top of that, Nortel was terribly led, resorted to fudging its finances, and got caught. That's what caused Nortel to collapse, not supposed Chinese spying. Huawei, the alleged beneficiary of the spying (which is just an unproven allegation at this point), was not even a major rival to Nortel when Nortel began to collapse. Huawei had barely even begun to expand out of China at that point. Nortel had much larger international competitors. Yet somehow, almost two decades after Nortel began to implode, a rewritten history of Nortel's collapse, somehow premised on Chinese spying, has begun to become popular. I think this has much more to do with the recent increase in tensions between China and Canada than with any new information about how Nortel went under.

jason-phillips 5y ago

> Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" There are a number of issues at play here and I can speak to several of them, having either helped the federal government directly or having knowledge of industrial espionage in my industry at the time (semiconductors). Some technology is export-controlled in the United States, full stop. Semiconductor research may absolutely be export-controlled and thus may not leave the United States or be shown to foreign nationals. Any researcher's talk, paper, research, materials, etc. must undergo an export controls review first before it leaves the United States or is shown to a foreign national. This is SOP at every research lab in the United States. If you do not disclose information when asked by the federal government as part of an investigation impacting national security, then woe be unto you. I don't know what else to say there. It appears that this may be what caused this gentleman the issues outlined by the NY Times. Industrial espionage is absolutely a thing in the semiconductor industry. I was once told how Hynix pilfered fab designs from Samsung. The loss was estimated to be $1 billion. I am personally aware of other lesser IP loss through the hands of careless engineers. I hope this helps answer your question. It is absolutely a thing in 2022.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> The estimated loss was estimated to be $1 billion. I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. Not saying Hynix did nothing wrong, only that that number assumes a lot of factors that are in no way guaranteed (stability of the market, no third player independently developing innovations that would create an attractive alternative for customers, the ability of the stealing company to implement the design they've acquired, etc.).
- jason-phillips 5y ago
  > I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. That's a perfectly valid but also somewhat trivial point. Some number has to be assigned as human nature requires it. Maybe the best representation of the situation is to present it as a question. When fabs cost $xx billion and take almost a decade to reach fruition from R&D to the point where they start shipping a viable product, if you were able to shave two to four years off that process, what does that number look like to you?

lettergram 5y ago

What’s the primary export of the United States? > Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" Are actual scientists concerned? Or just the state, and apparently most of the fellow commenters? It’s intellectual property. The majority of the worlds cutting edge research are designed, developed, tested, and eventually marketed in the United States. That’s the advantage of free markets and gives the US first mover advantage. Yes, it’s exceedingly important that is maintained (to the United States). If that stops occurring... manufacturing is gone, mining and energy sectors are regulated to oblivion. There’s not much left. Food and services? Healthcare? None of those produce enough wealth to maintain the nation, only information and advanced / advancing technology can support US growth.

JaimeThompson 5y ago
>That’s the advantage of free markets The large amounts of research done for and funded by the US government helps a lot too as do the various methods to give R&D tax advantages.
juanani 5y ago
dannyw 5y ago
The majority, really? TSMC's fabs are in Taiwan, using ASML machines from the Netherlands. Much of their chips run ARM, from Cambridge. As I look at my tabs, I see Google Maps (invented by an Australian in Sydney), and Spotify (from Sweden). The world is far, far, bigger than the USA; and as an Australian, I'd say it's extremely pretentious or naive to think the US has a 'majority' of cutting edge tech.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Google Maps and Spotify are not cutting edge tech.
- cromwellian 5y ago

Symbiote 5y ago

A friend of mine is a scientist in a relevant field, and has caught Chinese PhD students photographing documents in one case, and taking a video recording of a sensitive part of a laboratory in another case. In both cases, what they were recording was not related to their own work. Not everything is published openly. Some research is kept quiet until the economic value has been realized, and sometimes the "what" is published but not so much the "how".

namelessoracle 5y ago
This happens so often and so frequently that it makes me wonder if there is some official part of the Chinese government set up to consume and distribute this information. I mean if an American went to a prestigious university or worked a job where they got access to sensitive information for a random company like lets say Ferrari. They wouldnt immediately know who to sell this info too or have a buyer. But it seems like we hear constant stories in such a way that makes me think they were already briefed on who to tell and get this info too. Idk, maybe im being naive, maybe the CIA sends emails or reaches out to American nationals who work on sensitive projects.
Siira 5y ago
Is that illegal? If not, their actions are not exactly nefarious. Sharing unpublished knowledge is a boon to humanity. (Not that the Chinese are publishing their “findings” openly.)

prionassembly 5y ago

Scientists do not necessarily see the global picture here -- if anything, they'll be inclined to downplay geopolitical and nat-security issues (or at look the other way) if it produces more and better science. This is excluding any consideration of funding -- just what a scientist is supposed to care about. Some people need to take science more seriously, but there's a kind of crowd that needs to stop worshipping scientists.

ngc248 5y ago
>>> if it produces more and better science Its not even about science anymore, its all about money and prestige [0]. I am not saying there are no principled scientists, but money and prestige makes the world go around. [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/science/charles-lieber.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/21/science/charles-lieber.ht...

synergy20 5y ago

Two sides of the sword: The reason China got nuclear weapon so fast is that USA pushed the top nuclear scientist back to China. This could happen to semiconductor or other fields. I don't see any solution though, if you don't control, you will lose valuables faster, if you do, you will overdo it sometimes. Nothing is perfect, if things went too far in the process, let's trust the legal system to sort it out.

jollybean 5y ago

The opposite of 'wacky' - key R&D and especially know-how is critical to the development of specific industries and in some cases, it should be guarded. It can take decades of effort, R&D, product development to develop the key understanding towards making for example, jet turbines, high speed trains, chip fabs etc.. Economic espionage is real and part of China's industrial strategy. It should be noted that 'everyone else' will also steal R&D to the extent that it's related to weapons, but generally not industrial information. That said - probably most research isn't that important, and this kind of thing can easily turn into 'Witch Hunt'. Paradoxically, the CPP will also use an overbearing posture by the US on this issue as part of propaganda efforts. The CCP right now is fighting a 'narrative war' with all the touchy issues: they are circulating information indicating that COVID started in Europe, and in response to stern words by Canada PM Trudeau, China is telling it's citizens the a recent outbreak is due to 'frozen food from China'. Controlling information means being able to tell their citizens whatever they want and having them believe it for the most part. That a few independent thinkers want to 'VPN out' and form their own opinions isn't that important if you can tell 99% of people what the truth is. CCP is playing 'full court press competition' - they are engaging and comprising students on campus [1] , seeking information from well placed ex-patriots [2], planting spies everywhere [3], grabbing people and re-patriating Chinese citizens abroad by force [4], running disinformation campaigns [5], compromising state officials [6] and more. So it's important that our 'values' of true justice, equality, transparency etc. are not compromised, and we don't want to regress to early 20th century racism, but at the same time, it's a 'war' of sorts and it's incredibly naive to operate on the basis that this is not happening and affecting everyone. Probably it will take more than just a simple plan, but a major new way of thinking about China, and a whole series of changes in that regard. Even things such as governments new 'Trustless' IT policy published here yesterday, are a step in the right direction. [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china-cracks-down-on-students-who-speak-out https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china... [2] https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/survey-chinese-linked-espionage-united-states-2000 https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/surv... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-spy-sen-feinstein/2018/08/09/0560ca60-9bfd-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-... [4] https://thethaiger.com/news/world/china-forced-nearly-10000-nationals-to-return-home-since-2014-ngo-report https://thethaiger.com/news/world/china-forced-nearly-10000-... [5] https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/chinas-disinformation-campaign-in-italy/ https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/chinas-disinformation-campai... [6] https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Barbara-Boxer-China-foreign-agent-Uighur-Muslims-15865511.php https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Barbara-Boxer-China-...

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cm2012 5y ago

You can't be serious about opsec and not take seriously the risk of an internal bad actor with access to your systems.

commandlinefan 5y ago
Yeah, that was my thought - they treat everybody like a spy, because that's literally their job description.
jacquesm 5y ago
The majority of the cases I'm familiar with had an internal bad actor. If you don't take that into account when formulating your security policy and threat model then you have not done your homework.

ren_engineer 5y ago

>Surely, everyone is working on different things here and there, but this idea that there is such critical intellectual property the US that needs to be guarded so intensely in this like James Bond scenario, just feels a little wacky lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? Protecting IP isn't some new thing, humans have done it for thousands of years >As Constantine Porphyrogennetos' warnings show, the ingredients and the processes of manufacture and deployment of Greek fire were carefully guarded military secrets. >The technological advantage it provided was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from the first and second Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire

pietrovismara 5y ago
> lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? I don't know, ask Alexander Fleming maybe. To save lives? Make the life better for scores of other people, no matter their nationality or class? Why do you even do research, just for the bilions?
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  >Alexander Fleming not a great example, Penicillin was only made possible due to government funding to refine the manufacturing process for war >As to the chemical isolation and purification, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford took up the research to mass-produce it, which they achieved with support from World War II military projects under the U.S. and British governments and you could make the case that if the Allies just handed that research over to their enemies it would prolong the war

hazelmatic 5y ago

I'd like to point out that the majority of replies to this comment are about industrial espionage, and not academic research.

jacquesm 5y ago
Academic research tends to run some time ahead of industrial applications.
- hazelmatic 5y ago
  But the discussion we're having right now is about academic research, which gets published openly. Professors move between institutions all the time. Has Harvard sued MIT because some professor didn't get tenure and took their research and students with them? I think that there's a difference if the professor in question were consulting for US companies, or specifically in projects within the DoD(versus receiving a grant, which again is a different situation), and shared those with Chinese entities. But as far as I can tell, nobody in this comments section is looking into that and we're just having arguments about other situations instead of what has actually happened. That obfuscates the matter at hand.

tharne 5y ago

> ... is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world? Yes

83 5y ago

Industrial espionage can be an existential matter for companies. They rarely make the headlines but there's plenty of court cases like AMSC vs Sinovel, where Sinovel (China) stole the control software AMSC had developed and pretty much ruined them as a company.

sidlls 5y ago

I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS). I've been on the defensive end of attacks by employees (all Chinese citizens, living in China) in our Chinese organization attempting to breach data and infrastructure firewalls. Once upon a time my work touched some sensitive, classified areas. I was more or less constantly harassed by rather hilarious and obvious attempts by Chinese individuals to gain access to the classified bits for a time. We don't live in a world where scientific and technological advances are all to the good for humanity. There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are.

pietrovismara 5y ago
> There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are. Don't you think this group of politically powerful people might include the ones you research for?
- sidlls 5y ago
  Of course it would: but I'm struggling to understand the relevance, here. We do this stuff. They do this stuff. We each want to stop the other from doing it. There's nothing contradictory about it, as I'm not making an absolutist statements regarding ethics or morality.
dekhn 5y ago
"I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS)." Well, I've personally witnessed american students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require, too. That included me! Thank goodness the attitude of my leaders was "smart people should have access to more tools than their job requires". that included chinese nationals who were in my program. Certainly, my goal was the capture the hearts and minds of chinese people who were in my PhD program, so that they would move here, become US citizens, and contibute to our economy. It never even occurred to me that people could have a "dual scientific citizenship" and sort of hold positions in china and the us at the same time, and exploit that.

deleted 5y ago

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mirkules 5y ago

One of my favorite college professors got nabbed for secretly collaborating with the Japanese government: https://voiceofoc.org/2014/02/former-uci-professor-pleads-guilty-to-felony-conflict-of-interest/ https://voiceofoc.org/2014/02/former-uci-professor-pleads-gu... It does happen, even at university level.

Cullinet 5y ago

The only critical approach is to begin with the beginning and the trigger event, refusal to provide the passwords requested to his devices. In the UK it's a crime to refuse law enforcement request for your passwords. If the similar is true in the USA, or there's critical details involved - which frankly only CCTV footage could possibly reveal - about this incident, then there's your cause and effect from whence forward everything looks like semantic disassembly to me on the academics part and a desperate need to show substantive accusations on the governments part.

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

lenkite 5y ago

A history of espionage and theft of trade secrets demonstrates the necessity of concern. "Xiaoqing Zheng who holds dual-citizenship in the United States and China, used elaborate and sophisticated methods to steal countless digital files containing trade secrets from General Electric regarding their wind turbine technology" https://blog.twinstate.com/news/ge-trade-secrets-theft https://blog.twinstate.com/news/ge-trade-secrets-theft Jizhong Chen and Xiaolang Zhang indicated in theft of trade secrets https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/apple-has-deep-concerns-that-ex-employees-accused-of-theft-will-flee-to-china.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/apple-has-deep-concerns-that... https://www.digpu.com/business-and-finance/chinese-man-jizhong-chen-stole-apples-future-car-secrets-for-company-in-china https://www.digpu.com/business-and-finance/chinese-man-jizho... "According to today’s conviction, Xu attempted to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s exclusive composite aircraft engine fan – which no other company in the world has been able to duplicate – to benefit the Chinese state." https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/jury-convicts-chinese-official-espionage-crimes-attempting-steal-trade-secrets https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdoh/pr/jury-convicts-chinese-o... " A notable example is the 2014 lawsuit by T-Mobile, in which Huawei was accused of, among other conduct, sending an engineer to a T-Mobile facility to see "Tappy," the company's computer driven robot with a mechanical arm used to test smartphone screens to improve the reliability of its handsets. The engineer slipped one of the robot's fingertips into his laptop bag but was caught on camera" https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/trade-secrets/1052104/the-china-pivot-closing-the-back-door-to-trade-secret-and-ip-theft https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/trade-secrets/1052104/th... "A former associate scientist was sentenced to 24 months in federal prison in federal court today for stealing proprietary information worth more than $1 billion from his employer, a U.S. petroleum company." https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-stealing-trade-secrets-worth-1-billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-st... There are dozens of such visible cases. The vast majority of trade-secret theft is uncaught.

splitstud 5y ago