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To absolutely no one’s surprise, this seems to be largely a result of the theft of existing designs and technology, and is hardly a Chinese engineering accompl
by K0balt 3y ago
To absolutely no one’s surprise, this seems to be largely a result of the theft of existing designs and technology, and is hardly a Chinese engineering accomplishment.
I guess the good news is that if they copied enough, well enough, maybe it won’t fall out of the sky on a regular basis.
To wit:
(From the Wikipedia article on the C919)
Chinese cyberthreat actor Turbine Panda, linked to the Ministry of State Security’s Jiangsu Bureau, penetrated a number of the C919's foreign components manufacturers including Ametek, Capstone Turbine, GE Aviation, Honeywell, Safran, and others and stole intellectual property and industrial process data with the aim of transitioning component manufacturing to Chinese companies.[26][27][28][29] The report stated that the operations involved both cyber intrusion and theft as well as HUMINT operations, in most cases using a piece of code custom written for this industrial espionage operation.[26][27][28][29]
On October 15, 2018, ten Chinese nationals, including intelligence officials, were indicted by the US for allegedly working with COMAC to allegedly steal the secrets of thirteen foreign aerospace companies working on the C919.[51]
As of 2019, four people have been arrested in the US as a result of investigations into this economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.[29]
In November 2022, a federal jury in Cincinnati convicted Yanjun Xu, 42, on counts of conspiracy to commit economic espionage, conspiracy to commit trade secret theft, attempted economic espionage and attempted trade secret theft. The US court found that Xu played a key role in a plot to steal trade secrets from western aerospace firms, for the purpose of helping the C919 commercial airliner program. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.[30]
- hotpotamus 3y agoI wonder if it really is largely a result of theft. To my eyes, it looks like any other modern cargo plane that could have been made in the last 50 years; I'm not sure how much advance there really has been on the airframe. My sense is that most of the really hard tech advances have been in the engines (and the gains are somewhat marginal, but important to carriers), and the article says they're still buying those. I suspect the hard part of putting together a plane like this is getting the entire assembly line/industrial ecosystem bootstrapped, and there's not a whole lot that spycraft can do to actually build out that industry.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThey are buying engines and avionics. So mostly body work is being done in Chinese factories.
- ChatGTP 3y agoFor now, won't be for long until they build the whole thing, they're a growing super power mostly created by the west off shoring their operations there to make more money...we just have to deal with it...
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoIt might be some time, Chinese are struggling with jet engines since 1950s. Still not being able to get them running reliably for at least same hours as western or even Russian engines. https://eurasiantimes.com/chinas-engine-problems-despite-new-tech-for-j-20-stealth-fighters/ https://eurasiantimes.com/chinas-engine-problems-despite-new...
- ChatGTP 3y agoIt’s not going to be an unsolvable problem for them.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoJet engines are a tough cookie to crack. It is easy to get performance or efficiency or economy (time between rebuilds), but not all three at once. You can’t simply reverse engineer one either, so they got to put in all the work themselves, as they are dumping billions into R&D. Avionics are easier but…software really isn’t that easy, especially software that prevents your plane from crashing.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago> largely a result of the theft Do you have any evidence that the C919 is "largely the result" of theft? What specific components do you think are stolen? How do you know the extent to which espionage influenced/benefited the design? Right now, you're just citing accusations of specific acts of espionage (from Wikipedia, so we have no idea how meaningful this list is, or whether it's just a motivated editor making a mountain out of a molehill), and then drawing a very broad conclusion about the C919. Note that the highest-tech parts of the C919 are being bought directly from European and American suppliers. For example, the engines are delivered by CFM International, which is a Franco-American joint venture.
- yeknoda 3y agoLol. What are they supposed to do? Invent a completely new technology for a solved problem? The anti china sentiment is basically closeted racism at this point. Ever thought that maybe engineering design is somewhat deterministic? There’s not that many ways to design things… physical laws, manufacturing technique, and material properties are highly constraining and basically force a limited set of designs to accomplish the task at hand.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI don't think the expectation is to invent something new. The expectation is to invent license or buy something old. Reverse engineering is legal, but corporate Espionage is not. If you are hacking to a database to get ip or have spies stealing documentation, that's not reverse engineering.