7 ms·

France is top industrial espionage offender https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espionage-economy-germany-russia-china-business https://www.

France is top industrial espionage offender https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espionage-economy-germany-russia-china-business https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio... Well, I guess espionage is a French word: https://www.etymonline.com/word/espionage https://www.etymonline.com/word/espionage

hef19898 3y ago
And the link to anti-trust i what exactly now?
- kamray23 3y ago
  They are suggesting that anti-trust is an excuse to perform industrial espionage. France is, however, also the top anti-trust and pro-consumer enforcer in the EU, which in many sectors leads the world in consumer protection regulations. There is no reason to assume it was done for industrial espionage reasons, especially as NVIDIA France is explicitly already a French company producing these AI chips.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Ah, all those poor, prosecuted tech giants and multi-nationals... I'll shed I tear for them when I have time, or not. Explicitly including all former, current and potentially future employers. All of which raked in at least 10s of millions of anti-trust and other non-compliance fines, in some cases reaching billions. Don't do the crime if you don't have the dime, I guess.
    - ginko 3y ago
      The idea that only tech giants and multi-nationals get access to high-end AI accelerators is the main problem IMO. Nvidia keeps private individuals and hobbyists from access to affordable GPUs that can be used for machine learning by intentionally gimping the available memory in their consumer cards.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Sounds like a potential anti-trust case to me, right?
        touisteur 3y ago
        Sounds like 'we (French/Europeans) should get off our asses and build our own AI infra, twenty years ago' and instead grasp at straws whining that distribution of resources in very high demand by a for-profit American company is unfair. I see the lack of will around SiPearl, or the sad state of e.g. Kalray, and I say we deserve our place in the queue. No serious sustained ambition there. Or maybe We're betting on scrapiness and ingenuity and that once the LLM-740B-parameters dust settles, we'll find frugal alternatives...
pyrale 3y ago
No offense, but whenever this claim comes up, the same article from that one guy is quoted, and not much else. If the claim was true, one would think that, in the decade or so since, there would have been countless stories of french embassy personnel expelled, of french students being undercover spies, or of french secret services corrupting civil servants abroad, like there are for Russia or China. > Well, I guess espionage is a French word Also there is no french word for entrepreneur.
- glandium 3y ago
  > Also there is no french word for entrepreneur. It's hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic. In case you aren't: entrepreneur is a French word. https://www.etymonline.com/word/entrepreneur https://www.etymonline.com/word/entrepreneur
  - spuz 3y ago
    It's a reference to this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/
  - fmajid 3y ago
    It's a reference to an apocryphal quote attributed to George W. Bush "You can't trust the French. They don't even have a word for entrepreneur". Obviously sarcastic.
- vGPU 3y ago
  https://www.tarlogic.com/blog/france-and-economic-intelligence/#French_economic_intelligence_in_the_21st_century https://www.tarlogic.com/blog/france-and-economic-intelligen... It appears to be more so that they just really suck.
boudin 3y ago
There's not much data to back the claim. And given this line you would have to expect a lot of spying going on from any other country in the world than Germany and the USA: > Germany, the cables said, was trying to develop an optical observation-based satellite spy system with Washington's help despite objections from France, which is leading pan-European efforts in the field with its Helios satellites.
- hef19898 3y ago
  The US slowly pulling Germany away from pan-EU projects like this is genious, from the US perspective. Because without Germany, not a single project in this space (military aerospace, defense and so on) will develop a size that could make as much as dent in the US defense sector and the likes of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop and Raytheon. And thisballowsbthe US to corner the NATO market for military goods, and that market is the biggest in the world. Germany is an easy target for that, usually we suck at this kind of projects because our requirements management doesn't deserve the name. Just how things like A400M, NH90, Eurofighter, Galileo and Tiger came to be sometimes really puzzles me. There seems to have been a different climate in the 80 through early 90s went it came to that. Ever since, not so much.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > US defense sector and the likes of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop and Raytheon. And thisballowsbthe US to corner the NATO market German companies hesitance to work on Pan-EU (in reality only French) defense projects is because of a headache the Eurofigher has become, as both France and Germany have different export exemptions plus plenty of French companies are still manufacturing weapons systems to directly compete with French-German projects (eg. Dassault vs Eurofighter, Thales vs Airbus, etc). Also, the American defense manufacturers don't care to target the EU market as much anymore excluding the F-35 project because indigenous capabilities have caught up and North American procurement still dwarfs what individual European countries could buy and maintain.
    - hef19898 3y ago
acatton 3y ago
I don't know if France is the top industrial espionage offender. TBH, I doubt it. But yes, it has been well documented that my home country is very pro-active with industrial espionage. If you understand french I recommend the Spécial Investigation documentary "Espions privés: barbouze 2.0". However, linking the raid of Nvidia's offices to industrial espionage is a fantasy. It's well known that: • French companies mostly spy on their French competitors (Renault spies on PSA and vice-versa) • France mostly, if not exclusively, spies in sectors they can compete or are trying to compete. (Aerospace, Car, Pharma, ...) Nvidia is not a French company and has no french competitors. France doesn't have a tech sector. So your conspiracy theory is very unlikely. STMicroelectronics has no interest or ability to manufacture GPUs.
- quadcore 3y ago
  I came to find an answer to this question: why the heck do France care about nVidia?
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Well, they do business in France, don't they? So they need to follow French law. Seems in this case, French authorities think they didn't follow French law, so French law enforcement got involved. Seems pretty simple.
freeflight 3y ago
Funny how the "top" on that seems to be a rather subjective interpretation, could have sworn China was made out as top, and two centuries ago it was apparently the US; https://apnews.com/general-news-b40414d22f2248428ce11ff36b88dc53 https://apnews.com/general-news-b40414d22f2248428ce11ff36b88...
WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
> Germany, the cables said, was trying to develop an optical observation-based satellite spy system with Washington's help despite objections from France, which is leading pan-European efforts in the field with its Helios satellites. That's not serious, c'mon Here is serious one: Industrial Espionage + Anti-Competitive Practice + IP Theft, all of that facilitated by US's spying network + US extraterritoriality law - France loosing Alcatel (article in french [1]) - Alstom forced to sell its Energy department (patents, including nuclear) to the US's G.E (article in french [2], book[3], itw [4]) - Former French minister of economy itw [5] - NSA spying on international transactions [6] - Industrial Espionage against France [7] [1] - https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/comment-les-usa-ont-discretement-pille-et-destructure-alcatel-franck-decloquement-antoine-dreyfus- https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/comment-les-usa-ont-... [2] - https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/alstom---sept-ans-de-reflexion----ou-pas-entreprises-industrie-energie-nucleaire-avenir-loik-le-floch-prigent https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/alstom---sept-ans-de... [3] - https://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Trap.html?id=4tiYxgEACAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Trap.html?... [4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7qu14y8F8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7qu14y8F8 [5] - https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060 [6] - https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies-on-international-bank-transactions-a-922430.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies... [7] - https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-massive-us-industrial-espionage-against-france https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m...

hef19898 3y ago

And the link to anti-trust i what exactly now?

kamray23 3y ago
They are suggesting that anti-trust is an excuse to perform industrial espionage. France is, however, also the top anti-trust and pro-consumer enforcer in the EU, which in many sectors leads the world in consumer protection regulations. There is no reason to assume it was done for industrial espionage reasons, especially as NVIDIA France is explicitly already a French company producing these AI chips.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Ah, all those poor, prosecuted tech giants and multi-nationals... I'll shed I tear for them when I have time, or not. Explicitly including all former, current and potentially future employers. All of which raked in at least 10s of millions of anti-trust and other non-compliance fines, in some cases reaching billions. Don't do the crime if you don't have the dime, I guess.
  - ginko 3y ago
    The idea that only tech giants and multi-nationals get access to high-end AI accelerators is the main problem IMO. Nvidia keeps private individuals and hobbyists from access to affordable GPUs that can be used for machine learning by intentionally gimping the available memory in their consumer cards.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Sounds like a potential anti-trust case to me, right?
      - touisteur 3y ago
        Sounds like 'we (French/Europeans) should get off our asses and build our own AI infra, twenty years ago' and instead grasp at straws whining that distribution of resources in very high demand by a for-profit American company is unfair. I see the lack of will around SiPearl, or the sad state of e.g. Kalray, and I say we deserve our place in the queue. No serious sustained ambition there. Or maybe We're betting on scrapiness and ingenuity and that once the LLM-740B-parameters dust settles, we'll find frugal alternatives...

pyrale 3y ago

No offense, but whenever this claim comes up, the same article from that one guy is quoted, and not much else. If the claim was true, one would think that, in the decade or so since, there would have been countless stories of french embassy personnel expelled, of french students being undercover spies, or of french secret services corrupting civil servants abroad, like there are for Russia or China. > Well, I guess espionage is a French word Also there is no french word for entrepreneur.

glandium 3y ago
> Also there is no french word for entrepreneur. It's hard to tell whether you are being sarcastic. In case you aren't: entrepreneur is a French word. https://www.etymonline.com/word/entrepreneur https://www.etymonline.com/word/entrepreneur
- spuz 3y ago
  It's a reference to this: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/french-lesson/
- fmajid 3y ago
  It's a reference to an apocryphal quote attributed to George W. Bush "You can't trust the French. They don't even have a word for entrepreneur". Obviously sarcastic.
vGPU 3y ago
https://www.tarlogic.com/blog/france-and-economic-intelligence/#French_economic_intelligence_in_the_21st_century https://www.tarlogic.com/blog/france-and-economic-intelligen... It appears to be more so that they just really suck.

boudin 3y ago

There's not much data to back the claim. And given this line you would have to expect a lot of spying going on from any other country in the world than Germany and the USA: > Germany, the cables said, was trying to develop an optical observation-based satellite spy system with Washington's help despite objections from France, which is leading pan-European efforts in the field with its Helios satellites.

hef19898 3y ago
The US slowly pulling Germany away from pan-EU projects like this is genious, from the US perspective. Because without Germany, not a single project in this space (military aerospace, defense and so on) will develop a size that could make as much as dent in the US defense sector and the likes of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop and Raytheon. And thisballowsbthe US to corner the NATO market for military goods, and that market is the biggest in the world. Germany is an easy target for that, usually we suck at this kind of projects because our requirements management doesn't deserve the name. Just how things like A400M, NH90, Eurofighter, Galileo and Tiger came to be sometimes really puzzles me. There seems to have been a different climate in the 80 through early 90s went it came to that. Ever since, not so much.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > US defense sector and the likes of Lockheed-Martin, Northrop and Raytheon. And thisballowsbthe US to corner the NATO market German companies hesitance to work on Pan-EU (in reality only French) defense projects is because of a headache the Eurofigher has become, as both France and Germany have different export exemptions plus plenty of French companies are still manufacturing weapons systems to directly compete with French-German projects (eg. Dassault vs Eurofighter, Thales vs Airbus, etc). Also, the American defense manufacturers don't care to target the EU market as much anymore excluding the F-35 project because indigenous capabilities have caught up and North American procurement still dwarfs what individual European countries could buy and maintain.
  - hef19898 3y ago

acatton 3y ago

I don't know if France is the top industrial espionage offender. TBH, I doubt it. But yes, it has been well documented that my home country is very pro-active with industrial espionage. If you understand french I recommend the Spécial Investigation documentary "Espions privés: barbouze 2.0". However, linking the raid of Nvidia's offices to industrial espionage is a fantasy. It's well known that: • French companies mostly spy on their French competitors (Renault spies on PSA and vice-versa) • France mostly, if not exclusively, spies in sectors they can compete or are trying to compete. (Aerospace, Car, Pharma, ...) Nvidia is not a French company and has no french competitors. France doesn't have a tech sector. So your conspiracy theory is very unlikely. STMicroelectronics has no interest or ability to manufacture GPUs.

quadcore 3y ago
I came to find an answer to this question: why the heck do France care about nVidia?
- capableweb 3y ago
  Well, they do business in France, don't they? So they need to follow French law. Seems in this case, French authorities think they didn't follow French law, so French law enforcement got involved. Seems pretty simple.

freeflight 3y ago

Funny how the "top" on that seems to be a rather subjective interpretation, could have sworn China was made out as top, and two centuries ago it was apparently the US; https://apnews.com/general-news-b40414d22f2248428ce11ff36b88dc53 https://apnews.com/general-news-b40414d22f2248428ce11ff36b88...

WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago

> Germany, the cables said, was trying to develop an optical observation-based satellite spy system with Washington's help despite objections from France, which is leading pan-European efforts in the field with its Helios satellites. That's not serious, c'mon Here is serious one: Industrial Espionage + Anti-Competitive Practice + IP Theft, all of that facilitated by US's spying network + US extraterritoriality law - France loosing Alcatel (article in french [1]) - Alstom forced to sell its Energy department (patents, including nuclear) to the US's G.E (article in french [2], book[3], itw [4]) - Former French minister of economy itw [5] - NSA spying on international transactions [6] - Industrial Espionage against France [7] [1] - https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/comment-les-usa-ont-discretement-pille-et-destructure-alcatel-franck-decloquement-antoine-dreyfus- https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/comment-les-usa-ont-... [2] - https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/alstom---sept-ans-de-reflexion----ou-pas-entreprises-industrie-energie-nucleaire-avenir-loik-le-floch-prigent https://atlantico.fr/article/decryptage/alstom---sept-ans-de... [3] - https://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Trap.html?id=4tiYxgEACAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/The_American_Trap.html?... [4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7qu14y8F8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d7qu14y8F8 [5] - https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060 https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1665370246126125060 [6] - https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies-on-international-bank-transactions-a-922430.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-nsa-spies... [7] - https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-massive-us-industrial-espionage-against-france https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m...