5 ms·

Did that person just go around disclosing their plan?

reaperman 3y ago
I think if someone actually had government handlers asking them to do this, most of those people wouldn't blab about it to their school chums. But there's a subset of people with grandiose delusions / general behavior problems who feel a compulsion to tell everyone about their grand plans/machinations to become rich and powerful.
- ecoquant 3y ago
  I think you are underestimating how tough it would be to be playing James Bond and not tell anyone. You wouldn't have to be a delusional braggart to want to tell a friend this. Most spies are not going to be as much of a compartmentalized lunatic like Robert Hanssen or someone at that level.
- djtango 3y ago
  Reminds me of that scene from Silicon Valley where Jian Yang has a bunch of new startup ideas on his whiteboard
  - popcalc 3y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5XQxRrQvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5XQxRrQvw
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > someone actually had government handlers It most likely wasn't a Handler/MSS type espionage. It was most likely trying to grab IP to found a domestic competitor, and raise a Seed round from local government accelerators like those Beijing and Hangzhou have.
alephnerd 3y ago
Having seen something like this happen once, what probably happened was the person OP is referring to was trying to get IP in order to start their own private sector startup, and probably get some seed funding from a regional government (eg. Beijing and Hangzhou did this in the 2000s to jumpstart their tech industry) It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma I before it was privatized) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet.
- maayank 3y ago
  > It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet. Quite an allegation... any reference to them sponsoring/encouraging stealing IP or am I misreading and you simply meant it's a government sponsored startup accelerator program?
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    It's not really that damaging. Israel never recognized American software or pharmaceutical patents, and most countries do some form of Industrial Espionage (France is fairly notable in the space as well [4]). The wildest cases tended to be back in the 1990s, when Israel was trying to build a domestic armament industry, notably by stealing American IP and selling it to the Chinese [0][1][2][3] (most modern Chinese weapons systems today are based on that IP transfer in the 1990s). This largely ended by the mid-late 2000s when the Israeli tech industry was much more established, and Ehud Barak (edit: Olmert - mixed up his surname and the Barak middle scandal) getting arrested on corruption charges, heralding the end of Israel's Wild West days in the tech industry. Also, Tiannammen Era sanctions from the 1990s forced Israel defense companies to pivot to India, which doesn't allow vendors to sell SKUs to India which Pakistan and China have access to, and would leverage French and Israeli SKUs based on American designs. I highly recommend reading this GAO report from the 90s [3] [0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538128 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538128 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/12/world/israel-selling-china-military-technology-cia-chief-asserts.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/12/world/israel-selling-chin... [2] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/1149008 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1149008 [3] - https://www.gao.gov/assets/t-osi-92-6.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/t-osi-92-6.pdf [4] - https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/france-intellectual-property-theft-107020 https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/france-intellectual-p...

I think if someone actually had government handlers asking them to do this, most of those people wouldn't blab about it to their school chums. But there's a subset of people with grandiose delusions / general behavior problems who feel a compulsion to tell everyone about their grand plans/machinations to become rich and powerful.

ecoquant 3y ago
I think you are underestimating how tough it would be to be playing James Bond and not tell anyone. You wouldn't have to be a delusional braggart to want to tell a friend this. Most spies are not going to be as much of a compartmentalized lunatic like Robert Hanssen or someone at that level.
djtango 3y ago
Reminds me of that scene from Silicon Valley where Jian Yang has a bunch of new startup ideas on his whiteboard
- popcalc 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5XQxRrQvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km5XQxRrQvw
alephnerd 3y ago
> someone actually had government handlers It most likely wasn't a Handler/MSS type espionage. It was most likely trying to grab IP to found a domestic competitor, and raise a Seed round from local government accelerators like those Beijing and Hangzhou have.

alephnerd 3y ago

Having seen something like this happen once, what probably happened was the person OP is referring to was trying to get IP in order to start their own private sector startup, and probably get some seed funding from a regional government (eg. Beijing and Hangzhou did this in the 2000s to jumpstart their tech industry) It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma I before it was privatized) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet.

maayank 3y ago
> It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet. Quite an allegation... any reference to them sponsoring/encouraging stealing IP or am I misreading and you simply meant it's a government sponsored startup accelerator program?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  It's not really that damaging. Israel never recognized American software or pharmaceutical patents, and most countries do some form of Industrial Espionage (France is fairly notable in the space as well [4]). The wildest cases tended to be back in the 1990s, when Israel was trying to build a domestic armament industry, notably by stealing American IP and selling it to the Chinese [0][1][2][3] (most modern Chinese weapons systems today are based on that IP transfer in the 1990s). This largely ended by the mid-late 2000s when the Israeli tech industry was much more established, and Ehud Barak (edit: Olmert - mixed up his surname and the Barak middle scandal) getting arrested on corruption charges, heralding the end of Israel's Wild West days in the tech industry. Also, Tiannammen Era sanctions from the 1990s forced Israel defense companies to pivot to India, which doesn't allow vendors to sell SKUs to India which Pakistan and China have access to, and would leverage French and Israeli SKUs based on American designs. I highly recommend reading this GAO report from the 90s [3] [0] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538128 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538128 [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/12/world/israel-selling-china-military-technology-cia-chief-asserts.html https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/12/world/israel-selling-chin... [2] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/1149008 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1149008 [3] - https://www.gao.gov/assets/t-osi-92-6.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/t-osi-92-6.pdf [4] - https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/france-intellectual-property-theft-107020 https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/france-intellectual-p...