5 ms·

It's only one vague point of interest among many, but there were twenty Freescale employees on board flight 370. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/malay

by leoc 13y ago

It's only one vague point of interest among many, but there were twenty Freescale employees on board flight 370. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/malaysia-airlines-freescale-idUSL2N0M602O20140309 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/09/malaysia-airlines-...

simias 13y ago
I don't understand what the twenty Freescale employees have to do with anything and I keep seeing this fact mentioned in every discussion about MH370. How could they be important/valuable/dangerous enough to justify the hijacking or destruction of a commercial airliner containing hundreds of passengers? That sounds completely insane to me.
- yannyu 13y ago
  It's a bit Bond/cyberpunk-esque, but one could imagine a scenario where an evil villain could short a company's stock and then kill off 20 extremely valuable employees of said company. Not saying that's what happened here, but 20 of the right employees of a company could be very significant.
  - mootothemax 13y ago
    It's a bit Bond/cyberpunk-esque, but one could imagine a scenario where an evil villain could short a company's stock and then kill off 20 extremely valuable employees of said company When was the last time you heard of 20 employees of a company being murdered? To do so by killing 220+ other people makes such a theory even more absurd.
    - jzwinck 13y ago
      It happened to 13 separate companies on September 11, 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/). It was sort of not targeted at those companies, but on the other hand it sort of was. And it certainly had huge market impact.
      - mootothemax 13y ago
        It happened to 13 separate companies on September 11, 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/). It was sort of not targeted at those companies, but on the other hand it sort of was. And it certainly had huge market impact. I knew I should have specified something along the lines of "and as part of a criminal fraud or theft or deliberate talent destroying act, or..." As you say, the sole purpose of 9/11 wasn't to target those specific companies.
    - appplemac 13y ago
      Yeah, 10th of April 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_cr...
      - mootothemax 13y ago
        Yeah, 10th of April 2010. [2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash wikipedia link] You'll need to explain that one for me. Right now, it sounds awfully like you're trying to pin a story on an accepted tragedy. (for me at least...)
    - brohee 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Karachi_bus_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Karachi_bus_bombing could qualify (a bit short of the 20 casualties, but not for lack of trying).
  - jzwinck 13y ago
    Probably not these employees, this company, or this time. NYSE:FSL peaked around $23 and is still around $22. There are 300 million shares, and from the chart it looks like recent volume of a few million, so the potential profit is probably less than what you could simply sell the 777 to the bad guys for. Most companies with hundreds of billions in market cap would not send many important people on a single plane together. Freescale, not quite that large, arguably made a significant business mistake here, but the market impact so far seems limited.
  - macNchz 13y ago
    Incidentally, this is exactly how you can make a lot of money early on in the GTA V story mode.
- fafner 13y ago
  It would be much much easier to get to any of the passengers while they were still on the ground. Hijacking the aircraft and stealthily landing it somewhere is such a complex plan that it's just too ridiculous.
  - leoc 13y ago
    Really? I don't see any sign yet that the flight 370 hijacking involved unusual danger, difficulty or expense for the culprits: so far, as best we can see, it looks like stealing candy from a baby. Obviously to get people off it alive you'd need manpower and infrastructure, but either a dusty old Soviet-era airbase in metaphorical or literal Kazakhstan, or a ship to pick people up after a ditching in calm water somewhere, would be sufficient. Many state actors could arrange one or both of those without serious difficulty (some non-state actors too). I can't think of a way to kidnap a handful of Freescale engineers all at once from urban China or urban Malaysia that could be described as much much easier. That said, I think it's highly improbable that the Freescale guys were targeted like this, but mainly because the political consequences of being caught doing something like this would probably be much too painful for most of the states who might really benefit from debriefing those engineers at length.
    - joeguilmette 13y ago
      Twenty blatant murders in China might - MIGHT - make to the sidebar on HuffPo. Hijacking an airliner has captivated the attention of the entire planet. If they wanted to get rid of these guys stealthily this is not the way.
      - jerf 13y ago
        This is a very important point. I haven't yet seen a satisfactory conspiracy theory that explains why anybody would pursue this sort of action in the full glare of international publicity, and it's hard to imagine someone being good enough to pull this off, yet not realize this would happen. There aren't many conspiracies that benefit from continuous, sustained attention of this scale, or that could plan on absolutely no incriminating piece of evidence being turned up anywhere, by anyone, on such a large scale.
- jfoster 13y ago
  I also doubt that the employees had anything to do with it, but the most likely scenario I can think of that would involve the engineers is a country with sanctions imposed wanting to fabricate chips. On the other hand, any country capable of this probably could manage to get hold of as many chips as they wanted without kidnapping Freescale employees.
  - roc 13y ago
    If you were a nation-state you could just create a start-up 'front' company, seeded with laundered money, and hire the best of those that apply. And if you didn't have the money to actually continue funding a start-up, you could create the front, offer to fly all the employees to some destination-team-building exercise and kidnap them from there.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
  Because a lot of the people talking about the Freescale engineers are themselves one kind of engineer or another, and THEY are important, so ergo the Freescale employees have to be important. It's like in other disasters where lots of people get killed but the news focuses on the two Americans standing nearby.

by leoc 13y ago

simias 13y ago

I don't understand what the twenty Freescale employees have to do with anything and I keep seeing this fact mentioned in every discussion about MH370. How could they be important/valuable/dangerous enough to justify the hijacking or destruction of a commercial airliner containing hundreds of passengers? That sounds completely insane to me.

yannyu 13y ago
It's a bit Bond/cyberpunk-esque, but one could imagine a scenario where an evil villain could short a company's stock and then kill off 20 extremely valuable employees of said company. Not saying that's what happened here, but 20 of the right employees of a company could be very significant.
- mootothemax 13y ago
  It's a bit Bond/cyberpunk-esque, but one could imagine a scenario where an evil villain could short a company's stock and then kill off 20 extremely valuable employees of said company When was the last time you heard of 20 employees of a company being murdered? To do so by killing 220+ other people makes such a theory even more absurd.
  - jzwinck 13y ago
    It happened to 13 separate companies on September 11, 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/). It was sort of not targeted at those companies, but on the other hand it sort of was. And it certainly had huge market impact.
    - mootothemax 13y ago
      It happened to 13 separate companies on September 11, 2001 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/ http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/twintowers/). It was sort of not targeted at those companies, but on the other hand it sort of was. And it certainly had huge market impact. I knew I should have specified something along the lines of "and as part of a criminal fraud or theft or deliberate talent destroying act, or..." As you say, the sole purpose of 9/11 wasn't to target those specific companies.
  - appplemac 13y ago
    Yeah, 10th of April 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_cr...
    - mootothemax 13y ago
      Yeah, 10th of April 2010. [2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash wikipedia link] You'll need to explain that one for me. Right now, it sounds awfully like you're trying to pin a story on an accepted tragedy. (for me at least...)
  - brohee 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Karachi_bus_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Karachi_bus_bombing could qualify (a bit short of the 20 casualties, but not for lack of trying).
- jzwinck 13y ago
  Probably not these employees, this company, or this time. NYSE:FSL peaked around $23 and is still around $22. There are 300 million shares, and from the chart it looks like recent volume of a few million, so the potential profit is probably less than what you could simply sell the 777 to the bad guys for. Most companies with hundreds of billions in market cap would not send many important people on a single plane together. Freescale, not quite that large, arguably made a significant business mistake here, but the market impact so far seems limited.
- macNchz 13y ago
  Incidentally, this is exactly how you can make a lot of money early on in the GTA V story mode.
fafner 13y ago
It would be much much easier to get to any of the passengers while they were still on the ground. Hijacking the aircraft and stealthily landing it somewhere is such a complex plan that it's just too ridiculous.
- leoc 13y ago
  Really? I don't see any sign yet that the flight 370 hijacking involved unusual danger, difficulty or expense for the culprits: so far, as best we can see, it looks like stealing candy from a baby. Obviously to get people off it alive you'd need manpower and infrastructure, but either a dusty old Soviet-era airbase in metaphorical or literal Kazakhstan, or a ship to pick people up after a ditching in calm water somewhere, would be sufficient. Many state actors could arrange one or both of those without serious difficulty (some non-state actors too). I can't think of a way to kidnap a handful of Freescale engineers all at once from urban China or urban Malaysia that could be described as much much easier. That said, I think it's highly improbable that the Freescale guys were targeted like this, but mainly because the political consequences of being caught doing something like this would probably be much too painful for most of the states who might really benefit from debriefing those engineers at length.
  - joeguilmette 13y ago
    Twenty blatant murders in China might - MIGHT - make to the sidebar on HuffPo. Hijacking an airliner has captivated the attention of the entire planet. If they wanted to get rid of these guys stealthily this is not the way.
    - jerf 13y ago
      This is a very important point. I haven't yet seen a satisfactory conspiracy theory that explains why anybody would pursue this sort of action in the full glare of international publicity, and it's hard to imagine someone being good enough to pull this off, yet not realize this would happen. There aren't many conspiracies that benefit from continuous, sustained attention of this scale, or that could plan on absolutely no incriminating piece of evidence being turned up anywhere, by anyone, on such a large scale.
jfoster 13y ago
I also doubt that the employees had anything to do with it, but the most likely scenario I can think of that would involve the engineers is a country with sanctions imposed wanting to fabricate chips. On the other hand, any country capable of this probably could manage to get hold of as many chips as they wanted without kidnapping Freescale employees.
- roc 13y ago
  If you were a nation-state you could just create a start-up 'front' company, seeded with laundered money, and hire the best of those that apply. And if you didn't have the money to actually continue funding a start-up, you could create the front, offer to fly all the employees to some destination-team-building exercise and kidnap them from there.
GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
Because a lot of the people talking about the Freescale engineers are themselves one kind of engineer or another, and THEY are important, so ergo the Freescale employees have to be important. It's like in other disasters where lots of people get killed but the news focuses on the two Americans standing nearby.