
Chinese Intelligence Officer Charged with Economic Espionage - ccnafr
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-intelligence-officer-charged-economic-espionage-involving-theft-trade-secrets-leading
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Canada
"He identified experts who worked for these companies and recruited them to
travel to China, often initially under the guise of asking them to deliver a
university presentation. Xu and others paid the experts’ travel costs and
provided stipends."

And that seems to be the end of the allegation. I'm wondering, "And then
what?"

Were the experts bribed or blackmailed? It seems like quite a stretch to be
charged with such a serious crime for convincing experts to give a lecture.

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ardy42
> And that seems to be the end of the allegation. I'm wondering, "And then
> what?"

> Were the experts bribed or blackmailed? It seems like quite a stretch to be
> charged with such a serious crime for convincing experts to give a lecture.

The actual indictment is more detailed: [https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-
release/file/1099876/downl...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-
release/file/1099876/download)

He's charged with _conspiracy_ , and page 5/6 of the indictment makes me
suspect the government gained some access to the conspiracy's internal
communications that revealed it as such. It's still a crime to conspire with
others to commit a crime, even if the plans you form are never acted upon or
carried out successfully.

Edit: Further down in the indictment on pages 10-12, it looks like the accused
Chinese intelligence officer convinced an employee of the company to send
parts of a confidential presentation and directory listings from his work
computer. The employee was later asked to download the files to an external
hard disk and carry them to Europe so the intelligence officer could inspect
them. It sounds like the employee was cooperating with the government and they
arrested the suspect when he was expecting to get the hard disk with the
files.

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Canada
If I were writing the press release I’d definitely include at least one
sentence describing what the conspirators dastardly plan was!

From the PR it’s not even clear that an expert was knowingly involved in the
plot.

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candiodari
Given how legal filings work, unless they have good evidence that the expert
wasn't deceived they should not say that.

Besides, the filing only says that this Chinese person _allegedly_ tried to
convince the expert to commit a crime, hell it even seems likely that this
expert is the one that called the FBI to intervene.

Frankly, I think they should not even publicly imply this person did anything
until they have a conviction, and after that only of the things that the
person was actually convicted of.

~~~
Canada
Reading the indictment, it sure sounds like the victim company employee was in
on it. I wonder why "Employee 1" is not also charged. The press release makes
it sound like the Chinese spy was soliciting company insiders to give talks
where maybe they can learn something, whereas the indictment alleges that he
was brazenly asking the insiders to send copies of confidential designs. And
in this case it seems the insider did exactly that, and was hand over of a big
dump of valuable data was imminent when US authorities decided to move in. It
seems to be more than mere conspiracy, they were actually committing
espionage.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I wonder if "Employee 1" is
a Chinese national and was under some pressure, or if there was a big payout
on offer that isn't mentioned. Otherwise I can't understand why anyone would
betray their employer for a few grand of travel expenses.

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candiodari
Please note that the indictment is the opinion of one prosecutor, who got the
story secondhand (or worse), and writes with the express purpose (and bias) to
get a conviction.

You should read it like it is SCO's legal description of the damage inflicted
by IBM's Linux on SCO. Because that's exactly what it is.

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trhway
I wish Russian spies were caught stealing tech secrets instead of killing and
cyberwar-ing - i mean it would be kind of an indicator that my old country
looks forward instead of into the past.

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supergirl
russia doesn't need to steal tech secrets. they have a lot of tech, especially
in aviation. what they lack is in mass producing due to various things that
can't be fixed overnight.

~~~
trhway
Thanks. I guess I could hardly desire for a best illustration of my point. I
suppose you're a Russian millennium, right? The generation which will be
defining Russia for the next several decades. Rephrasing a well known saying -
Russia doesn't look into the future and the future doesn't look into Russia.

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lyricat
It's interesting that the behaviors began since 2013 and nobody recognized.

