
Chinese Men Indicted in Theft of Code from U.S. Tech Companies - vinhboy
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/technology/6-chinese-men-indicted-in-theft-of-code-from-us-tech-companies.html
======
ChuckMcM
I see the Times playing up the nationalistic components but the truth is that
people go to companies, learn stuff, and start new companies doing the same
thing only better all the time. It is perhaps even more rampant in California
with its employee protection laws but it isn't unusual anywhere in the US.

The question I have is that if several students of a prominent professor at
Harvard go to work at Intel and AMD as electrical engineers, and then later
get together to form their own company, still in the US, to make a really
energy efficient x86 equivalent processor, is that economic espionage or
innovation? Generally we've held it to be the latter.

And then there is the number of students getting advanced degrees in the US
from really bright professors, but are unable to get a Visa to actually work
in the US?

It is hard for me to be outraged here.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Your comment lacks the context of China's economic policy. As bizarre as it
sounds, _Top Gear_ actually hit on it during one of their specials:

[http://youtu.be/K0bNf-jcVU0](http://youtu.be/K0bNf-jcVU0)

I know it's easy to discard what you're reading as nationalism, but the
Chinese have a long history of theft of intellectual property and protecting
it at the state level. It isn't about national pride at all, for me; our
industry is one that is directly targeted. A new iPhone is copied in weeks,
and that's not only a direct shot at American exports, it's a direct shot at
my work. Why should I put the work into innovating when cheap copies will
flood the market?

There's a slight difference between incremental improvement and the economic
espionage described in the article, though I grant you the line is fine.
You're potentially starting to see more desperate maneuvers (this isn't the
first, and I agree with you that it's a potential stretch) because it's really
hard to prosecute most of these and it's been an issue for a long time.

~~~
pyre
There is a difference between PRC specifically sending agents to the US to
steal specific technologies, and a random group of Chinese nationals deciding
to take US tech back home and profit off of it.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
You're implying that you can discern the difference.

~~~
derefr
No, the reverse; the implication is that, since you _can 't_ tell the
difference, you should be charitable and assume it's just some random people
with a coincidental feature of X, rather than an X-ist conspiriacy. A lack of
this kind of charity is what creates ideas like "the jews control the banks"
or "the gay agenda."

------
nshung
I think China needs to stop these activities if she wants to be respected
internationally. In January this year, two Chinese professors in Norway got
kicked out from a Norwegian university because Norway was also concerned with
spying activities from China. [1] I think China economy has come to a point
that it needs innovation to move forward. Obviously, stealing intellectual
properties from other countries is not the best way to go here.

1\. [http://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/forskere-ved-uia-utvist-av-
norge...](http://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/forskere-ved-uia-utvist-av-
norge-1.12177709)

~~~
therobot24
Was this sponsored by the chinese government though?

>> They took the technology back to Tianjin University, created a joint
venture company with the university to produce the chips, and soon were
selling them to both the Chinese military and to commercial customers.

They sold chips to the government, but for all we know the gov is just another
customer.

~~~
Zikes
If the Chinese government knew it could get the same vital technologies at
greatly reduced costs while growing its own economy, don't you think they
would sponsor this sort of activity?

~~~
mkaziz
That's not to say they did.

~~~
Zikes
Certainly, but it is plausible.

~~~
pyre
What makes replacing "China" with "The United States" in that statement any
_less_ plausible?

~~~
Zikes
Nothing at all, and I never claimed such.

------
pquerna
It seems this is pretty clear case of attributable theft -- it's good that it
is being prosecuted.

The challenges are with attribution though, in many electronic-only attacks,
it "could be" anyone.

Companies like CrowdStrike have done some work to attribute PLA & China in
some attacks:

[http://blog.crowdstrike.com/hat-tribution-pla-
unit-61486/](http://blog.crowdstrike.com/hat-tribution-pla-unit-61486/)
[http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4589853/crowdstrike-
intellige...](http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4589853/crowdstrike-intelligence-
report-putter-panda.original.pdf)

But largely APT attacks are happening without repercussion, probably by many
countries, including the US, and as a "defender" against many of these, it is
terrible. The worst part is, I don't see it changing: Nothing right now is
driving State-Actors to stop doing whatever they want against corporations.

------
virtuabhi
This is just a group of people deciding to steal intellectual property. Here
is the more organized attack, originating in China, in which intellectual
property of multiple companies (including Google) was stolen
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)

~~~
wavefunction
Probably, but then these people should face punitive action, further
infringement prohibited, and restitution made to the owners of the
intellectual property then? If that's all this is...

------
lstyls
I'm surprised nobody has pointed out yet that the headline is mistaken - no
code was stolen in this incident. It was hardware designs that were stolen, as
the first line of the article states:

>> "The Obama administration on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Chinese
professor and the indictment of five other Chinese citizens in what it
contended was a decade-long scheme to steal microelectronics designs from
Silicon Valley companies."

~~~
gwern
How do you know? Software is intimately involved in all parts of chip design -
what are hardware description languages like Verilog or VHDL, and the chips
written in them, but code? If they didn't steal code what _did_ they steal?

------
meatysnapper
I pity the fool who steals the software written anywhere I've worked. It's
hard enough to maintain for those of us who wrote it or rebuilt it.

The only thing this would be good for is breaking into systems!

EDIT: Also, one of the suspicions is that the next big revelation with the NSA
surveillance fiasco is mass spying on foreign businesses for the benefit of
our business. Who would look silly then?

~~~
gertef
that revelation is decades late:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON)

------
trhway
>According to the indictment, two of the professors began to apply for patents
on some of the technology in the United States, beginning in 2010.

pretty strange form of theft.

------
rasz_pl
>The chip is popularly known as a filter, which is used for acoustics in
mobile telephones;

clueless NYT. Article is about microwave circuits, parts of PA.

> while the parts are small, the market for them worldwide is worth well more
> than $1 billion a year. According to the charges, the men took the firms’
> technology back to Tianjin University, created a joint venture company with
> the university to produce the chips and soon were selling them both to the
> Chinese military and to commercial customers.

question is did they copy designs verbatim? or simply designed their own?

If you want to know more about microwave design/R&D this episode of theamphour
featuring Shahriar Shahramian(old bell labs/alcatel-lucent) is excellent
[http://www.theamphour.com/228-an-interview-with-shahriar-
fro...](http://www.theamphour.com/228-an-interview-with-shahriar-from-the-
signal-path-quisquous-quivering-quadripole/)

------
tete
I also don't think that China can keep up with the advanced industrial
espionage conducted by the US.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502](http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502)

[https://news.vice.com/article/germany-accused-of-spying-
on-f...](https://news.vice.com/article/germany-accused-of-spying-on-france-
and-engaging-in-industrial-espionage-on-behalf-of-nsa)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-
braz...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-
petrobras)

------
ken47
"According to the indictment, two of the professors began to apply for patents
on some of the technology in the United States, beginning in 2010."

It would seem difficult to steal and simultaneously patent an idea in the US.
Am I misunderstanding the title or the article?

Is the crime that they invented a patentable concept and then they tried to
then take it back to another country that happens to have some tension with
the US?

------
aswanson
China will never be ever to compete with the US in its current configuration.
All it can do is copy and follow, as it's governmental central authority
mandates. That continent will never be a significant threat...it will always
be several steps behind...mimicking what has already worked.

~~~
vardump
30 years ago they used to say exactly same about Japanese.

~~~
hebdo
Yes. Also, people tend to forget that out world is actually a pretty old
place. The history of the economic scene of the last 2000 years teaches us
that there is plenty of space for changes.

[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1_AD_to_2003_AD_Histo...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1_AD_to_2003_AD_Historical_Trends_in_global_distribution_of_GDP_China_India_Western_Europe_USA_Middle_East.png)

------
shit_parade2
I wonder if the Chinese will begin arresting American citizens who visit for
conferences.

~~~
greeneggs
Like these cases?

"An American geologist who was imprisoned for more than seven years on a vague
charge of “illegally procuring state secrets” has been deported by China and
arrived home in Houston on Friday..."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/world/asia/china-
deports-a...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/world/asia/china-deports-
american-jailed-on-spy-charges.html)

"An American automotive engineer has been detained by the Chinese police for
more than a year on charges of violating trade secrets, according to United
States officials..."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/asia/18detain.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/world/asia/18detain.html)

------
intrasight
A lot of the comments here are more apt to the China of 10 years ago. Things
have changed folks. China is now making huge investments in innovation science
and engineering. Not yet on par with US in terms of quantity, and certainly
not quality. But great progress is being made. We should take IP theft very
seriously, but we should likewise recognize those Chinese researchers who are
working diligently to improve things.

~~~
dba7dba
_huge investments in innovation science and engineering_ It takes YEARS for
any meaningful return, no matter how huge the investments may be. Just my 2
cents.

There's no denying rampant theft of IP by Chinese companies, even between the
Chinese companies.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Sure, China has less strict IP laws and less strict enforcement, as well as
possibly a government policy of looking the other way when they can acquire
tech from abroad. But there is a huge difference between that and labeling
those activities as state sponsored economic espionage in all cases.

Morris Cohen giving the U.S.S.R the plans for the atomic bomb? Espionage.

Two professors doing a startup in China with tech that was probably under
NDA/copyright/patents of their former employer? Not espionage.

Really, if this was all happening internally inside the U.S. it would probably
be a civil lawsuit at most... and only news in Techcrunch, not NYT.

~~~
dba7dba
@ lazaroclapp I never mentioned state sanctioned theft of IP. You brought it
up first.

~~~
lazaroclapp
Didn't mean to imply you did. That comment was about how it's being reported
in the media in general, should have made it more clear.

Edit: I think I was more reinforcing your point than challenging it, basically
"the main issue is different standards of IP protection laws; without (an
unusual level of) malice involved.", but it's being reported as a movie plot
heist...

