
Chinese spy allegedly caught stealing self-driving car secrets from Apple - velmu
http://www.cultofmac.com/603708/chinese-spy-allegedly-caught-stealing-self-driving-car-secrets-from-apple/
======
Isamu
It is worthwhile noting that people are sensitive to titles like this, and
"chinese spy" is probably an unwarranted term. It does seem true that the
Apple employee was taking all kinds of IP with him to a competitor. That's
illegal, and theft.

When Levandowski was caught apparently taking files from Waymo (allegedly to
give to Uber) he wasn't characterized as an "american spy".

[edit] When you say "American spy" there is the implication of a professional
connection to the US govt apparatus. So we don't use this term for private
American industrial espionage, it's sloppy, and deliberately misleading at
worst. I think this is probably a privately motivated deal to make some money,
as in my Levandowski example.

~~~
iooi
Did you read the article? This is the second paragraph:

> The FBI reportedly arrested a Chinese national working for Apple the day
> before he was set to fly back to China with thousands of files on his laptop
> that contained Apple’s intellectual property. He was reportedly planning to
> take all the info to one of Apple’s competitors in China.

It's pretty accurate to characterize him as a Chinese spy.

There's a certain level of competition between countries and it makes sense
for Americans to want to keep American-made IP in America. There's nothing
wrong with that.

~~~
Isamu
>Did you read the article?

Yep, in fact I posted another article on the same incident:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19037738](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19037738)

------
oh_sigh
Queue 'America shouldn't complain, because of Samuel Slater' arguments...

~~~
chillacy
Not America shouldn’t complain, rather America shouldn’t claim a moral high
ground. Complaint is part of serving your own interests, totally necessary and
justified.

~~~
oh_sigh
Yup, just like America can't claim moral high ground over Mauritania because
of large amounts of slavery happening there, because after all America was all
into slavery 200 years ago.

~~~
dragonwriter
> America was all into slavery 200 years ago.

American didn't abolish _de jure_ slavery until 153 years ago.

It retained _de facto_ slavery for much longer, as it did little to enforce
the prohibition on except terminating overt chattel slavery until WWII (the
federal order to federal prosecutors announcing the policy shift that stopped
eseentially ignoring this was issued five days after Pearl Harbor, 77 years
ago.) [0]

[0]
[https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591)

~~~
oh_sigh
Okay, I edit my previous statement to be: "just like America can't claim moral
high ground over Mauritania because of large amounts of slavery happening
there, because after all America was all into __de facto slavery 77 years ago.
__"

I don't believe the point is particularly changed though.

------
msie
Good luck with that, maybe you'll make it work.

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majui
Were they "allegedly caught" or are they "allegedly a Chinese spy"? :)

~~~
Varcht
the article doesn't help sluice that out much... "Another alleged Chinese spy
has been caught apparently trying to steal secrets from Apple’s mysterious
self-driving car project."

