
Ex-Apple Employee Stole Secrets for Chinese Firm, U.S. Says - Jerry2
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-10/ex-apple-employee-charged-with-stealing-secrets-for-chinese-firm
======
kylec
Duplicate of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247)

------
hkmurakami
I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” after having worked
at DENSO HQ (Toyota group supplier) where a Chinese natiuonal engineer stole
30,000 design documents in the early 2000s (it made national headlines when it
happened). Because it’s only 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause
prejudice and disdain for all the good actors.

~~~
blahblahblogger
> I’m sad at myself for feeling “well yeah not unexpected” > Because it’s only
> 1/1000000 people that do this that will cause prejudice and disdain for all
> the good actors.

Damn I came in here to say the same thing and feel sad at myself now too.

So not to be racial but from an American standpoint I liken it to hiring an
American who happens to be Chinese versus an engineer from China.

For the first, they are American, their family is here, their life is here -
where would they flee to?

For the latter, they're here temporarily most likely. So why not take the risk
and get a big reward?

~~~
thatfrenchguy
That's true for any nationality though. And Snowden was American and
technically fled to Russia ?

~~~
jerkstate
That's quite a stretch in your comparison there, I don't think that stealing
industrial trade secrets for profit is the same thing as whistle-blowing the
fact that tinfoil hat sci-fi conspiracy theories were actually being carried
out by the US government.

------
throwaway955555
(posting from a throwaway for obvious reasons)

I currently sell to autonomous vehicle (AV) companies and spoke to a number of
them. I believe that (most) chinese-money backed AV startup set up "R&D"
offices in silicon valley purely for the tech/IP transfer back to China. Just
to give you an example, an engineer at one of them boasted to me how his
colleague, who used to work at a _brand-name-AV-company-you 've-heard-of_,
copied code & provided access to all of it internally.

Although innovation in China might seem like a wild west to many Westerners,
there's plenty of it happening there. It's impressive, extremely fast paced
(10xSV), and deadly cut-throat. They know they're behind the US in AV and are
playing catch up, with VC certainly knowing of & backing such approach.

Circling back to this story - just check who's backing XiaoPeng
Motors/xmotors.ai: $700M in funding from GGV, Alibaba, IDG, Foxconn & others.
All their R&D is in China, with a very small office in Palo Alto. What do you
think the office here is for? I don't believe this fellow Xiaolang Zhang acted
without Xiaopeng's "encouragement".

All of this being said, there are plenty of smart and honest engineers working
on both sides of the Pacific to push the humanity forward. One could think
though, maybe the more know-how transfer, the better for the entire world?

~~~
abledon
I wonder how Tesla will setup their "security" in their Tesla Factory in
China. Considering how a worker recently misconfigured their factory software
in a malicious manner... They better have some good failsafes ready!

------
djrogers
I worked for a company that got acquired by a larger company who happened to
have a JV with a Chinese company. A few months after the acquisition, one of
us stumbled across a shockingly blatant copy of our product on the Chinese
firm’s website. Same box, same ports, same darned WebUI but translated to
Chinese.

Now this was a hardware product with a _weekly_ data feed, so not only did
someone at the JV feed all the specs and source code to the Chinese company,
they sent them weekly updates.

Needless to say, when confronted about this the company didn’t seem too
surprised we found out, nor did the understand why everyone was so upset...

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
How do you reconcile this with idea that copyright and IP laws are too strong?

~~~
Buge
The common argument "copyright period should be shortened from 95-120 years
down to 10-20 years" is compatible with a criticism of the described
activities because the described activities took place in less than 10 years.

The common argument "there should be no anti-circumvention provisions" is
compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described
activities would violate other provisions besides anti-circumvention
provisions.

The common argument "patents should be weaker" is compatible with a criticism
of the described activities because the described activities would be illegal
due to copyright laws, trade secret laws, trademark laws, and contract laws.
It's not even clear if there were any patents involved in this situation.

The less common argument "copyright should be abolished" could still be
compatible with a criticism of the described activities because the described
activities could be illegal due to trade secret laws, trademark laws, and
contract laws.

I don't often hear criticism of trade secret laws or trademark laws.

------
noobermin
Seriously HN, every time these posts come up, it becomes a fest for racists to
pin their one off experience with Chinese people onto the entire race of
people, the definition of racism. I do want to hear an ex-Apple employee doing
corporate espionage may be, but I don't want to hear about your Chinese grad
students. That has _nothing_ do do with the story other than the race of the
individuals.

I'm almost at the point where I want to just flag articles like this because
they have in recent months become a sordid data point pulling down the signal
to noise ratio that is usually commendable on this site.

~~~
briandear
Perhaps make an argument using some data. Do Chinese companies engage in IP
theft or corporate espionage at a higher rate than other countries? Is there a
cultural point of relevance rather than race? We don’t hear of many stories of
ethnic Chinese Singaporeans or Taiwanese doing this sort of thing — when it
comes to Chinese, it’s almost exclusively related to mainland, Communist
China. Is it racial to point out that there could be some validity to the
argument that mainland/communist Chinese engage in this sort of behavior at a
higher rate than Indians or pretty much every other Asian country? Do we know
that not to be true?

I’m not looking at data, so I don’t know the answer, but dismissing an
apparent cultural/political tendency to engage in IP theft or espionage as
“racist” is simplistic. HN loves to generalize about Americans and American
companies and their practices, yet to do that with China is somehow racist?
Regarding Chinese students — how do you think they get permission to study in
the US? Chinese people don’t have unlimited freedom of travel. You have to be
“approved” before they’ll let you study abroad. That “approval” has a lot to
do with the political reliability of that person. So while it is fair to say
all Chinese don’t agree with this sort of thing, it is fair to say that the
Chinese that end up in US graduate programs represent a set of those who have
demonstrated adherence to the CCP mindset.

Race doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion; it’s a cultural-
political question and, culturally, mainland communist Chinese have a
different viewpoint than international IP law upholds.

You rarely hear of a British person stealing secrets or British companies
blatantly stealing sensitive IP. Is that because it happens far less
frequently or because it doesn’t get reported?

It seems as if the Chinese way of doing business supports these sorts of
situations and it seems that the Chinese cultural attitude towards IP is at
odds with the very idea of IP. It’s fair to point that out. Flagging a
legitimate story because you don’t like the racial implication is itself
racist — you seem to be suggesting that we ought not to discuss this if the
perpetrator is of a certain nationality because it might reflect badly on the
country and it’s people. Censoring something because you object to the
conclusions that might be fairly drawn is to limit the range of intellectual
discussion.

Despite the seeming cooperation, China views the US as an adversary. It would
be naïve to discount the critique of Chinese practices as simple racism.

~~~
abalone
_> We don’t hear of many stories of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans or Taiwanese
doing this sort of thing..._

We literally heard a story of a _white American_ doing this exact thing just
last year.[1] Nobody complained about America's cultural/political tendencies.
Even though there's plenty of academic cheating here.[2] It was just about
that white guy. The racism is in the double standard and confirmation bias.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski)

[2] [https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-
gradua...](https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates-
cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009)

------
sjroot
Disclaimer: I am speaking from personal experiences and know that, despite
these experiences, there are tons of Chinese engineers who work their ass off
and maintain great professional integrity.

That said...my experience with Chinese graduate students has been incredibly
disappointing. While they made up the majority of our graduate computer
science program, most had no respect for academic conduct guidelines. I
experienced this both as a student and a teacher, even having to meet with two
Chinese students during my office hours to explain that they couldn’t turn in
assignments they copied from others. They had explicitly asked me if this was
okay, so I was happy to inform them.

I would venture to say that there is a cultural disconnect with the Chinese
when it comes to the idea of intellectual property. I obviously cannot speak
from experience, but it seems the political atmosphere in China probably
contributes to this a lot.

I would love to learn more about how Chinese engineers (in the USA and abroad)
feel about this.

Last note: has anyone looked at the website or Twitter account of the company
this person is moving to? Their website is completely devoid of any actual
information, and their Twitter account is a mix of horrible car mock-ups and
announcements about their company raising millions in venture capital. ???

~~~
lawnchair_larry
It’s funny how afraid people are about tiptoeing around this issue. Cheating
among chinese students is widespread and blatant, and they do not even pretend
to care. They are completely shameless about it. Everyone with Chinese
students knows it, but it’s politically incorrect to call it out. Which they
are also aware of, and take advantage of.

~~~
ghettoimp
FWIW.

In my undergrad days, long ago now, cheating was rampant throughout the
(overwhelmingly white and male) CS student body.

One professor, whom I admired, got fed up with this. He handed back a
particular assignment to his class, ungraded, with the code of conduct stapled
to each student's submission. He then pointedly told the class that if anyone
needed to come and tell him anything after class, he would be in his office.
This move was the talk of the dorms for weeks.

But nothing really came of it. This stern warning no doubt caused some fear
and anguish among those affected, but that was the extent of it. Nobody got
expelled, flunked the course, or had their record damaged in any way.

This is just an anecdote. I certainly don't have any data on the prevalence of
cheating, or on differences in attitudes toward cheating, among Chinese versus
other students. But I'd be surprised if there is a measurable difference. In
my experience, everyone is completely shameless and nobody faces any real
consequences even when they are caught red-handed.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
If it's an assignment many people will copy this has always happened and will
always be true for probably every human being anywhere.

That's why exams exist. Make them hard. People who do the homework will
succeed. Others won't.

We're too afraid of making people fail.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
And yet exams can be (are?) a poor way to test knowledge.

I’m ideologically against exams. For many they are stressful, and they don’t
represent any real life scenario as you will always have access to reference
material on the job.

~~~
ntsplnkv2
> For many they are stressful, and they don’t represent any real life scenario
> as you will always have access to reference material on the job.

Good. They should be stressful. I don't want people who can't handle stress
being doctors or engineers. Out in the field they will have to make decisions
that will not just be "look it up in the reference manual."

And it's not like you can't have reference materials on exams. All of my
engineering exams were open reference. It didn't matter.

------
Jerry2
If anyone's interested, here's the PDF of the indictment:

[https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=734...](https://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=DownloadFile&id=73455ddecba090e8f06b8161e4d7deae)

It's quite an interesting read.

------
sam0x17
Sort of dumb that he told Apple about his intentions to switch jobs. He would
have easily gotten away if he hadn't. Guilty conscience?

~~~
mjcl
I’m sort of surprised they don’t have automated flagging for activity like
downloading a years worth of documents in an evening.

~~~
tptacek
Benign instances of that happen all the time. Picking out actionable anomalies
from event data like this is one of the big problems in information security.

------
abalone
The anti-Chinese sentiment on this thread is T H I C K.

May I remind everyone that not so long ago another guy was caught red-handed
downloading autonomous vehicle IP from a major SV firm to take with him to a
new company. He was a white American.[1]

I don't recall hearing much about rampant cheating at top U.S. universities as
a cultural norm[2] where "note-sharing and consulting teaching fellows was
widespread."[3] Or how lack of respect for academic conduct guidelines at top
technical universities was so deeply ingrained in the culture that "many
students... turned in identical solutions" while seeming confused by the very
concept of "what constitutes cheating."[4]

I don't recall hearing anecdotes from ex-TAs about how while they are of
course encountered tons of honest white guys, frat bros as a group have a
reputation for being notorious cheaters that just don't seem to hold
themselves to the same standards of intellectual honesty that we do. Must be
the high-pressure, status-obsessed cultures they come from.

No, the commentary here was mostly focused on just that one white guy.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski)

[2] [https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-
gradua...](https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/1-in-5-harvard-graduates-
cheated-in-studies-survey-finds/100009)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Harvard_cheating_scandal)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-
over-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/22/technology/scandal-over-
cheating-at-mit-stirs-debate-on-limits-of-teamwork.html)

~~~
candiodari
The issue is what the result will be long-term of these actions.

Currently we allow innovative firms to pay a lot of money for engineers who
then develop unique and great products that carry a premium. This applies
pretty much across the developed world.

If "IP theft" is allowed to occur at any decent scale, every market will
rapidly become a race to the bottom, and premium products will simply cease to
exist, with a lot of casualties in both the companies involved and the
engineers doing development.

So what does it have to do with China, and Chinese nationals ? Well simple:
the Chinese government has large-scale corporate espionage as a stated goal
[1] and has gotten caught red-handed in more than a few cookie jars, for
example [2] ... that is seriously at odds with the goals of, frankly, every
engineer and company worldwide (even Chinese ones). Note that in most cases,
this appears to be not "actual" corporate espionage, but it is actually the
state organizing large-scale corporate espionage (and sabotage in some cases),
then going out to Chinese companies and actually forcing them to use the
stolen data.

The predictable response is of course that engineers, companies, management
and even unions will start systematically boycotting anything to do with the
Chinese state, and that includes Chinese nationals' job prospects. This does
not reflect on them, except insofar as they support this disgraceful state
policy, but there is no alternative.

The ideal solution would be that Chinese people start sabotaging and striking
and ... until the Chinese state gets the message. That's what SHOULD happen.
After that, trust can be earned again. When the Chinese state starts
cooperating and imposing large scale fines on companies caught duplicating
products with stolen data, then this can end.

Obviously the current situation cannot exist for any real length of time
without ever more serious consequences.

Now I get it, the Chinese state is trying very hard to confuse acting against
their spying with "racism" (funny that given their ethnic and religious
policies in China that that is not considered disgraceful. This is Hitler
berating countries for not treating Jews well (which, incidentally, he did do,
hell, he even had a point))

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_espionage_in_the_United_States)

[2] [https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-
ro...](https://www.pddnet.com/news/2017/10/video-day-four-legged-robot-chinas-
answer-boston-dynamics)

------
Theodores
I do not wish to question the veracity of this story, however it plays into a
narrative where the West is advanced and China is merely stealing I.P. from
hard working folks in the West.

I fear that one day we will wake up and realise that we are behind, to
discover that our friends in China have been innovating.

We have had this already with internet infrastructure. Whilst half of the USA
and rural UK struggle along with internet served over fifty year old copper
cables, in Eastern Europe, after the fall of the wall, countries such as
Estonia were able to leapfrog typical Western infrastructure and lay fibre to
the door for everyone. They might not have done so with Estonian made Cisco
routers, however having this leapfrogged infrastructure in place fostered an
environment of innovation - Skype being from Estonia.

In automotive there is a real risk for Western auto companies that they will
not be able to compete with the electric cars that will be coming out of
China. Chinese electric cars could be cosy and a really nice space to be in
during one's commute, like an extension of one's living room and a good place
to get work done. Meanwhile Western alternatives might still be trying to be
yesteryear's status symbols, e.g. 'sporty' cars where the fake exhaust note,
theoretical time around the Nurburgring and whatever else excites geriatric
Top Gear presenters 'matters'.

A new generation of Western consumer might not want these 'dad cars' and just
might prefer whatever comes out of China. There may be cheap plastics in these
cars, they may not even have self-driving, but the sum of the parts, price and
reliability might trump Western alternatives. We have had this before with VW
and Japanese compact cars gouging out the U.S. Big Three. There was no rocket
science in the VW Beetle but it was a better buy than what Detroit was
offering at the time. Putting up tariffs and complaining about the Japanese
merely copying didn't really help.

~~~
est
I think ex-employees steal previous company data all the time. It's just
happens that add "china" to the title these days can grab more attention.

------
skaul
Fascinating how _none_ of the Hacker News comments on a similar story some
months back (employee defecting to another company with driverless-technology
trade secrets) talked about Anthony Levandowski's nationality or race.

------
mozumder
So did the Chinese company actually acquire the stolen data?

------
Fricken
Adam Smith thought intellectual property rights were an 'unnecessary evil'.

------
product50
Can China not innovate at all? Why are they so keen on stealing IP? Their
other homegrown products such as WeChat and Xiaomi seem pretty competitive and
very catered to the local market. This is just giving such a bad name to the
country and supporting Trump's broad claims that China thrives on IP theft.

~~~
adventured
They're in a hurry. Culturally today they believe in a sort of global manifest
destiny for the near future of their nation. They believe they're destined to
be _the_ dominant power.

It's dramatically faster and cheaper to steal than to invest decades and
countless billions of dollars doing it the hard way.

The only way China can fully stand toe to toe with the US in the next two
decades or so, is to aggressively plunder beneficial IP wherever they can.
There has been no serious consequence for them doing so the past 30 years of
their rise. It's not below their dignity, because the mission overrules all.
They'll continue doing it until the cost is too high; their calculation is
probably that by that point they will already be fully self-sustaining as a
superpower. At that point they'll show you the door if you have a problem with
it (or worse).

China very carefully plays by the hide your power and bide your time strategy.
Xi recently admonished state media about bragging too heavily; that's all
about playing down their strength. China's ideal is to play it down until
they're strong enough so as to be beyond a reasonable challenge by other
powers (at least in their sphere of influence, Asia broadly).

~~~
mamborambo
China (PRC) culture suffers from two systemic weakness: the selfishness
created in one-child, post Cultural Revolution, and the cha-bu-duo (nearly
good enough) attitude of rapid modernization. In Asia many consumers think of
Japan and Korea as being committed to craftmanship and China as being low-cost
questionable quality.

Engineers and innovators growing up in such environment are naturally not
adverse to cutting corners to reach their goals quickly.

However I have to add that, given the huge population of China, the top 0.1%
can still be enormous, and once China learn to discard its shardy attitudes,
they can race ahead rapidly.

