
GE Engineer Linked to China Stole Power Plant Technology, FBI Says - propman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ge-engineer-linked-to-china-allegedly-stole-power-plant-technology-fbi-says-1533235590
======
dmvinson

      In 2014, GE’s corporate security learned that Mr. Zheng 
      had copied more than 19,000 files from a GE-owned 
      computer to an external storage device, according to 
      the FBI affidavit.
      
      In late 2017, GE discovered he had saved about 400 
      files on his desktop computer using encryption software 
      not used by the company.
    

I don't understand why GE would keep him employed after the first offense. Can
someone who understands corporate bureaucracy explain this? Especially knowing
that he was literally running a competing business in China while employed at
GE.

~~~
ghein
Sometimes you catch a spy, fire them, and have them arrested.

Sometimes you identify, feed them false information, and watch who they talk
to...

Sometimes you screw up.

There can be good reasons for GE/FBI/CIA to let a spy keep their job.

~~~
barrow-rider
For example, Line X and the Farewell Dossier:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier)

------
zealsham
Why is the act usually perpetuated against the US. China trades with other
countries but rarely you hear news of China stealing their tech. Why does
China strive to a great deal to steal tech from the US

~~~
sneak
Copying information is not stealing.

~~~
adventured
If you hire me at your company, then I take _all_ the information, code,
files, work on your big new project that you've invested all of your company's
money into, and go to your competitor with it (for a handsome fee) - you're
not going to proclaim 'copying' your IP et al is not stealing. Not unless
you're suicidal and don't care about your employees and their jobs.

No business could survive and make long-term plans and large capital
investment if that's how the world actually worked.

How about walking out of an accounting firm with private business files and
handing them to competitors for a fee? Still not information stealing?

~~~
teddyh
Everything illegal is not “theft”. Kidnapping, for example, involves many of
the same aspects of theft, but still isn’t theft. Likewise, illegal copying
and corporate espionage, while they may be crimes, are not “theft”.

------
noiterme
I am a Chinese and I am not comfortable with most of comments here. But I see
lots of places that China companies can do much better though. I see people
are growing awareness of IP or copyright, I hope these companies can do just
better.

~~~
askaboutit
There is a whole society ingrained in “copying”. Mainland Chinese don’t see IP
theft as theft. They see it as simply “copying”. It’s ok to copy. But not to
steal right? So just preach that it’s ok by changing the view. Then allow
copying to happen endlessly without retribution because without it. The
economy is done.

~~~
filmor
Well, it is not theft. Theft means that what you are stealing is not there
anymore afterwards. Like actually stealing (unique) plans. Not saying that
copying is actually okay, but using more sensational terminology is not really
helping.

Same thing is going on with "piracy", in Germany they actually coined the term
"Raubkopie" (robbed copy) which implies that a copy is taken by violent force.

~~~
askaboutit
What about theft of revenue, profits, money spent on new R&D because there is
a company or government willing to copy your idea and subsidize its
development heavily as to maximise their economic growth.

It’s theft. Handbags to manufacturing techniques. Source code to schematics.
Science to business models. It’s all meant to prop up local business. Pin duo
duo just had their IPO. Now there’s so many fakes and copies that no one knows
what’s real on their anymore.

Didi vs Uber is a great example. Didi copied the idea, took government
subsidies. But then the government stole the competition completely by
shutting down Uber and forcing a merger with Didi.

~~~
filmor
You can't just redefine "theft" as "deprive of potential earnings/subsidies",
watering down definitions is helping no one. I agree that the depriving is
what is happening here by copying but this is what shouls be called out then,
not a made-up theft.

------
shrewduser
companies that use stolen tech should just not be allowed to sell to WTO
countries

~~~
tptptptptptp
Here's an idea: EU, US, and Japan should slap a 50% tariff on all Chinese
goods (made in China, or from Chinese companies). You're stealing our techs to
sell products back to our markets? We're punishing you with a 50% cut first.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And then China will reply - "with a couple of recent exceptions, we ain't
selling back shit - it's your companies who pay us to manufacture stuff for
you, and then they sell that stuff to you for 400% the price".

~~~
tptptptptptp
And then the rest of SE Asia will reply "we'll gladly take all the
manufacturing from China" And then EU, US, and Japan says "we better speed up
moving out of China". And China was never heard of again.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And then the rest of SE Asia will say, "oooh, juicy IP coming our way, just
asking to be copied!".

------
neya
If you look into the story of American Superconductor, Sanyo Shinkansen,
Apple's self driving car project and now, GE..it's all similar.

It's their culture, they don't believe in attribution nor fair trade, they're
used to growing up in a red ocean. That's the way they are.

I work with Chinese companies on a regular basis, I never give them access to
my repos, always uglify my JS code, and ensure strict rate limits for anything
other than my office's IP address and carefully monitor access logs from their
IPs and always implement kill switches in my software. I know what I'm doing
isn't going to stop them if they wanted to, but for most part, it keeps them
at bay.

Just watch out if you work in an industry where your IP is everything.

~~~
ta1672
I'm curious (and fearful) as a naturalized US citizen of former Chinese
nationality--is your sort of paranoia and general attribution of this to
culture common? The man arrested was a US citizen (and would have had to give
up Chinese citizenship to become one) but would have obviously looked Chinese.

If you had to work with me, would you actively try to obfuscate your work
because you believe at a cultural level that I'm keen to steal?

~~~
neya
> I work with Chinese companies on a regular basis, > I never give THEM
> access...

I've clearly explained my stance with Chinese companies. Ie. Companies from
China.

I've never mentioned anything at a personal level in my original comment.
That's your mis-interpretation. Sorry.

~~~
wimpelbone
Re-read your comment.

You said nasty things about Chinese companies because a US citizen stole IP
from GE. And then you wonder why a Chinese-born US would be wary of working
with you.

~~~
neya
I said those because, a US citizen stole IP from GE, but sent it back to
Chinese companies.

Hence, I clearly mentioned why I don't trust Chinese companies, whereas the
misinterpretation here is automatically the assumption that I have a problem
with Chinese as a race, which isn't true.

------
propman
This is NOT a cultural thing folks. I really want to emphasize this basic
basic fact. There are over 4 million Chinese Americans living here, 99% the
most hardworking, honest, brilliant immigrants in America. The lowest crime,
some of the highest success etc.

There are a handful of people stealing technologies though and the point I
want to make it ITS STATE SPONSERED. China gives you a handbook on how exactly
to steal technology and how to bring it back. The STATE SPONSERED stealing of
tech in specific fields is the problem and is estimated to lose the US $150B
every year according to a bipartisan report not including the rest of the
world. The CIA estimates thousands of government trained espionage operatives
are present in California alone, far more than any other country has had ever
and this doesn’t include the Confucious Initiatives all over the country. This
isn’t a Chinese problem at all, it’s the government of China specifically CCPs
fault that should be countered by government policy not mistrust.

------
Leary
Hopefully this discovery will help GE turn around its business

------
throwaway18923
Going to use a throwaway here as I'm afraid of professional repercussions,
despite being from the "land of the free."

Reading the comments here are just so funny. Why is it whenever a Chinese
person does something, or rather an "Asian person," it must be attributed to
their culture?

Do Chinese people not have personal traits? Could this guy just not be greedy?

There are 1.4 billion Chinese people. The ones that come to the US are over
achievers. It should not be surprising in a group of over achievers to have a
high percentage of greedy and opportunistic people.

Recently Ron Rockwell Hansen was arrested for spying for China. I wonder what
type of cultural norms caused him to do so?

~~~
throwaway234970
Also posting as a throwaway for similar reasons.

This comment brings up a valid point. When I was working in academia, a lab
from $large_and_famous_west_coast_university copied some code from a set of
open source scripts from another lab in my field on Github, erased the Git
history, and then created a new repo with a footnote in passing that they had
been "inspired" by the original scripts- pretty much a textbook case of
plagiarism. No one involved was Chinese (most were actually white male
Europeans).

In general, high profile researchers take incredibly morally repugnant /
unethical actions to get ahead.

~~~
rellui
It's "Open source". That's the whole point of open sourcing code. As long as
the lab attached the license provided it's good. This is completely different
than copying code from private internal repositories.

~~~
throwaway234970
You're missing the point / haven't read my other comment- in the context of
academia plagiarism amounts to stealing. Sure, there's nothing that's legally
preventing you from copying code and passing it off as your own so long as the
license is preserved, but in academia this has political and sometimes
economic ramifications.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/eOdFv](http://archive.is/eOdFv)

------
autoon
There are lots of bias in the comments. Some blame culture, which is wrong.
This is a simple case, just like Uber waymo lawsuit.
[https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-lawsuit-
settlement/](https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-lawsuit-settlement/)

Lots of Chinese companies don't steal IP and invest heavily in R&D, and they
want to contribute. On Github, many contributors are from China.

------
07d046
The interesting part, other than fitting into the "Chinese IP theft"
narrative, is that:

> [He] removed electronic files with company trade secrets involving its
> turbine technologies and hid data files in a digital photograph of a sunset.
> Prosecutors say he then emailed the picture to his email account.

[https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/08/01/us/ap-us-
general...](https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/08/01/us/ap-us-general-
electric-investigation.html)

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes?

~~~
Alex3917
Someone should make a new database engine for Postgres that has stores all the
data by embedding it steganographically in images and then automatically
uploading them to imgur. They could then be submitted to Reddit for faster
cacheing at edge locations.

~~~
robbyt
Interesting idea, but since imgur recompresses photos, so I'm not sure this
would work.

~~~
Asooka
Steganography can be sufficiently redundant so as to be resilient to
recompression. Of course then your signal-to-sunset ratio gets even lower.

~~~
samstave
[https://i.imgur.com/470fzsY.png](https://i.imgur.com/470fzsY.png)

------
lettergram
I'm sorry, but China has been a pro at stealing IP from the West. I'm actually
with Trump on this one (gasp) - but I think it needs to go one step further
and actually drop trade all together.

Fact is, China straight up has people from the government who sit in factories
reverse engineering the stuff that's built. The Chinese government (after it's
been reverse engineered) helps support competitive businesses, then locks out
the U.S. or other Western competitors (as it's in the national interest).

It's insane that the west has put up with this, because it's literally going
to cripple the west in the long run.

Regarding this case, it's espionage essentially... But not really supprising
given the prior events.

~~~
anonymous5133
Exactly. None need look further than the story of american superconductor.
American superconductor made wind turbine control systems. They partnered with
a Chinese company called sinovel who made the turbines. Eventually some
Chinese engineer stole the company's software and gave it to the company. The
Chinese company canceled the contract with american superconductor and then
used the stolen IP to continue business as usual. American superconductor was
nearly bankrupted in the process.

Free trade only works if you have fair trade, otherwise it is every man for
themselves. Trump knows that trade with China is rigged so there is no point
in having free trade with them. Most people who complain about Trump playing
hardball with China are very uninformed about the reality of the situation.
China is getting ready to gut the US economy from the inside out. China will
make sure it never has a trade deficit with the USA. They will buy some of our
stuff but only if they have a trade surplus.

~~~
Fricken
Knowledge wants to be free. Adam Smith considered IP laws to be an unnecessary
evil. The Chinese are just being good capitalists. American Superconductor
nearly went bankrupt because they couldn't compete on a level playing field.

[https://youtu.be/axXTMUmTOyE](https://youtu.be/axXTMUmTOyE)

~~~
alehul
Do you believe that, without IP law, we'd still have companies invest the
amounts they do into creating new technology (particularly in high R&D areas
like pharma)?

~~~
Andhurati
Isn't most research done in government labs or universities?

Innovation is great but it's mostly a buzzword to describe the aformentioned
research in commercial areas

~~~
adventured
No. The US Government is 18%-20% of all R&D spending in the US. A lot of that
is in the military budget of course.

Which makes perfect sense when you consider the size of the private economy
versus the share of government spending that could reasonably go to R&D
(versus entitlements, military, infrastructure, etc).

Private corporations are around ~$400 billion of the ~$550 billion per year
spent in the US on R&D.

The government R&D figure as a share is higher in the EU than in the US, but
not dramatically so. The private sector is simply too large by comparison and
can focus its resources more narrowly on things like R&D than what a
government could be expected to.

~~~
alehul
Not only does private industry spend more on R&D, but I'd personally argue
that their $400 billion is required to be more effective at a per-dollar
level, given the inherent competitiveness and need to create something
profitable.

------
yhoneycomb
>Xiaoqing Zheng (JOW'-shing zehng)

this pronunciation is so off it offends me

~~~
macintux
Feel free to correct it for those of us who don't have a clue.

~~~
yhoneycomb
Sure thing

Should be pronounced like this:

Shiao - Ching - Zheng

Shiao is pronounced like "shout" without the t, or "ow" (like you hurt
yourself) with an sh in front of it

Ching is pretty self-explanatory. Rhymes with sing, but starts with ch.

Zheng is harder to describe. It's similar to "zing" but instead think "zeng"
(with the e pronounced like the e in end). Now, to pronounce the "zh" sound
try to pronounce "it's" but stop yourself at the interface between the t and
the s. That is about the sound that you should be making. Don't make the sssss
sound either. It's more of a z sound. Like if you saying "zzzzz" and then
moved your tongue back a bit.

~~~
nick0garvey
You described the z initial, not the zh initial. zh is very similar to the
English j.

"Sheow Ching Jung" is a better approximation.

~~~
yhoneycomb
>zh is very similar to the English j.

I strongly disagree... what makes you say that, Nick Garvey?

------
jfoutz
Modern day Slater. Good for them.

The overall situation annoys me, but congratulations to the person.

------
nabla9
IP theft by spies just like piracy but between businesses and governments.
Governments business should try to keep secrets as much as they can, of
course, but losing secrets is rarely net negative globally.

~~~
agumonkey
do companies have counter intelligence ?

~~~
nabla9
They do.

Corporate Counterintelligence and Cybersecurity Services is growing business
area.

------
grecy
Given there are ~7.5 billion people on Earth, and given we're getting more
interconnected every single day, and given there is more "stuff" being
invented every single day, at what point will we just assume this kind of
stuff is commonplace and it won't make the news anymore?

In the same way a lot of forward-looking people are seeing a future were full-
time work will have to be replaced by some form of Universal Basic Income, I
wonder when we'll realize the whole IP / Copyright / "It's mine, you can't
have it" mentality will have to be replaced.

~~~
Leary
The reason why we have IP laws is that we assume innovators are selfish and
will only innovate for personal economic gains.

~~~
PeterisP
You don't need to assume that they'll _only_ innovate for such gains.

You can avoid absolutes and simply assume that _many_ innovators are selfish,
and personal economic gains are a strong motivation that works in _many_
cases; which seems absolutely true and is a sufficient reason why IP laws
would be useful.

------
sneak
I wonder when we as a human society can get past this silly nationalistic idea
that one can steal information or technological ideas or designs. The entire
concept of intellectual property is a hack to prop up industry revenues; it is
not reality. The free flow of information and discoveries is essential to the
advancement of the human condition.

It’s sad that more often than not, chinese hackers get this and US hackers do
not.

~~~
frockington
Without patents, pharmaceutical companies would cease to do research. Its not
feasible in some sectors to do research if someone else can copy it with none
of the cost

~~~
pishpash
There is no indication that this GE technology is patent protected. With
private "trade secrets" which can be kept wrapped indefinitely, the public
never gets the benefit of disclosure while incurring the cost of monopoly.
There is an argument to be made for non-patent trade secrets being an overall
negative.

~~~
frockington
That's a fair point. I wonder if the US Government would let them patent
military trade secrets

