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Comment by walshemj | Hacker News Reader

Surprised that he is not being charged under the espionage act and also in a way why apple hired him - or is the USA less strict about hiring into sensitive industries.

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espionage act for non political / military related corporate secrets? Kinda glad it doesn’t work that way

Even if you're giving the secrets to another state?

Especially in this case, where autonomous vehicles could have military applications...

>Even if you're giving the secrets to another state?

Industrial espionage / theft of trade secrets is not in the realm of the Espionage Act (even if that industrial espionage is directed by a foreign state).

Apple's Neat Car That Drives Itself is not classified technology and is not national defense information.

See: Economic Espionage Act

> or is the USA less strict about hiring into sensitive industries.

No. On the contrary you need various kinds of security clearances to work in sensitive fields.

Whoa there buddy.

How about we be a little careful with the xenophobic talk, no?

It's not xenophobic to want or expect a country to protect its IP from a country known to openly flout such rules.

Questioning why Chinese nationals are hired in tech is xenophobia. Period.

I think they were questioning why Apple would hire a non-US citizen to work closely on valuable US trade secrets.

Right, xenophobia.

It's not xenophobic to exclude people who are citizens of a country with no extradition treaty from working on sensitive projects.

Also consider a large number of Russian and Chinese spies have been American citizens born in America and who've lived in America their whole lives. Collaboration with a foreign government is not 1-to-1 with what country you're a citizen of.

It's certainly not 1 to 1, but it's hardly farfetched to believe that someone born in China and presumably still a citizen of it (and thus not of the US) is more likely to abscond to China with the proprietary IP of an American company than a random American citizen born in America who's lived there their entire life.

Yes, of course, but if you start looking at everyone from a foreign country with suspicion, you're not going to have a tenable situation. For certain extremely high-value things like military and defense projects, those precautions are necessary, but otherwise you're just eliminating large amounts of potential talent for probably no good reason.

It would be but nobody really does that on the basis of extradition treaties anyway.

You should probably have made that clear in your original comment. I missed it myself.

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