Feds: Chinese spies orchestrated hack that stole aviation secrets

> Apparently a major contributor to their downfall was all of the IP being stolen

If a company is heavily dependent upon existing IP then having it all stolen will be a major contributor to their downfall. But so is that dependence. Hard to make suggestions without appearing to victim blame, but companies need to be able to survive even without secrets.

China also couldn't make a ballpoint pen until last year [1].

I imagine making a modern jet engine is somewhat more challenging than making a ballpoint pen (both endeavours involve making high precision metal parts).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/01/18...

The Soviets also couldn't crack the jet engine but the English helpfully provided a Rolls-Royce engine for the Mig-15 just in time for the Korean War.

"What fool will sell us his secrets?", asked Uncle Joe Stalin. "I will", said Sir Richard Stafford Cripps, CH, FRS.

Having the designs itself can only carry you so far. You also need the fine precision tools, materials engineering, software, etc in order to build sophisticated machinery.

China is advancing quickly but they can't make up 200 years of industrial headstart by the west in 20 years.

It wouldn't seem necessary to fabricate such elaborate stories because:

1. Most Americans aren't paying attention / don't respond to them.

2. We clearly have a situation where POTUS if he wanted could just make up a story and get people's attention.

On the other hand stories like this would fit in nicely with state run / controlled media as the feed could simply be placed where you know it would get attention (if only because it is exists largely by itself).

As a foreigner living in China, I can say that the populace is like many other countries. You have your normal people who don't really keep track of what's going on, you have your informed people who have informed opinions and realize that the world is a complicated place, and then you have your crazies who are filled with distrust of other nations and conspiracy theories in the name of nationalism and patriotism. There are some people who view these activities as negative, and there are some people who view these activities as positive, and there are some people who never even think about it. We must acknowledge there are many in China who do endorse these activities too, just as there are people in the US who feel bombing North Korea is the right thing to do. There is no need to make things look nicer than they are, just as there is no need to make things look worse than they are.

And ironically, let's face it, every country is doing something in the spy game, China is not alone in using underhanded methods to steal secrets and intelligence. And each country can easily spout their justifications too.

> As an ethical Chinese myself

What is unethical about nation states spying on other nation states' militaries? The aerospace industry - of every country - is intimately entangled with their defense departments.

I don't think most do, I don't.

But, I don't think China is somewhere I would want to live and it has nothing to do with the people. Then again for the same reason ok wouldn't want to live in the US right now

Nothing has shifted. Spies without diplomatic immunity have always been criminally prosecuted. Often they're held in prison for a while, then quietly repatriated in return for one of our spies or some other political concession.

Here's a few ways of thinking about it:

1. Escalation, the instinctive response of angry humans, is generally a bad idea in international relations (or any relations). I once read a veteran practitioner express it this way: 'The job of international relations is to prevent a B-level problem from becoming an A-level one'. The U.S. and China, for example, have a very large number of interactions on an enormous number of issues; if someone retaliated every time they were unhappy - and then of course the other side would re-retaliate - that would be all that was happening, lots of treasure would be wasted, war would be risked, and positive things wouldn't get done. That doesn't mean that you do nothing, but you need to respond in a way that doesn't escalate the situation - it's not always easy to thread that needle, but that's what the professionals are there for. Another reason retaliation is bad is that it puts the other side in control of your actions - they can provoke you into doing what suits them, when it suits them. You want to act at the time and place and using the means that best suits you, not dance to their tune.

2. The U.S. does take action against them, but not in public. This helps prevent escalation - the Chinese government isn't publicly challenged and forced to respond.

3. Espionage is, in one sense, like a state of war. The U.S. is already doing all they can to shut down Chinese espionage and to spy on China, and vice versa. China isn't breaking any rules in the context of espionage (AFAIK), and if the U.S. could do more, they'd already be doing it.

Because that would be hypocritical. Most likely all large governments try to hack other governments.

Most likely because they all do it

You don’t think some part of the tariffs is because of this?

Because every government hacks, spies on and steals from every other government. The US was built on stealing tech from britain.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-18/us-complains-other-na...

Going back even further, the byzantine empire stole silkworms to break china's monopoly on silk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smuggling_of_silkworm_eggs_int...

As a matter of fact, the biggest spies and thieves in the world are allies. Do you know who spies on the US the most? It's not china. It's not russia. It's actually canada, britain and israel. Do you know who we spy on the most? Our allies. We aren't going to sanction our allies.

Think about it. Why do countries have intelligence agencies? Should we sanction all countries with intelligence agencies?

It's Melbourne IT. A terrible company that somehow still gets large contracts despite ripping clients off at every step. I'm sure their entire staff is underpaid 457s.

Everybody is talking about the social aspect of Bolsonaro in brazil, but the major thing people are ignoring is the impact on China. Together US and Brazil produce 80%+ of the worlds soybeans and corn. Brazil has been friendly with China for years but Bolsonaro hates them more than Trump. If they work together they can effectively starve China into complying with trade laws

> Trade should not be conducted through industrial espionage or intelligence agencies as a standard approach.

That's literally how it's worked throughout history. Europeans did it. Americans did it. Now the Chinese are doing it.

Should and how the world actually works are two different things that do not always align.

Remember that the CIA did worse (like droning children in Yemen), be careful what you wish for.

> This lines up with having a Chinese spy in California Senator Diane Feinstein's office

That's not really an accurate description of what happened. Here's Feinstein's statement:

"Five years ago the FBI informed me it had concerns that an administrative member of my California staff was potentially being sought out by the Chinese government to provide information. He was not a mole or a spy, but someone who a foreign intelligence service thought it could recruit.

The FBI reviewed the matter, shared its concerns with me and the employee immediately left my office. He never had access to classified or sensitive information or legislative matters. The FBI never informed me of any compromise of national security information."

Nothing in your article or any other reputable sources I've read conflict with that statement.

From your article:

'“He didn’t even know what was happening — that he was being recruited,” says our source. “He just thought it was some friend.”

The FBI apparently concluded the driver hadn’t revealed anything of substance.

“They interviewed him, and Dianne forced him to retire, and that was the end of it,” says our source.'

A friend of mine is volunteering for someone's campaign.

He said as soon as it was semi public that he was involved his personal email lit up with fake emails. His email wasn't even listed anywhere in association with the campaign and he didn't use it for the campaign. Presumably they just guessed it (could have done that easily) or they found a list or something.

So just getting involved, now you're personally involved all the way.

That would raise a variety of other serious issues. Besides the ethical problem that just because someone else does something bad, doesn't make it ok for you to do that bad thing.

I could list several important reasons why "hacking back" would be a bad idea, but I'll just stick to the pragmatic "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". We have a much larger surface area and much more to lose if we get into that kind of tit-for-tat. Instead, the US is building a case that China is an aggressor, and is responding in other ways that will apply more pressure. For example, tariffs on Chinese exports.

By "rent-seekers" you mean organizations that have spent billions of dollars to research and prove the tech? As the current top comment represents, if company A spends billions of dollars creating a technology, then company B steals it, company B can sell it for less because they don't have to pay the R&D overhead. Company A falters or dies. The company that actually knew how to advance the field and create new tech suffered. Is that good for the world?

The way it is supposed to work is, company A researches a tech, company b also researches a tech, the best one wins (or more likely they split the market), the competition induces more advances, and eventually the old tech becomes cheap (or free) and widely available as it is supplanted by even newer, better tech.

And yea I know our patent system is broken, etc. But I don't understand how you can have a general principle that the people who created something don't have the right to benefit off of it.