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Comment by harles | Hacker News Reader

The espionage really is next level in China. It’s not just reconstructing software (that’s part of it) but stealing binaries (and source where they can) for everything along the way.

I worked at a large tech co with an assembly line in China and experienced this first hand. A routine scan of one of our calibration machines turned up a Trojan with a copy of all calibration software squirreled away. Fortunately nothing is network connected there, but it was obvious someone was planning to come back for it. The stash had our calibration software and the factory’s proprietary control software on it. Both companies sent security to watch the machine for 48 hours straight until a hard drive shredder could be procured to mutually assure each party no software would leak. It was nuts, but apparently common.

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How did this become a thing on a cultural scale? Like that everyone does it and it is almost expected as it were?

It's master planned by the government.

Just Google "Chinese protectionist" and then any industry. The Chinese government has been actively targeting everything from CNC machine tools to medical devices and semiconductors for decades. Some industries with more success than others. Anything they import, especially industrial equipment like textile looms, cnc machines, semiconductor equipment, etc. There are big, long term, well funded pushes to manufacture indigenous versions of just about everything. Airplanes, jet engines, computer chips, industrial equipment, on and on

Textile looms are particularly relevant : https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur...

it's not espionage, it's a development strategy, and it's working well. it foster local knowledge, local know how and local production.

the deal is: you can use our cheap labor force, but we can use your ideas

The issue appears to be when they’re not just using the ideas, but the implementations verbatim?

That's not "the deal". It's illegal. No one on either side agreed to do this and had that been part of the negotiation, the offended party would have walked away or else agreed to a higher sale price in exchange for technology transfer.

Am yes, executives of eestern firms earn billions spesifically because they are clueless about the country where they outsource production.

It might nit be in the contract, but they definitely know whats going on, and they still take the deal

> It's illegal.

According to who? Sovereign states have their own laws, that's what makes them sovereign.

You claim that companies wouldn't have done business in China (in the times before our current Second Cold War) had they known about the lack of IP law enforcement there. I think companies who outsourced to China knew very well what was going on, and calculated that they'd still come out ahead.

I agree with this. The executives that made the decision to outsource and offshore understood that near term gains would come with long term consequences, they always do. Those executives did very well by those short term gains.

According to international trade law and China itself. [1] People are making absolutely wild, misinformed claims that don't belong here. Claiming executives knew what they were getting into is pure conjecture.

> Sovereign states have their own laws, that's what makes them sovereign.

You're making a grossly misinformed claim here. Sovereign countries also participate outside their borders and are subject to the international agreements they participate in.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_...

> Claiming executives knew what they were getting into is pure conjecture.

Schrodinger's executive - when things go well, it's because they meticulously planned every detail. When things go wrong, suddenly they know less about their business than my grandma does.

What is the cause of this habit of making up excuses for people that get massive compensation but never take any responsibility?

Do you understand that the side of this argument you're representing is making excuses for internationally illegal theft as, "well they sure had it coming?"

The side you are representing was trusted with safekeeping this information. They purposefully placed it into the jurisdiction where it is frequently, systematically stolen. They clearly did this to save a few bucks. Quite reasonably, some people are asking, why do they face no accountability for this decision.

You are coming up with excuses like "well they couldn't possibly be aware of information that was widely avaliable in mass media since 2010 at least.

Would you accept this sort of excuse if someone was in charge of safekeeping your child and they took your kid for a walk through an area known for violence and murder?

I can no longer follow your argument, sorry. This is blatantly moving goalposts to excuse theft and defend what exactly? Are you suggesting industrial theft at a mass scale is excusable because they knew the risks? That is the definition of victim-blaming.

Shareholders are victims, executives are their agents that acted against shareholder’s long term interests.

Here is a better example; you trust the bank with your money, bank gets robbed. The criminals are gonna be criminals. But why is the bank vault made of cardboard, and why is the password ‘1234’? Imagine the same bank keeps getting robbed for 10 years, and they make no attempt to fix things.

Should the management still get their bonus? Should they be help to account? At some point you have to start asking if the bank management is in on the crime.

Mainand Chinese culture owes itself more to Stalin than to Confucius. If you lived in USSR stories like this have certain warmth of deep cultural connect.

Information wants to be free. If it's not, it's your duty to liberate it.

This is so obnoxiously wrong. You could add qualifications to your statement to be less wrong but your statement as is is stupid. When I'm banging my wife is it my duty to start banging on the walls and bellow at my sleeping kids to let them know what I'm up to?

That's just creating noise and disturbance. Correct analogies would be uploading it to Pornhub. For whatever reason plenty of people do that

What does your analogy have to do with my post?

> How did this become a thing on a cultural scale?

A IP is not a 'natural' concept, most cultures do not have it. Better question might be how did IP become a cultural thing in the West?

Of course they have IP in China. If a western firm violates a chinese firms IP they will of course take action.

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