MI5 head warns of 'epic scale' of Chinese espionage | Hacker News Reader

MI5 head warns of 'epic scale' of Chinese espionage

bbc.com

26 pointsfortran779 comments

There's this kind of crab bucket mentality where in the West we feel like we need to be ahead of China no matter what. That's not going to last if all we have is trade secrets keeping us in the lead. Maybe we should get back to innovating. Reduce the amount of red tape and stamp out rent seeking behaviour. UK's economic growth this year is projected to be just 0.5%. China's will be ~5%.

Frankly I have lost faith in our leadership. I really don't see how we can catch up at this point. Might be time to learn some Mandarin.

Economic growth is low because of democracy. (A little) more than half of all Brits are against growth (or at least against almost every imaginable policy that stimulates growth) because they reasonably believe this is against their interests. Older people with little education and some accumulated property will only lose from growth, the more of them in a democratic society, the less growth will happen. This isn't some failure of leadership, but a conscious intent by majority of population. UK is a conservative country and not by mistake.

I don't get it. Even Elon keeps trade secrets, to the point where he won't patent certain technologies because patents can be read by members of the public.

What's the point of innovating, if China can ctrl c/ctrl v your idea and then pay cheap labour to churn out a clone within a week?

Supposedly the one thing the internet can't ban, is knowledge theft?

>if China can ctrl c/ctrl v your idea and then pay cheap labour to churn out a clone within a week?

By being protective over our ideas we're admitting that China will do it cheaper and faster than us. Why can't we aim to beat them instead?

You want to beat them while giving away your ideas? ... ??? Huuahh?

I don't care about 'ideas', I care about protecting knowledge and high level intellectual work that takes real hard work to generate. "ideas" aren't often worth copy-pasting because they only apply to the person generating them anyway, like connecting a winch to a stuck tractor.

Protecting Einstein's theory generating work and then retaining the scientific offshoot products of his work, like Velcro from the Shuttle program, is what is worth protecting.

China wins because they are willing to work themselves to the bone, for relatively cheap.

We can replace the same tasks with machines, but we're not allowed to cut out working class jobs.

We can near fully machinize agriculture from wheat to plate, machinize mining from ore to metal.

What is 'beating China' in your books? I don't understand how you expect to show your hand and win at blackjack, at the same time... (or even why you would show your hand / give away your ideas for no reason..?).

> China will do it cheaper and faster than us

its more they will have advantage while abusing Western IP but still keeping its own intact.

I'm much more concerned about the West's 'epic scale' of espionage of its citizens.

I am concerned with both. No reason to pick one of the two.

It's almost comedic: domestic spy wearing Five-Eyes badge warns us we're being spied on!

>"Authoritarian states are laser-focused on the opportunities that these technologies represent."

They're trying to say this a reason China is bad, that sentence definitely applies to the UK at the moment.

The NPSA.gov.uk "Secure Innovation" advice amounts to very little; "make sure your systems are secure". That's about all you get.

From the detail it sounds like the Chinese "attack" could be 2 companies emailing 20,000 people asking if they want to work in AI with them ... it might be much worse, but based on the details given there's little substantiated.

Presumably the next step will be 'we need access to all businesses computer systems to check they're secure from spying'?

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