Five Eyes Intelligence Chiefs Warn on China's 'Theft' of IP (reuters.com) 102
The Five Eyes countries' intelligence chiefs came together on Tuesday to accuse China of intellectual property theft and using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying against the nations, in a rare joint statement by the allies. From a report: The officials from the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - known as the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network - made the comments following meetings with private companies in the U.S. innovation hub Silicon Valley. U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the "unprecedented" joint call was meant to confront the "unprecedented threat" China poses to innovation across the world.
From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said. "China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," Wray said. "Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous." In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.
From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China was stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said. "China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," Wray said. "Every strand of that web had become more brazen, and more dangerous." In response, Chinese government spokesman Liu Pengyu said the country was committed to intellectual property protection.
Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funny and sad moment in Top Gear
https://youtu.be/dMsRMcqQ6Is [youtu.be]
Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
How do you say "duh" in Mandarin?
IDK, I learned all my Mandarin from Firefly, and they only used it to curse. ;-)
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"duh", duh.
But being a multi-toned language it can potentially have various meanings depending on e.g. whether it is a rising or falling tone.
You really need to reference which logogram in written Chinese is in use to determine which of the possible meanings is intended.
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Unprecedented? (Score:5, Insightful)
For decades the claim has been that China steals all IP, everything China ever invented was actually stolen, if you do any business with China they own all your IP, every hack is some Chinese government operation to steal your IP, China doesn't have any IP protections, your product will be instantly cloned and the market flooded with knock offs...
An now they say there is an "unprecedented" threat of IP theft. What now, are they using their mind reading rays to suck the data straight out of engineer's brains?
Re:Unprecedented? (Score:5, Interesting)
I had been involved or observing in projects attempting to "partner" with China for over 20 years an never once was there a case where IP theft was not an issue.
My first experience was with early Huawei. There was a trade show in Chicago (I think "Comtel") where the trade show executive were forced to restrict Huawei personnel from the trade show floor. They had been coming in after hours and taking apart other company's exhibits and photographing the circuit boards. That was back in the '90s.
At another trade show in Europe, Siemens marketing people were taken by surprise to see products that had identical form/fit/function to their own being sold by a Chinese company. Siemens thought they were selling those products for deployment in China and some of them were deployed, but they were obviously viewed as prototype/reference designs there.
An Intel engineer i met in Shanghai told me of a story where a China-based auto company duplicated perfectly a Honda Pilot and started selling it. Identical except the logo. They didn't understand why there would be any objection.
For one company I worked with, their key to selling successfully into China was their IP was in encrypted FPGAs. Apparently that was a sufficient barrier to reverse-engineering the product such that they could continue to sell for years.
Stories go on and on like that. Although the government is trying to update the corporate culture to western notions of IP ownership, by and large most of the capitalists hustling their businesses do not see IP as something that can be actually owned. What they own instead are factories and supply chains, and relationships into their vendors. They are perfectly fine with 3% margins which would be the ruin of any western company. As long as they can keep their lines going, employees on the job, and the money flowing in even a slightly positive sense they will do that. Stealing IP is fine because they really don't consider it stealing in the first place.
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Hate to be the one to break it to you, but that's all normal stuff that happens in every country. Theft from trade shows. Pretending to be customers to get samples and ask technical questions. One time one of our customers let us remote desktop in to diagnose an issue, and left a browser window with a competitor's web interface open. Might have bought them lunch.
I was widely rumored that Air France business class was regularly bugged for commercial espionage purposes.
Japanese companies copied a lot of Weste
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Degree matters.
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Bad mod China shill earned his 50 cents.
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Bad mod China shill earned his 50 cents.
Western dickhead earns a place in the food stamp queue with standard US reply.
The West represents 1/7 of the world's population and the other 6/7 don't give a shit about the laws and regulations you impose on them.
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That's the dumbest reply you could have had. Congratulations! Population count is irrelevant to global power. Your racism is irrelevant to global power as well.
The only things that matter are military, cultural and economic might. China's billion rural dirt poor rice farmers are not a power multiplier.
Now that the Western world is waking up to the evil shit your CCP masters are up to, such as slavery, government enforced mass rape, organ harvesting of political prisoners or keep your withering overlords
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Population count is irrelevant to global power. Your racism is irrelevant to global power as well.
The only things that matter are military, cultural and economic might.
That was then, Commodore Perry. This is now.
Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing when Ford takes apart a Chrysler transmission to see how they reduced shift times, and if they could use that technique in their own transmissions. This absolutely happens in a lot of western corporations.
It's another thing when Ford takes apart a Chrysler transmission, clones it, and starts selling knockoffs through a shell corporation to Africa and South American markets. This is the kind of behavior that gets you sued for multiple billions of dollars, which is why the vast majority of western corporations don't do it. If you raise a similar stink in China, all of a sudden you stop getting parts shipments on time. I am not making this up, this actually happened, and is currently happening. Heck, ten years ago a Chinese sales rep was sued for selling counterfeit Cisco routers. Not knockoffs - clones that run IOS. Last year a US company was sued for doing the same thing.
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They are called "pattern parts" and agree extremely common in Europe. If your insurance company repairs your car, they will very likely want the garage to use copies rather than the original parts, because copies are cheaper.
Completely legal too, unless active patents and involved.
Cars (Score:2)
Which is why I used a transmission as an example. Drivetrains are patented eight ways from Sunday. If you notice, all car manufacturers build their own engines, and roughly half use in-house transmissions. Most other parts are off the shelf.
You are right, if you need a replacement radiator or water pump for your car, knock-offs are fine. There is no analog for an engine or transmission. You might have a situation where a cheapo Tata transmission could work in a Fiat because it's a licensed clone, but that i
Re:Unprecedented? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not on the level of China....
State sponsored (remember, they own/control ALL businesses in China)...they take it to levels no one else can imagine.
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Re: Unprecedented? (Score:1)
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Speaking of state sponsored, a few years ago I was working on project for protecting waterways. The California government was trying to clone our technology, using a mixture of reverse engineering and demanding that we give up certain information to get the contract.
The solution was to set up a subsidiary in California, because apparently there is some law that they can't compete directly with businesses, but only US based businesses.
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I used to work for a company that made hard drive head lapping equipment: Big round disks that spun for weeks slowly grinding down rows of hard drive heads to very very precise tolerances.
We sold equipment all over the place, essentially anywhere hard drives were manufactured- US, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, and eventually China.
Eventually, we stopped selling to China because competing devices, with the included bits of nonsense circuit traces, started showing up in China to compete with ours. This ONLY h
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I don't really consider it stealing either.
Oh no companies only make 3% margins, how terrible. As opposed to apple that sells a phone that costs $558 to make for $1,199. (source https://www.tomsguide.com/news... [tomsguide.com]) and locks you into paying for overpriced repair bill. This to me seems more like stealing.
Forcing companies into being efficient is how capitalism is supposed to work, if you can't survive go under.
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This to me seems more like stealing.
Stealing implies a lack of consent. No one is being forced to hand over that $1,199 for an iPhone. There are numerous competitors and yet consumers still choose the iPhone, which seems to me like a market working as expected.
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Stealing implies taking something from someone, depriving you of the use, if I "steal" your idea, you are still free to use it. Take the old analogy comparing copying a movie to stealing a car. The answer is if of course I would steal a car if I could take a photo, 3D print it at home for close to zero. You still have your car you are free to drive it as much as you want.
Also lack of consent is relative, if you are die I get you to consent to something its still stealing.
Having to pay apple for a batter rep
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copying isn't theft [youtube.com]
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For decades the claim has been that China steals all IP, everything China ever invented was actually stolen, if you do any business with China they own all your IP, every hack is some Chinese government operation to steal your IP, China doesn't have any IP protections, your product will be instantly cloned and the market flooded with knock offs...
Not too long ago I worked for a Fortune 500 company in the USA. My severance agreement restricts for a while what I can say about them on social media, so I am not going to give you their name. I can tell you that they are in the bottom half of the Fortune 500 and North America is their largest market for what they do and while they are truly an international company, if they lost every bit of their business outside of the USA and Canada they would survive fine although they would have to do lay offs.
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This sounds an awful lot like a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
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Why would there be obvious examples, isn't a major part of spying not to be obvious?
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We do, however, occasionally hear about commercial espionage when it involves spying on public figures in govts., e.g. during international trade negotiations. You can find several instances of that over the years, e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Apparently, it's most of what spy agencies do, which is why it's imperative that executives, public & private, heed the advice & foll
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From the number of engineers in China, I suspect that IP theft is going the other way.
Semi-meh (Score:3)
China does some shit that makes me want to torch some Chinese politicians, but industrial espionage isn't one of them.
How much did we just hand to them and ask them to make it for us?
Re: Semi-meh (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically all that is supposedly "stolen". Same thing happens time and again and did kick-start the US ecconomy als well.
Re:Semi-meh (Score:5, Interesting)
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If I leave my front door wide open and go on vacation you are still a criminal if you take all my stuff.
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If I leave my front door wide open and go on vacation you are still a criminal if you take all my stuff.
Nobody stole your stuff, dickhead. You still have all of it.
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How much did we just hand to them and ask them to make it for us?
Yes, how stupid of our business people to have made the assumption that Chinese companies and the government would respect our patent laws like every other country we hand shit over to make for us does.
On top of this, just because they acquired large amounts of our technology via manufacturing stuff for us doesnt mean they havent also been engaging in large amounts of actual industrial espionage at the same time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . The two things are not mutually exclusive.
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The whole edifice of intellectual property is essentially a rent-seeking scheme by Western countries, so it should be little surprise that other, newer players are not really interested.
It was a stupid idea that only worked as long as the rent-seekers were hegemons. Things be a changing, along with a lot of other stuff.
Re:Semi-meh (Score:4, Informative)
While the duration things remain patented is likely far too long it is still the best way I've ever heard of to make sure that those who innovate actually benefit from their innovation. Without that benefit we would see a hell of a lot less innovation. Also, these newer players (who arent all that new anymore in regards to China) will be singing an entirely different song the second they have an original idea of their own that ends up stolen.
I most definitely dont see this changing either. As China continues to develop it will only find things like patent law to be more desirable rather than less and no other country in the world that would take manufacturing jobs from us has the clout China does to just shrug their shoulders when confronted with this stuff. Smaller countries like Vietnam could actually face serious repercussions for similar actions.
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Will they be interested in economic transfers to the West? You are more sanguine than I.
Fast forward a couple hundred years and maybe you're right. Until the decision of who is going to dominate the globe is solved, I doubt they are going to be interested. We should recognize the Chinese pragmatism on this issue as a strength of theirs, similar to how the Muslim ability to organize new territory in the pursuit of further conquest by features of their doctrine was also a strength that resulted in the Musl
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China is already building up a large amount of its own innovations that it will want to keep protected. It's only a matter of time before the costs of stealing other country's innovations outweighs the benefits as if they are stealing other people's IP there's no reason for others to respect theirs.
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Without that benefit we would see a hell of a lot less innovation
By the contrary, we may see a hell of a lot more innovation. All this "intellectual property" rent is an incentive to not innovate: you create a product and then sit on your laurels, cashing IP rent from its use, have no incentive to innovate as money continue to come with no effort.
If another company reverse engineer your products and sell copies, they can't do it overnight, will take time. And if they are just copiers, they won't understand your products and won't be able to improve them. If you are a tru
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You use the phrase tent seeking like rent is immoral or unethical.
If I own or created something you want, pay for it.
If you don't like my terms, tough shit.
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Lmao, no one is trying to own the English language.
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.... and I say Bravo to this! If i invent something, invest my hard earned time and energy bringing it from pipe dream, through idea, to instantiation, I do definitely want that time I spent covered by the patentable product I created... If you, walk in, take pics of my products guts, and then go make the same exact thing and sell it, then I am going to hate on you.
You weren't smart enough to prevent your product from being copied and manufactured.
Hate all you like. You still have your precious idea to keep you warm.
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If some pics would allow your competitors to come instantly with similar or better products than yours, then your products weren't that much.
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Care to wager about the same warnings and news stories coming out of India in the future.
I would wager. Very much doubt India has the skills and culture needed to produce worthy knock-offs.
Fun Story (Score:5, Interesting)
Years ago I worked for an electronics company. A group of engineers flew over to China to look at getting a widget built. They visited a bunch of joint-venture contract manufacturers with no issue. Then they visited a wholly Chinese government owned operation. While on the tour of the factory floor, one of the engineers went back to the conference room to grab his phone. Some employees from the factory had the example widget disassembled and were taking pictures of it. They apologized and left quickly. The manager of the factory made up something about safety, and the engineers immediately crossed that factory off of their list. Counterfeit widgets did show up years later, but I doubt this had anything directly to do with it.
The funniest part was on the brochure for that factory, they had pictures on how nice their facilities and cafeteria was. All the employees in the cafeteria picture were wearing their bunny suits, which is not how that is supposed to work.
naive company (Score:3)
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The first mistake is having anything made in China. The country has long had zero respect for IP and will continue to have no respect for IP. You guys were fucked the moment you went over. Either the factory sells the plans to everyone else...or they just produce their own version. I've had a design I ultimately did not sell because the company wanted to make them in China...and I said "absolutely not as that will ensure none of us make any money".
They got someone else to do the design. They had it made in
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You just don't have shit made in China...period...unless you absolutely don't care about them stealing it.
It's like they're communists or something, and they don't care about capitalist laws!
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Since the planet is at peace, Five Eyes has been feeling increasingly irrelev
it's just one eye: the us. plus its lapdog and the cheerleaders. and this is just propaganda. intelligence bodies gather intelligence, they don't share it with the world. so when they do share something you can be certain it's just narrative serving some agenda.
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Since the planet is at peace
What planet do you live on and can I hitch a ride there?
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Whether the planet is at peace might be an interesting discussion.
But, its more about scale .... population growth, 'net access, increasing services access by 'all' generates
a haystack so big that looking for 'needles' in it become ever more expensive, and probably, ever more
fruitless a task. Looking for 'bad guys' on a planetary scale does sound like a job for cengenital optimists.
my 2d/2c
SD
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Whether the planet is at peace might be an interesting discussion.
The planet is pretty peaceful, considering how it started, how many non-peaceful events its went through. The people living on it, however? That's a different story. I'm not at all certain that we're capable of true peace. We seem to enjoy fighting too much.
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yeah, honestly going through our history, it seems we are having way too much fun killing each other to ever want to stop.
We've always enjoyed killing each other. Once we figured out a way to do it on a massive scale, then further figured out how to turn that massive amount of killing into a profitable business? There's zero incentive to stop, and every incentive to keep pushing the envelope on better ways to kill more!
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IP Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe the whole concept of claiming to own ideas is an idea that needs to be revisited.
And they are telling me the west doesn't spy on China?
Congratulations Five Eyes! (Score:5, Funny)
So these intelligence chiefs finally figured out what the rest of us have known for decades? Way to go, guys! Great work!
boo-fucking-hoo (Score:2)
the five eyes are deprecated and can't understand they're about to disappear in oblivion...
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Spying is now an obsolete and outdated concept?
I'm curious (Score:3)
OK these are public servants, right? ...but then they had a CLOSED meeting for 'entrepreneurs and investors' only?
They had a public statement about 'China's spying on us!' - great, glad to see it.
I'm genuinely curious what they told these folks that they didn't say in the open meeting.
I mean, sure, I expect the conference itself was the reason there was a 2-tier event ($premium$ tickets) but we're not talking national secrets (or better not be).
As government officials of nominal-democracies, their non-secret comments better be available for everyone at some point.
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> but then they had a CLOSED meeting for 'entrepreneurs and investors' only?
Merger of state and corporate interests?
If only polisci had given us a name for that!
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Likely something like, "Hey company XYZ CEO, your factory in Pittsburg has bern compromised" followed by details.
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I'm genuinely curious what they told these folks that they didn't say in the open meeting.
I have been in similar meetings. They don't actually say much more in the 'secret' meetings. They do take the 'kid gloves' off with the verbiage and share some perspectives that you may not have thought of, but nothing truly secret is ever discussed in those types of meetings. You never hear about the meetings where truly secret stuff is discussed.
Perspiration (Score:3)
American culture values inspiration over perspiration, so we wind up with patent trolls, patent warchests, costly legal battles, and a dearth of products.
Chinese culture favors perspiration over inspiration so they will gladly steal, rip off, and mass-produce your idea if you're not doing so for a low cost.
The real name for "CCP" is "Public Property Party". Commies who outmanufacture the "capitalists".
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Americans work more hours/week than almost anyone.
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"Americans work more hours/week than almost anyone."
Yeah...in minimum wage McJobs requiring the IQ of a turnip.
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That's not unique to American and Chinese culture, but more a property of their state of development. When you're technological and developmentally behind, you're more open to copying and stealing ideas, because you're at a disadvantage and want to copy success. When you're ahead, you're prone to being protectionist, because you want to keep your advantage as long as possible. I guarantee that if China ever catches up or even overtake the US and gains a technology advantage, their behaviour will transform t
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Have you ever invented anything?
You sound like someone who hasn't.
New Pied Piper (Score:1)
wah but but (Score:2)
meh. (Score:2)
The devil they know (Score:2)
Having better technology allowed governments to invade and exploit agriculture, mineral deposits and the natives. Superior technology is no longer "guns, germs, and steel" (1997), and invasion is no longer, men with guns. The oppressors are becoming the oppressed and once again, the rich, white people demand everyone save them. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the traditional colonialists but also don't want to see Chinese imperialism.
Chinese authoritarianism is worse than the cultural imperialism pe
Not just business (Score:3)
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Education is for EVERYONE.
Complain about how your government doesn't promote their own citizens going to these schools. Do not complain about anyone else going.