It’s very different than Japan. Japan is more like the US, capitalist where some companies are cozy with the government.
China is a communist state, where the state or affiliated entity is an owner or partner in significant enterprises. Many industrial commodities have national security interests.
Chinese intelligence entities have embedded engineers in a variety of sectors… a few years ago a guy got caught embedding turbine designs inside of nature photos from GE Vernova. Another recently got caught exfiltrating aviation trade secrets, including turbofan designs.
This type of intelligence and technology transfer is no doubt helpful to Comac, the PLA controlled aircraft manufacturer.
> It’s very different than Japan. Japan is more like the US, capitalist where some companies are cozy with the government.
It’s like Japan at the end of the 80s in term of economic development and the US reaction to it (but you might not have been born when people talked about the Japanese ogre) not in terms of political structure. But even then if you take a realistic look at the free market in Japan and Korea, it might not look that free actually.
> Chinese intelligence entities have embedded engineers in a variety of sectors…
Yada, yada, again same shit than with Japan at the time.
The US routinely spies on all its commercial partners to. Multiple scandals involving European companies in the last decade and let’s not talk about how it uses its stupid embargo laws to punish foreign companies it does not like.
Should we also ban the US from international commerce too or does this logic only apply to country that threaten American interests?
> The US routinely spies on all its commercial partners to.
This is completely irrelevant, as there's no evidence that the US uses its state intelligence apparatus to engage in industrial espionage, stealing secrets from private Chinese companies and feeding them to American companies. There's ample evidence that the PRC does this, and has been doing this, for decades, against many different countries (including the US and different member states of the EU).
> Should we also ban the US from international commerce too or does this logic only apply to country that threaten American interests?
This is whataboutism, part of the standard PRC influence playbook, and is obviously irrelevant to bring up (as we're not discussing some sort of moral tit-for-tat) and only meant to serve as a distraction from the PRC's very real and well-documented history of espionage and what the US (and other countries) should do about it.
> This is completely irrelevant, as there's no evidence that the US uses its state intelligence apparatus to engage in industrial espionage
Apart from recent and historical evidence to the contrary[0;1], one has to expect that every member of the G20 group is doing the same against everyone else - and has also been doing so for decades. Perhaps more importantly, you have to assume that every intelligence agency in that same group are constantly (re)compromising and extending their foothold in their peers' communications systems as much as they can.
From a national security perspective, to refrain from doing so would be irresponsible. That said...
> There's ample evidence that the PRC does this, and has been doing this, for decades
This is also true. The approach taken by China was brutally effective: in order to allow foreign investment into China, the investor company had to accept terms that started with Technology Transfer programs.[2;3] For a Western company, ongoing access to relatively cheap and educated labour, in addition to a market of a billion+ potential customers, the short term tradeoffs were each seen individually profitable enough to compromise on their longer term sustainability. After all, it made the graphs go up.
The technologies that the companies chose to keep out of China were then the juicier, self-selected targets for pure industrial espionage.
The way I see it, we're slightly more than a decade away from reintroduction of internment camps. One of the G20 players is going to overstep the invisible boundaries, in a game where the rules are constantly rewritten. The result will be an inevitable knee-jerk reaction, propped up by the already visibly rising nationalistic and xenophobic fervour.
We are entering the age of the next round of the Great Game, this one fit for the 21s century, for the control of all six continents.[4]
Your first citation [0] does not actually provide evidence for the claim that the US government is engaging in IP theft and passing that IP to US companies - spying on a defense minister (even though it's something that shouldn't happen given that the US and France are allies) is categorically different, and is something that you would expect countries to do (even if be disappointed at them) for defense and strategic purposes only, without any IP theft. You'd need additional evidence to indicate IP theft.
Your second citation [1] links to no sources and makes the massive error that the NSA is a department of the CIA. I don't think that it's trustworthy, although I can look up the story later and if I find other sources we can see if it's plausible.
> Perhaps more importantly, you have to assume that every intelligence agency in that same group are constantly (re)compromising and extending their foothold in their peers' communications systems as much as they can.
Yes, I think this is a reasonable assumption - I'm not saying that it's right, but it's reasonable. However, that's still categorically different from the IP theft being discussed, in the context of being able to trust your knowledge workforce and having good cyber security.
Thanks for the analogy to the Great Game, this is interesting!
Intentional deception. CIA meddling with another state's economics is completely separate from them stealing IP and you know it.
> contracts somehow leaking and trade secrets being stolen
You have provided precisely zero evidence for the claim that the US government is using their powers to steal IP from other countries' companies and giving it to US companies, and you've already intentionally tried to receive readers by bringing up something irrelevant, so it's highly likely that you are fabricating claims.
> Also how is it irrelevant to a discussion about China being unreliable because they practice corporate spying? It’s not whataboutism.
The discussion is whether other countries have to guard against China stealing their IP. Discussion of whether non-China counties engage in the same behavior is completely irrelevant, and bringing it up is literally textbook whataboutism, because when discussing this matter, you literally are saying "what about <other country>" when that country isn't the subject of discussion.
And to be absolutely clear: it should be obvious, but I am not stating that CIA intervening in other counties' economies isn't bad - just that it is objectively difficult than IP theft of the kind the PRC engages in.
You've still provided zero evidence for this claim.
>> The discussion is whether other countries have to guard against China stealing their IP.
> It’s not whataboutism to point that the US is charging China with something it has been doing itself for a long time.
That is literal textbook whataboutism - we are talking about China taking stuff from the US and you are saying "what about the US taking from other countries?"
You still haven't read the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism) which says " Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about ...?") is a pejorative for the strategy of responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation instead of a defense against the original accusation." and that's exactly what you're doing, responding to the claim ("accusation") that China steals IP from the US by counter-accusing the US of doing the same. It doesn't matter whether it's true - it's still whataboutism.
> It shows that the core discussion has actually nothing to do with IP. It’s all about the US feeling its allegedly hegemonic position being threatened.
This is attempted manipulation of the discourse. The comment you originally responded to (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42541481) was about the technical challenge of the US trying to prevent its IP from leaking to the PRC. Yes, that actually has "everything to do with IP".
You're trying to change the topic entirely to something irrelevant, which is claiming that the US's "allegedly hegemonic position being threatened".
I cited two well documented situations where the PRC paid Chinese expats to steal specific materials to help PLA owned firms develop specific products.
Show me something other than whataboutism and double talk.
Snowden's words are meaningless - he didn't even read the majority of the documents he himself leaked, he just grabbed everything that wasn't bolted down - and saying that the US monitors other countries' companies is also completely different from the IP theft being discussed. Monitoring other countries' companies happens routinely for intelligence purposes and does not connote IP theft.
So, once again, you have provided zero evidence for your claim.
> I’m always shocked by the average American level of ignorance about what the US does…
In addition to being condescending, breaking the HN guidelines, and engaging in emotional manipulation, you are also being highly ironic by displaying your own ignorance while sneering at others.
> So much for whataboutism.
I already explained to you how you're engaging in whataboutism:
> The discussion is whether other countries have to guard against China stealing their IP. Discussion of whether non-China counties engage in the same behavior is completely irrelevant, and bringing it up is literally textbook whataboutism, because when discussing this matter, you literally are saying "what about <other country>" when that country isn't the subject of discussion.
This applies regardless if the claim about what the US is doing is true, which in this case it isn't.
It’s clear at that point that you are just going to refuse any sources. I haven’t provided zero evidence you are discarding my evidence (which includes a report from the EU by the way).
If you fail to see how knowing if the US is engaging in IP theft is relevant to a discussion about US-lead effort to isolate China motivated by IP theft from them, I don’t think I can do anything for you. It is not whataboutism. It’s the heart of the issue.
The core issue is that the US is becoming protectionist to try to protect its threatened position and trying to drag other countries in its madness. IP theft is merely an excuse.
You broke the site guidelines so badly in this thread that I've banned the account. I don't want to ban you, but you've been crossing the line frequently and badly:
