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Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

zdnet.com

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Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol come on. You know what will happen. You just don’t want to say it out loud. Edit: To be clear.... less Chinese will be allowed into the United States given the threat. Light the comments up my lads.

Internment like in WW2? Probably not. Pretty sure the only viable way would be to enact laws to enforce extremely stringent eligibility requirements on foreign students/workers.

> Internment like in WW2? Probably not.

I wasn't thinking in such drastically illegal terms to be candid... so: no.

> Pretty sure the only viable way would be to enact laws to enforce extremely stringent eligibility requirements on foreign students/workers.

I agree in principle. My thoughts are more along the lines of mass denials of any type of visa from [mainland] China for the purposes of study and/or work. If it gets bad enough, total denial of all visas. (I don't feel a kinship with China that I do with Mexico/Latin-America and Canada.)

This is a long term threat. I don't want any short term reactionary type policy. I want a strategic policy that addresses the threat, not just our emotions in the current times.

Edit: Lol the Chinese are out in force tonight.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#42

I would like to challenge anyone who's immediate response to this is "China are always stealing our intellectual property" to stop, and really consider whether IP laws are providing a net benefit here. Sure they provide an incentive to innovate, but they also actively prevent others from innovating. This technology will now be available to many more people, and can now be built on and developed. It's a very capitalis…

By "different principles", you presumably mean totally in the service of an autocratic, hegemonistic nation bent on the brutal oppression its own citizens and its rise to become an unchallengeable global power able to curtail the social, political and human rights of anybody, anywhere on Earth, who it deems an enemy?

These sorts of comments are what make most online discussions about China seem so out of touch.

If I told you that most people in China generally support the government and don't feel oppressed by it, how would that affect your worldview? Most people in China are primarily concerned with improving their standard of living. For hundreds of millions of people, that standard has improved more than you can probably imagine in the last 30 or so years. That's what they care about.

Sure, they get upset when they hear about governmental corruption, or when wages aren't paid, and young people even care about internet censorship (though they all have VPNs). But if you were to go to them and propose overthrowing the government, most people would be horrified. They don't want chaos. They think that would put the enormous gains in social welfare they've achieved at risk. They want a competent government that delivers economic growth, and maybe some day in the future slowly - gradually - opens up political life.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#43

> In the rare occasions when the hacking team couldn't find a way inside a target, a second MSS JSSD officer would intervene and recruit a Chinese national working for the target company, and use him to plant Sakula on the victim's network, usually via USB drives. I'm not sure how the US is going to deal with things like this given that we have so many Chinese nationals working in most major corporations across so ma…

Moles are not unique to China, it just happens that China currently happens to be the enemy. Most people whether immigrant or not just want to get the work done and go home.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#44
post #22

Ah yes, the Comac C919, 8 years late and counting, and brought to you by the company whose sole previous model still has trouble landing on wet runways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21

China managed to quite quickly absorb the technology transfer from Alstom/Siemens to build high-speed trains. Now their trains are better than anyone else's and they have more high-speed rails than any other country. They even managed to beat competitors and export their trains to Turkey and Argentina... I have no doubt their airplane will ultimately be successful.

I don't think so, and if they are, I don't think it will be through hacking.

Refactoring other people's code is often harder than coming up with your own, and this is when you have the corresponding ability. Just receiving source code/ design without know-how to actually implement anything might even be worse in the long run.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#45
post #25
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China managed to quite quickly absorb the technology transfer from Alstom/Siemens to build high-speed trains. Now their trains are better than anyone else's and they have more high-speed rails than any other country. They even managed to beat competitors and export their trains to Turkey and Argentina... I have no doubt their airplane will ultimately be successful.

But will China be able to make the next leap on their own? It's one thing to copy but another to come up with the design on the first place.

Once upon a time German and Japanese manufacturers were laughed at as mere copies too.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#46
post #37

Ah yes, the Comac C919, 8 years late and counting, and brought to you by the company whose sole previous model still has trouble landing on wet runways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21

I can remember a horror story of Chinese copy of R179 engine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677936 Repost: > Funny thing to mention, I think 95% of industrial espionage effort yields zero if not negative benefit. The problem is that you are always stealing a "cat in a bag" For machinery, rarely there is anything like a "secret sauce:" Soon after the fall of USSR, Chinese defence companies flocked to Russia bu…

While I have no specific knowledge on even jet engines, from general engineering principles, who says you cannot have 2 groups of people, one working on your own design, the other working on reverse-engineering / replicating others' works? For critical projects like this, it's not hard to imagine a State Actor throwing at least this much resources (including human resources of course) at this. One benefit I can think of is that reverse engineering can shine light on some tough problems during the "forward engineering", like "can this be done at all", and "what is the major concern / bottleneck when designing a particular component". Even if you don't figure out the whole thing, the process can still be useful, especially when you don't already have all the know-how.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#47

> In the rare occasions when the hacking team couldn't find a way inside a target, a second MSS JSSD officer would intervene and recruit a Chinese national working for the target company, and use him to plant Sakula on the victim's network, usually via USB drives. I'm not sure how the US is going to deal with things like this given that we have so many Chinese nationals working in most major corporations across so ma…

Moles are not unique to China, it just happens that China currently happens to be the enemy. Most people whether immigrant or not just want to get the work done and go home.

The situation is a bit more unique with Chinese working/studying abroad. Since most of their families, friends, and relatives are still in China, they can be coerced by the CCP to engage in espionage out of fear of hurting their families.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#48
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will China be able to make the next leap on their own? It's one thing to copy but another to come up with the design on the first place.

The Swiss watchmaking industry was once largely focused on producing cheap copies of English and French watches. Today Swiss watchmakers are renowned for quality and innovation.

And going even farther back, the British industrial revolution was built on producing cheap copies of Indian textiles.

Re: Building China's Comac C919 airplane involved a lot of hacking, report says

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moles are not unique to China, it just happens that China currently happens to be the enemy. Most people whether immigrant or not just want to get the work done and go home.

The situation is a bit more unique with Chinese working/studying abroad. Since most of their families, friends, and relatives are still in China, they can be coerced by the CCP to engage in espionage out of fear of hurting their families.

I'm confused by your main point. Do you mean, as opposed to other foreign workers and students on temporary work/student visas, who can somehow migrate their friends and family over and therefore be subject to less coercion?
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