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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

#71

Post by yourbandsucks »

deogeo wrote: post #70
yourbandsucks wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a Chinese family goes from a 3rd-world life to a modern one, is that a relative loss for America? In sports, it would be. Yes, we should be firm about our interests. No, we shouldn't be obsessed with some 'score' -- or if we are, maybe channel it towards fixing our own house.

And if a Chinese airplane manufacturer out-competes a US one, causing it to fail, its workers go unemployed, weakening the US economy, and making it more dependent on China? How long does an average company last, if it gives away all its IP and know-how? Why should the result differ on the scale of countries? I assumed these dynamics are obvious to everyone.

A wise company with secret sauce wouldn't give it away.

If our corporate culture is pathologically short-term-obsessed, that's on us. It's not on the 'bad guys' who lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

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

#72

Post by blunte »

erentz wrote: post #60

Unfortunately all Chinese citizens must comply under Chinese law with spying requests whenever their intelligence agencies come asking. That makes every Chinese citizen in your company a potential spy. This is shitty on so many levels, and what is the appropriate response? Should Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities? Etc. That would be a terrible outcome. We do need some kind of clear a…

> Should Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities?

If they can be compelled to act as spies by their government, then Yes, they should have restricted access. It is unfair to an honest person to be judged by the actions of a few in power in their country, but such is life globally (even for US citizens... especially lately).

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

#73

Post by blunte »

kwizzt wrote: post #28
wolco wrote: 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.

You shouldn't treat China as a single entity. The question should be whether the Chinese people can come up with the design.

Given time, resources, and education, certainly Chinese people can come up with functional solutions to any problem. The same is true for people of practically any other country.

But it seems that for one reason or other, technology theft is attractive enough to be a primary method of "innovating" in some places.

It's really a matter of degrees. People copy anything they see that seems like a good idea (better than the idea they previously had). It's just a matter of how much original effort is put in vs how much detail from the other party's effort is acquired and used to fast-track the development.

In complex projects like this, just seeing provides limited benefit. But in other simpler cases, just see another's working model can convey enough information for the newcomer to quickly come up to speed and compete.

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

#74

Post by blunte »

choonway wrote: post #52
smilekzs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The first thing that you learn when you go into the aviation industry, is that the shortcut is the longest way to get from A to B.

This applies to many software projects as well :).

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

#75

Post by microcolonel »

thinkcontext wrote: post #69
president wrote: post #33

> 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…

There's a crackdown underway. "Is it police work or racial profiling? U.S. crackdown puts Chinese scholars on edge" https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-21/trump-ch...

Well, when your adversary is effectively an ethnostate (at least in terms of the classes capable of travel), scrutiny on their nationals is going to be harder to distinguish from racial profiling (if most Chinese people where you're at are new).

At least, we should be monitoring Confucius Institute outposts and scams/blackmail making Chinese nationals vulnerable in the U.S. and Canada.

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

#76

Post by deogeo »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #71
deogeo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if a Chinese airplane manufacturer out-competes a US one, causing it to fail, its workers go unemployed, weakening the US economy, and making it more dependent on China? How long does an average company last, if it gives away all its IP and know-how? Why should the result differ on the scale of countries? I assumed these dynamics are obvious to everyone.

A wise company with secret sauce wouldn't give it away. If our corporate culture is pathologically short-term-obsessed, that's on us. It's not on the 'bad guys' who lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Being the victim of espionage isn't 'giving it away' - but I see you're being deliberately obtuse.

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

#77

Post by fyfy18 »

blunte wrote: post #72
erentz wrote: post #60

Unfortunately all Chinese citizens must comply under Chinese law with spying requests whenever their intelligence agencies come asking. That makes every Chinese citizen in your company a potential spy. This is shitty on so many levels, and what is the appropriate response? Should Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities? Etc. That would be a terrible outcome. We do need some kind of clear a…

> Should Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities? If they can be compelled to act as spies by their government, then Yes, they should have restricted access. It is unfair to an honest person to be judged by the actions of a few in power in their country, but such is life globally (even for US citizens... especially lately).

Rather than being compelled, what happens if the citizen is voluntarily spying for their government? And maybe it's not even their government, maybe their brother in law is an exec for a competitor back home, so they want to help him out. And rather than being Chinese, maybe the citizen is French.

https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

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

#78

Post by boredishBoi »

fyfy18 wrote: post #77
blunte wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should Chinese citizens have lower access in US companies? At universities? If they can be compelled to act as spies by their government, then Yes, they should have restricted access. It is unfair to an honest person to be judged by the actions of a few in power in their country, but such is life globally (even for US citizens... especially lately).

Rather than being compelled, what happens if the citizen is voluntarily spying for their government? And maybe it's not even their government, maybe their brother in law is an exec for a competitor back home, so they want to help him out. And rather than being Chinese, maybe the citizen is French. https://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espio...

What if their brother in law is an exec at an American competitor? I don’t see how your example is relevant given we’re discussing governments spying/compelling citizens to spy for them.

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

#79

Post by ackbar03 »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #35
president wrote: post #33

> 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…

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.

I don't think genocide is an option anymore

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

#80

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

khuey wrote: post #53
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imagi…

For fairly obvious reasons, "look the other way at the government's indiscretions in exchange for raising per-capita GDP to ~10k USD" isn't an appealing bargain for anyone in the developed world.

We're not talking about the developed world. We're talking about a country whose GDP/capita was $300 just 30 years ago. For citizens of that country, increasing GDP/capita to $10k (a factor of 30) and looking the other way on various political issues is an appealing bargain. It doesn't take that much imagination to empathize with that view, which in my experience is shared by many (I'd say most) Chinese people.

It continually amazes me how little effort people make in Western online discussions to put themselves in the shoes of someone who's seen their country go from utter poverty to relative wealth in one generation. That person might want to gain more political freedoms eventually, but they mainly don't want to destroy everything by plunging the country into chaos.

Keep in mind that the catastrophic experience of the Cultural Revolution soured many Chinese people to politics, and convinced them that stability and steady improvement of living standards are the most important things. Many people who remember those times are allergic to any sort of fanaticism.

Also keep in mind that although many things are restricted in China, the country has opened up a huge amount. In contrast to how things were not so long ago, Chinese people are now able to travel around the world, and largely live their lives without experiencing much government interference. The limits on political activism are clear, but most people just focus on improving their own situation and enjoying the modest luxuries they can now finally afford.

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