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How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

economist.com

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Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#121

Post by asdff »

crop_rotation wrote: post #113
throwaway104710 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The superpower aspect is true. Otherwise, India is very friendly with Russia. But we (i.e. big capital) want their H1B labor and outsourcing, so the narrative isn't there yet and many tech companies are headed by Indian CEOs. I'm exaggerating the above, but until recently China wasn't deemed to be a problem either, so the narrative does seem to play a role.

India is friendly with Russia yes but power wise India is just a non entity. It has nothing to make US feel threatened.

India is a nuclear weapon state

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#122

Post by echelon »

thinkingemote wrote: post #79

In the UK Chinese funded international masters/phd students have to send back to China reports about their fellow students as a condition of their funding. There's no mandatory spying expected if the position is funded privately or by the host institution. I expect that the spying is just limited to their fellow state funded students although I have heard of significant tension between mainland and Hong Kong students…

I'm shocked this is a thread on HN.

Until recently these threads were flagged and removed from HN, and participants to conversations stating these things were warned of possible future bans.

It looks like the conversation has changed quite dramatically. The geopolitical tone has trickled down to tech and VC.

Firms like a16z are going all in on "American dynamism", which is basically about competition with China.

It's almost every week you hear about China's sixth gen fighters, NGAD, drones, military spending, etc. in the media. Now the various institutional interests want to invest in capabilities to deter this.

But this kind of conversation, even if handled delicately in a way that was super mindful of not being xenophobic, was entirely forboden just a few short years ago.

Talking about Chinese national students as possible spies. Wow. My ban avoidance scar tissue still tingles with this subject matter. I'm wondering out loud if this geopolitical tension and rivalry is kosher to talk about now.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#123

Post by ipython »

cyanydeez wrote: post #42
NemoNobody wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experian was hacked and 168 million Americans had all of lives information stolen - the data that is supposed to verify who I am and tracks all of my financial life, everywhere I've ever lived and of course my social security number. Not one thing to fix this was done. Anyone could buy my information and be me, NOTHING was done to fix this insanely huge problem.

America cares very little about actual security beyond military nukes.

Even then, the priority for nukes is availability not “security” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_action_link

> For a long time the U.S. military resisted the use of PALs. It feared the loss of its own independence, and it feared malfunction, which could put warheads out of action in a time of crisis.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#124

Post by anramon »

Amazing how this site's comments have been decaying in quality since a few years now. Obvious propaganda article, from a media that doesn't even try to hide that it's mainly a propaganda media, is commented on seriously without any kind of reality filter, and it gets to the top comments...

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#125

Post by duxup »

bearjaws wrote: post #4

Soon enough anything that is even remotely a security threat (pretty much any non-trivial app) will require clearance and in office work. The North Korean hacks into several companies are an example of how bad it is now, add in some good deep fake technology and soon you will not be able to distinguish who is actually working for your company.

Long ago I worked at a company that had equipment sold to a US military contractor and we had to send someone onsite to fix it.

You were instructed that anything you had in your vehicle when you got to the gate (in the middle of nowhere) might be confiscated. Show up with the rental car, keys, ID, and necessary equipment only. Nothing but you and your clothing would leave the site, yes it cost a laptop each visit (that we sent ahead). ID, car and keys stayed at the gate.

Blindfolded while onsite until you got to the equipment, someone would take you to the bathroom.

It was a lot, but I suspect some form of “all electronics dropped here” should be the SOP in a lot of places.

It kinda horrifies me when I hear about congressional members upset about not being able to take their phones to some meetings and so on.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#126

Post by Cyph0n »

monadINtop wrote: post #108
lazyeye wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its probably more a question of scale that makes China unique.

Do you have any numbers that would verify that? Or even any other statement on that issue? Pretty sure determining the "scale" of any kind of intelligence activity is unbelievably murky, as you might be able to imagine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_State_Security_(...

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#127

Post by alecco »

popcalc wrote: post #34
pclmulqdq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese nationals who come to the US are often rich enough to not have any student debt.

Yeah, they pay in cash up front. I've seen sometimes physical bundles of bills.

Why is this downvoted? The comment sounds plausible.

The Chinese mob (wink wink) has the biggest money laundering operation in the world. They have brokers who pick up (source) and deliver (destination) the cash. They do all the currency conversion. And then have an internal market to auction the conversions. All over Chinese government controlled networks like WeChat. Very clever.

The Triads have been doing this kind of dark market money transfers for decades (it's mentioned in the book Mr Nice like it was old news in the 80s). I've met Chinese people who use it to send/receive from family and investors in mainland China. I've met agents who investigate the networks of companies Chinese mobsters make to cover up their tracks.

Financial Times doc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjGIp7kdS6E#t=8m32

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#128

Post by Spooky23 »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #93
throw10920 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soon enough anything that is even remotely a security threat [...] will require clearance and in office work. I think this is one of those things that sucks but may be necessary. You need to trust the knowledge workers that make up your economy to not send your research to a hostile nation so they can take advantage of your R&D investments. And you need to know that your critical infrastructure (beyond Internet and…

[flagged]

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.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#129

Post by qwezxcrty »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #95
thinkingemote wrote: post #79

In the UK Chinese funded international masters/phd students have to send back to China reports about their fellow students as a condition of their funding. There's no mandatory spying expected if the position is funded privately or by the host institution. I expect that the spying is just limited to their fellow state funded students although I have heard of significant tension between mainland and Hong Kong students…

I take it these reports don't stop when they are interns?

I'm not sure about CSC (China Scholarship Concil) funded students, but being an intern funded by a Chinese university myself some years ago, I didn't need to report anything back beyonds a final scientific report signed by my US advisor.

Tangential: in my personal experience, the need for CSC funding for UK PhD programs is due to the very little available funding opportunities for foreign students. Doing a PhD without financial support in an expensive country is ridiculous for most families in China.

Most students would actually try to avoid that if it's possible to secure funding in alternative ways (like the paid PhD programs elsewhere in the world), as CSC funding comes with a requirement of returning to China after finishing the study and this limits opportunities of the students to work abroad afterwards.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#130

Post by demarq »

thinkingemote wrote: post #79

In the UK Chinese funded international masters/phd students have to send back to China reports about their fellow students as a condition of their funding. There's no mandatory spying expected if the position is funded privately or by the host institution. I expect that the spying is just limited to their fellow state funded students although I have heard of significant tension between mainland and Hong Kong students…

> In the UK Chinese funded international masters/phd students have to send back to China reports about their fellow students as a condition of their funding.

That's a major claim, do you have a link to an article or source?

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