The original link from Nikkei Asia that the 9to5mac article is a repost of has some more information and less generic filler:
Link: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/tsmc-fires-worke...
Archive: https://archive.ph/ta1kq
TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
31–40 of 215 posts
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#32Right before I left Samsung Austin Semiconductor (Samsung’s fab in the U.S.), in 2019, they were phasing out local share drives in favor of a self-hosted cloud that Samsung created. The supposed reason was better security, though it’s unclear to me why they couldn’t globally apply whatever rules they wanted to enforce to all office locations, instead of forcing everyone to use a remote endpoint. The throughput was absolutely terrible, like One such file was an Excel file that was more script than anything else. We had to have labels in a specific format on every machine we owned in the fab, which was something like 250 of them. The normal stuff like its id number, and also which points of contact for a technician and engineer, as well as their photos and phone numbers. Manually balancing and re-balancing every time a shift gained or lost an employee would’ve been obnoxious, so naturally instead countless hours were spent coercing VBA and ODBC to query a DB containing employee info, extracting and resizing their headshot, applying all of this to a template label, queuing a print job, and repeating. It was pretty fun to watch, honestly. I think I also had created a floor plan map somehow, and it would do its best to group a given technician’s assigned machines such that they minimized distance traveled during inspections. Anyway, the large file size was due to it caching the headshots (might have made a hidden tab for each? I don’t remember) for better performance, as that had proven to be a bottleneck.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#33Industrial espionage has to be totally insane to defend against these days.
I frequently wonder what steps SpaceX security has to take, given the insane geopolitical significance of reusable rockets and cheap access to orbit.
So, this is admittedly a little tinfoil, but I wouldn't be surprised if Musk is happy for some degree of espionage to happen. If it looked like there was a possibility of China getting this capability first, it would light a fire under the US government to give financial and regulatory assistance to the Starship program.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are doing much better off with the status quo than TSMC firing everyone who isn't of the same religion, and even then, it's not hard for a spy to pretend to be .
>even then, it's not hard for a spy to pretend to be . There are religious groups which you can only be born into. Some people believe that one such religious group wields the most power on our planet.
Is there a Druze world government out there that I’m not aware of? :) It’s absolutely possible to convert to Judaism, for reference, though the faith is non-proselytizing (not actively seeking converts) and the status of converts is disputed among the more extreme Orthodox groups (but what isn’t).
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think what SpaceX is doing is that hard to replicate. There's already competitors launching smaller payloads for smaller costs per weight. Just a matter of time until they creep into SpaceX's market, while SpaceX tries to build a starship inspired by the Futurama rocket.
It is insanely valuable, both commercially and strategically. If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now. I think you vastly underestimate how difficult rocketry is. There’s a reason “rocket science” is colloquially a metaphor for an extremely difficult and technical task.
The problem lies in forming and managing such a huge organisation that deals with the problem in an efficient and lean way, not the technical aspects.
The materials science aspect is a challenge, not to produce, but to produce with a sane cost.
The rocket science aspect of things (namely the linearisation of the booster model in order to be able to be solved in constant time by an MPC) is more or less a solved problem.
Coordinating such complex interconnected systems will always remain one.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#36Industrial espionage has to be totally insane to defend against these days.
It seems to me companies ... don't care out side some easy to do basic things.
But when push comes to shove if manufacturing is cheaper in a country where lots of folks want to steal your things. -shrug- Short term profits win.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#37It's nice to see TSMC's internal security teams are detecting these things, but it would be more surprising news if this kind of IP theft wasn't happening to be honest...
Only the bad criminals get caught.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#38Locally in Taiwan, there’s growing suspicion that the 2nm process technology was leaked to Japan’s Rapidus. People are questioning whether the technology was leaked to Rapidus through Japanese equipment suppliers.
make no sense since Rapidus 2nm process is from IBM.
idk which shocking, Japanese company try to steal TSMC or IBM have 2nm process out of nowhere
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#39Industrial espionage has to be totally insane to defend against these days.
Compartmentalize your company. Make sure people from one compartment are unaware about things people from other compartments are doing. Don't transfer/hire across compartment boundaries.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#40Industrial espionage has to be totally insane to defend against these days.
Just knowing how the thing is built doesn't seem to be enough. Comac still sources its jet engines from Pratt and Whitney for instance, despite many years of trying no local manufacturer has been able to build them to the same spec.
A relative of mine worked at a medical devices company (brain sensors). She told me how small intricacies of the manufacturing process were critical to reach good enough yield or functioning devices, at all. The critical process steps were closely guarded and only a handful employees knew how to do them. The devil is often in the details - and the moat, too.