So even if someone steals the secret sauce, does that mean they can actually cook the same dish?
TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
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Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#62Right 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 ab…
Nice ha. Your story reminds me of why I flinch whenever I hear "just give them the spreadsheet, engineer, don't argue..."
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#63Industrial 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.
There is a very nice chapter in the somewhat dated but classic book Business Adventures [1] on trade-secrets and what happens when employees of one company move to another. In chapter 11, "A man, his knowledge, and his job", there is a story of a "space-suit" manufacturer Goodrich suing an employee for moving to its rival Latex for stealing trade-secrets. The story is timely in context of Meta hiring researchers from open-ai, deepmind etc for 100s of millions for the knowledge in their heads of the recipes which work for making superior LLMs - the knowledge of which is empirical and may take years to discover.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Business-Adventures-Twelve-Classic-St...
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#64Earlier 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.
>If it weren’t that hard to replicate, several countries (and Bezos/Blue Origin) would have replicated it by now.
There is a 100% chance multiple countries/companies will have replicated it in the next decade. If SpaceX never existed, they likely would have achieved it at the same pace regardless.
This is the same with EVs. If Tesla never rose, the world EV market outside of Tesla would have seen precisely the same rise.
There is a tendency to attribute the early movers with innovation in the inevitable, where we all stand on the shoulders of others and just reach a little higher.
As to the rocket science misnomer, that's a space race hangover where an engineering role was extremely public and celebrated, but in actual reality "rocket science" is a mediocre field with miserable pay and high unemployment.
As to how valuable it is, "insanely"? The world has a fairly finite launch need, such that SpaceX made a whole new business -- Starlink -- to make work for their capacity. Economically the space launch business is relatively minuscule.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to say why? Security always comes at a cost ...
You don't need to deliberately create silos in order to secure a project. We've had people working on top secret projects and while people may not have known the specifics the company was kept up to date on the progress and outcomes of the project. We brought people in from other teams after an extra vetting process and additional NDA specific to that project.
With industrial espionage, NDAs aren't going to cut it ...
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#66Right 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 ab…
At least they didn’t make you use Sharepoint and OneDrive. How fun using VBA and ODBC in 2019, proving the mighty Excel will go on as the new MS Access.
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#67Industrial 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.
am i crazy for not caring if a company in a foreign country obtains trade secrets and manufactures the same thing? like we're all humans and we all want access to whatever it is they're building, it seems like more people building the thing is a good thing. if that impacts Samsung's profits, why do I care? its not like corporations give a shit about me
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
idk which shocking, Japanese company try to steal TSMC or IBM have 2nm process out of nowhere
"Out of nowhere" would be a stretch. IBM may not have mass-market volume anymore but they kept up the production chain to build mainframes (and I would guess other "specialty" products) for institutional customers.
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Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#69Gee, I wonder which nation-state actor was orchestrating this...
Re: TSMC says employees tried to steal trade secrets on iPhone 18 chip process
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or for analogy, following a recipe doesn't make you a good cook.
Or for analogy, following a recipe doesn't make you a good cook.
Following a recipe can you close enough for thousands of Door Dash customers to put the original restaurant out of business.