US Accuses China, Taiwan Firms With Stealing Secrets From Chip Giant Micron (yahoo.com) 99
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced charges Thursday against Chinese and Taiwan companies for theft of an estimate $8.75 billion worth of trade secrets from US semiconductor giant Micron. From a report: Sessions said the case was the latest in a series that are part of a state-backed program by Beijing to steal US industrial and commercial secrets. "Taken together, these cases and many others like them paint a grim picture of a country bent on stealing its way up the ladder of economic development and doing so at American expense," Session said. "This behavior is illegal. It is wrong. It is a threat to our national security. And it must stop." The indictment released in the US district court in San Jose, California alleges that Chinese state-owned Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. and privately owned United Microelectronics Corporation of Taiwan, along with three UMC executives, conspired to steal Micron trade secrets to help UMC and Fujian Jinhua develop DRAM chips used in many computer processors. It said the three Taiwanese men -- Stephen Chen Zhengkun, He Jianting and Kenny Wang Yungming -- all previously worked at Micron and stole its technology when they joined UMC with the express purpose of transferring it to Fujian Jinhua, a two-year-old firm. Chen was originally a top executive at Micron, then moved to lead UMC, and subsequently became president of Fujian Jinhua.
Re: IT WAS RUSSIA (Score:1)
It was several years ago, but Russia got caught infiltrating Cisco and eBay. Obama did nothing about it.
Why didn't they patent (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a company in the industry. When we receive InfoSec training, we are told that, unlike patents, trade secrets cannot be legally enforced. The only legal resource for trade secrets is confidentiality agreements with employees and contractors. Training tells us that it's fair game if a competitor by any means obtains a trade secret, as it ceases to be secret the moment it's shared. Weren't patents precisely invented to discourage trade secret keeping behavior? Can a trade secret be registered?
Re:Why didn't they patent (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why didn't they patent (Score:5, Informative)
Patents are indeed designed to provide strong enforcableblity advantages over trade secrets, plus advance the state of the art by publicly revealing your secret sauce. Worked wonders in Silicon Valley, e.g. company A would develop invention X, company B would realized X could be vastly improved with invention Y, they'd cross license and both and their customers would benefit.
But that'st not to say that trade secrets can't be enforced. Sure, if stealing company C were to broadcast to the wide world the secrets, they've lost their status as such, but why would they do that, instead of gaining advantage by keeping them secret inside the company? The theft of them is of course actionable, Micron has been suing these companies and I think individuals, and now the DoJ has decided the case has merit and is serious enough for them to step in.
Which will make things very sticky for UMC and any of the relevant employees in Taiwan, since they have the rule of law there, unlike the PRC. We can also enforce all sorts of penalties starting from the exit from the border of the PRC, and go further if the PRC thumbs their nose at us if the chips produced using these trade secrets are only used for the internal market.
Ultimately we really should revoke both the PRC's membership in the WTO and their Most Favored Nation Status, if they're not willing to play by the rules established for those, especially now that they're not really a developing nation. The American hating whataboutists should consider that acceptable behavior changes as you make such a transition.
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If by we you mean the US then I doubt the US is going to ask for China to be removed from the WTO since the US wants to leave the WTO themselves.
And China isn't the only country that doesn't play by the established rules when it's in their best interests. The US does this quite often, especially since Trump has come into office.
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Generally trade secrets are things that aren't patentable or worth patenting. They're usually highly esoteric, whereas patents are supposed to have utility beyond a single immediate application (or else it would be a very weak patent).
The classic example is the formula for Coca-Cola. It's not patentable because it likely doesn't have any novelty, but it's obviously highly valuable. And that value somewhat depends on it remaining a secret.
In fact, say Coca-Cola was able to, and did, patent their formula. Wel
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Obviously what I think is very relevant to you or you would not have bothered to answer. A nice failure on your part that provides a good estimator for your level of rationality.
Also, what makes you think China is spying because it needs to? I think it spies on US businesses because it is _easy_. Incidentally, the US does a lot of economic espionage as well and has been doing so for a long, long time, even if the NSA does not admit it openly. Does the US do that spying because it needs to?
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After a couple times, you know you should have seen whatever it was coming and strengthened yourself against it, if you don't...
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Seeing a lot of "it's that other guy's fault" these days in politics. Losers all. Quitcher bitchin and fix it, losers.
I've been amazed that over the last few decades, no matter what bad thing - heck, if we
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Yep, it's basically the definition of loser at least in my book. If it's always someone else's fault, you're a loser.
That sums up all of the aggrieved college majors and many a liberal.
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Also most conservatives. Just look at the current moron-in-chief: Nothing is ever his fault.
People that recognize their mistakes and learn from them generally do not go into or care much about politics. Politics is a dirty and corrupted field because it does not care about facts, ethics and rationality, and at the same time lies egregiously about that. Unless the human race manages to overcome politics (and with that greed for power), it is what will kill it. I am not hopeful.
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Um, he's just one guy, and anything but a dictionary conservative. Not "most conservatives". Most of whom don't like being lumped in with neocons (both parties' neocons are the war and bribe party), the wing-nut radicals (which both parties have), or the "in name only" sorts who say whatever to get elected and then do whatever their corporate sponsors tell them or whatever they think will bring home the pork or bring in the votes by whatever other m
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I should add that from an European perspective, both Republicans and Democrats are conservatives...
The problem is, however, not being conservative, the problem is not taking responsibility for your actions and mistakes. Decent people have gotten really rare. The few remaining ones you find all over the place.
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Heck, in a better world, for awhile, it was "do right, increase happiness - what goes around comes around".
And yeah, accountability...largely missing. On this side of the pond, one side more loudly blames others for "everything", but almost no one is actually taking responsibility. And that's kinda the key
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Isn't that precisely the behavior of the US at the start of the industrial age? What goes around comes around.
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This.. take a read : https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
Re:It's time to shoot Fox News faggots in the face (Score:4, Insightful)
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I also know criticism of one's own side is so rare as to make people think you're on the other one. But what if you hate sides generally?
I'm actually anti-partisan, more anti to the harder core ones, which I feel is consistent. It's dumb to reduce every thought to two states - we're not binary. we're human - and to reduce whole collections of thoughts to b
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Yes, like this one [cnn.com]... oh sorry, it pointed at the wrong direction.
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South China Morning Post is a Hong Kong newspaper; maybe you are talking about CNN. :-)
Fair, you don't have to believe them; maybe they were making FAKE news. :-)
But you should read through all the documents in the Snowden leak to see for yourself if the source data are there.
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LOL, they were caught red -handed. Here's some background from last summer for those obviously not following the story.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/technology/china-micron-chips-theft.html
Do as I say, not as I did (Score:2, Informative)
The US itself built its industry by stealing from others [google.com], massively. Without that, the US today would be just another Mexico.
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You make some very good points, but I'll reply that it's not a binary thing ... and ask you, what nations are developed by your criteria? Poland, maybe?
Not even Switzerland satisfies the first criteria; all told, your point is pointless in the context of the discussion.
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PRC looks like still a developing country based on GDP per capita [wikipedia.org].
Not sure about the US. :-)
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I tend to prefer GDP by PPP [wikipedia.org], but that doesn't change things much.
Still, how "developing" can you be if you're running and building multiple fab lines, at least some of them fairly close to state of the art? This Wikipedia list is of limited utility [wikipedia.org] because evidently a lot isn't known about many plants, but note that India has exactly 1, run by the government's Indian Space Research Organisation (which is more than a little competent at their official purpose, even evading the Mars curse), and it's doing an
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1. having a fab line or two does not imply advanced economy. they are just like factories;
2. requiring developing countries to not develop its tech industry and have to stuck in low end manufacturing is selfish and unreasonable;
3. you were implying developing countries can steal tech is OK, I'm sure plenty of people don't agree with you;
4. using #3 to justify the early theft acts of the US is hypocritical.
5. the West has signed up to the fact that China has been a developing country, without a clear legally
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Except that you can't steal ideas, and trying to monopolize them is backward, and not at all in the interest of humanity. We should all encourage the proliferation of good ideas; not only can we all share their benefit at no cost, but then the entire world can freely cooperate to improve the state of the art.
The problem isn't that the US "stole" ideas from Britain, but that they didn't discard the regressive concept of "Intellectual Property" after disrespecting it. In reality, new ideas don't spring forth
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What did the US expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
That it was all going to be union free low cost Communist labor for decades making low tax computer parts?
The USA could have kept its tech production lines secret in low tax Ireland, secure in low tax parts of the USA, even opened up in Northern Ireland with a huge UK tax "considerations" just for creating local jobs.
The US gov allowed its tech brands to set up in China and now finds the Communist took the best US tech?
Don't build your tech factories in Communist nations and your tech will stay secure.
Lots of normal nations wanted US tech jobs and would have totally respected and supported all USA security just to get their work force new US tech production line factory work.
What did generations of US govs allow? Allow US brands to give away US secrets to Communist China with every new generation of tech investment.
Was the US brands ingratiation with a Communist party worth it now all the US secrets are lost?
Was a few MI6 and CIA "business" spy fronts deep in China worth the total loss of generations of US tech secrets to China?
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The US went from war to investing in a nation with full Communist politics that did everything it could against the USA for decades.
That opening US computer production lines in a Communist nation would be secure at any price?
All that investment did was give US tech to Communist China for free.
Then invite US educators to give away US education to the world for free.
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There is still one thing those "normal nations" were missing and are still missing, that China provided a lot of these electronic hardware manufacturers: little to no operating regulation.
It's starting to change very slowly, but for the longest time, China had incredibly lax environmental regulations. The production of some electronics results in a fair amount of waste that can be pricey to handle in "normal countries." Also, work environment safety is really lax in China as well which helps draw down the p
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To get the jobs. A 1970-1980's export location with electrical power, no tax and no regulations, new ports and roads.
English speaking experts. Rule of law.
They would have kept US secrets and offered equal low wages. No unions and no communist spies.
Their mil/governments would have done all they could to offer low wages and understood all NSA/CIA demands for US
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I don't know much about South America's resources very well, but I know another factor in the electronics manufacturing in China was due to a large number of rare earth metal deposits (which generate a large amount of ground water toxins during mining, see the lax environmental regulations again). I know Brazil has some mines, but I can't tell if they knew about those mines in the 80s or not. I found a slide online that shows China's rare earth mining accelerating drastically in the mid-80s. That really hel
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"Allowed".... does the federal government have any authority to tell a private US company it's not allowed to hire workers or set up manufacturing in a particular country?
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quit hiring spies (Score:2)