Ex-Samsung Executive Accused of Stealing Secrets for China Chip Factory (reuters.com) 14
A former executive at South Korea's Samsung Electronics was indicted on Monday on suspicion of stealing company technology for a copy-cat chip factory in China and jeopardising national economic security, prosecutors said. From a report: South Korea is a chipmaking powerhouse, increasingly pressed by the geopolitical and economic rivalry between the United States and China. Last week, President Yoon Suk Yeol described chip industry competition as "all-out war". The defendant, who also formerly worked at SK Hynix as a vice president, is accused of illegally acquiring Samsung data to build a rival factory only 1.5 km (1 mile) away from a Samsung chip manufacturing facility in Xian, China, the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office said in a statement. Prosecutors said they estimated the theft of data to have caused at least 300 billion won ($233 million) worth of losses for Samsung Electronics.
Hard to fathom (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, both factories are in China. That makes copying a little easier.
Why non Chinese companies bring any trade secrets into China is hard to fathom.
Re: Hard to fathom (Score:2)
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We are equally to blame, if not more so.
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He would need to steal an absolutely massive amount of information and in the end it will be mostly useless, unless maybe if they use the same contractors for the new factory as for the old one.
Why would you think it is hard for an executive to gain access to trade secrets for a manufacturer? I'm not in manufacturing, but the level of access I am used to executives having makes this easy for me to believe.
Re:Hard to fathom (Score:4, Interesting)
However what you're missing here is that there is a difference between actually stealing a chip and competing, and the belief that you can steal a chip and compete. It's the latter one that people act on, and in many ways China's technology espionage has shown that they believe they can steal technology, but actually putting it into a practical application is entirely a different story. the J-20 fighter has stolen technology from the US [nypost.com], but is not really believed to be stealthier than the F-35 and certainly not the F-22 despite it having clearly similar technology on it.
When you look at things from China's point of view, they were the dominant culture for most of human history and historically around 50% of global GDP, until about the 1850's when Europe usurped that place. Much of early Western technology has origins in China; it's ironic that the Chinese essentially invented gunpowder only to have Europeans come with guns and take over their economy. The Chinese long view of history is that the West stole their rightful place in the global order, and they see it as fair play to essentially steal it back. So they can deploy massive capital, play the nationalist game, and try to grow into their own by taking back what they see as theirs. It's a very simplistic view, but it's that view that drives behavior, not the actual results of the behavior.
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I don't even know if your view of China is correct or not. Almost any country or people had a streak o
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I don't even know if your view of China is correct or not. Almost any country or people had a streak of nationalism in their veins, even ones that haven't existed but for a tiny fraction of the time China has. I'd put it down to a simpler explanation that in recent history China has turned a blind eye to IP theft and there's a whole generation that's been brought up through the ranks where this was the way to get ahead. It's hardly surprising that it's going to be an internal problem within the country and likely will be for quite a while into the future.
While I postulate on several topics on Slashdot, this is one I'm actually educated on and pretty familiar with.
The only reason I'm responding to this is your "simpler explanation that in recent history China has turned a blind eye to IP theft" point. To quote Obi Wan, many of the truth's we cling to rely greatly upon our own point of view; as stupid as that quote is it's actually relevant here. Many in the West view China's attempts at IP theft as outright unethical and thievery, and that's even impli
Re:Hard to fathom (Score:5, Insightful)
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It would probably all fit on a USB drive. No one steals paper files anymore.
Cheeto Benito would tend to disagree
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I never quite believe these kind of stories. He would need to steal an absolutely massive amount of information and in the end it will be mostly useless, unless maybe if they use the same contractors for the new factory as for the old one. The problem being that this kind of information is never 100% complete or 100% correct.
It's not at all unbelievable that someone would just copy/steal oodles of bytes. This has happened many times. For example, recently someone hacked into Nvidia and stole entire GPU designs. The expectations was that the designs were headed for China, as AMD and Intel would be smart enough to go out of their way to avoid contaminating their designs with illegal content. Of course, simply plopping such complex designs into a Chinese GPU is not a simple thing and would likely take a ton of debugging and cu
1 mile away (Score:2)
They figured Samsung will never suspect the copycat factory to be so near. Kind of like when I used password as my online banking password figuring hackers will never try that. It really did seem like a good idea at the time.
FOSS (Score:2)