Re: Hi Tech Espionage Case - China USA - Lan Lee, Yuefei Ge NetLogic MicroSystem

On 22 Jun 2006 12:49:05 -0700, bmoore@xxxxxxx wrote:


What in the article gave the impression that "they are guilty of little
more than carelessness"?

PPP: The original article gave details on the low success rate (any at
all?) of US anti-spy agencies and courts in making their charges
stick. Many victims even received an official apology and substantial
compensation. The common factor is that the victims are middle-aged
family guys who went by their real names and had real and long term
permanent jobs. Often they had hard earned professional
qualifications too. Furthermore there is no record of misconduct in
anything prior to being charged as high tech spies. When they were
"caught" the evidence was as careless as having the "loot" in
un-encrypted CDs, printed manuals and generally uncoded items in
unsecured custody. Any half decent spy wouldn't be caught dead with
that kind of evidence. Having relatives (wives, brothers, cusins,
uncles) in a spy ring goes against all tenets of spying - too easy to
have things go wrong early.

The present duo is no different. They will have their lives ruined.
After about five years being ground up by the process they will be
found not guilty, given an apology and compensation. Not that it will
restore their lives. But it will scare the rest (US domiciled
Chinese) like hell from talking about their work or making contact
with mainlanders or oriental businessmen. It will also stop ethnic
Chinese insiders from trying to sell their employers' trade secrets.
But this is a normal criminal act anyway and indictable under criminal
law. As I said earlier these insiders always had the option to move
to China to set up shop. They were stupid to want to keep their jobs
and make easy money the leaky way.

More than that, the US is trying to build a case of a broad Chinese
government plan to "cheat and steal" on technology development. There
is no such plan as China can buy the same technologies elsewhere.

Where can anyone buy the design for a high-tech chip that has the
potential to make its creators a lot of money?

There are no more significant breakthrough chips like advanced
microprocessors. The present generation of uPs can already do more
than anyone can find applications for. All ICs have incremental
improvements, smaller size, faster speed, but no functional
breakthroughs. Heard anything from Intel, AMD or any other chip
manufacturer worth stealing?

Where the money is is in software. Again there is not much one can do
to copy complex software programs unless one has the source code. And
even then its too easy to identify which parts have been copied. The
pirate will be tied up in the courts for years trying to disprove that
and lose gadzillions of dollars in the process. Fujitsu tried that
route on mainframes (IBM OS) and they had the Japanese government's
full support for their national advanced computer project (80s).

Source code or not reverse engineering software is harder than
writing one on a clean ***. Just ask Microsoft. The only way to
make real money is to come up with a better video game (any copying is
too obvious) or a killer application. If Microsoft and the present
generation of US based software giants couldn't come up with a second
killer ap act what can anyone who can only steal code achieve? There
is no room for any new comer to the existing killer app market.

The only real secret codes worth stealing are perhaps in defense
technologies or oil exploration data processing. But one has to be
fairly senior in those skills to be of value and able to understand
the system parameters and devices. One does not get to those lofty
positions and wreak one's life and career even for a few million bucks
bribe.

Back to chips. The money in chip design is in high speed high
resolution video processors. The best designs in this field is coming
out of the orient (Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan(?), at least in
manufacturing. I haven't kept up with the news to know if the chip
designs are from the US. If these Far East countries are already into
manufacture how does stealing a chip design help? With technology
having such a short shelf life what is hot today is passe' two years
down the line. It already takes that long to start up production.
Furthermore it is possible to deconstruct any chip layer by layer. Any
indentical copying will be obvious immediately and therefore render a
stolen design worthless. One can use the deconstructed design to
make improvements. But this is already been done by every chip
designer in the world. Nothing illegal there.

Software or hardware to make real money one has to be a global player.
At that level you can bet your sweet mama that the current industry
leaders will deconstruct any credible rival's product to see if they
can tweek any ideas and improvements from it into their own products.
To discover an exact copy of one's own design will be grounds for
going to court to destroy that rival or upstart. Big players and
governments cannot be involved in such chicanery (piracy). The
consequences are too dire. Small players may still try although to
what purpose only they know. This will be my argument against your
thesis that the Chinese government has a broad based plan to steal
technologies to quick start her technology programs.

I have no idea if there is a "broad Chinese government plan," as you
put it, but there are certainly plenty of people in China and the world
over who would love to get their hands on proprietary IP like chip
designs.

There are lots of companies, other than US companies, eagerly lining
up to sell to China.

They might sell chips but not their chip designs!

That is what we pay royalties for. The only way around that is to
make a better product. That means hard work. That is why China and
Far East countries put out so many engineers. A product may be
advanced today. It won't be in a few years time when everyone figures
how that advance was made. By then thousands of engineers will try to
figure out how to do one better. It may just be an incremental
improvement. Breaktroughs will be rare. IP is only good if you have
a fundamental patent. The first one that succeeds starts a whole new
ball game. Its brutal because the first one across the line wins all.
Its a numbers game. The more technicians you throw at the problem and
the more money you have when the oxygen gets thin has a better chance
of winning. Guess where that is heading.
.