U.S. Says Accused Apple Secrets Thief Had Patriot Missile File | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Says Accused Apple Secrets Thief Had Patriot Missile File

bloomberg.com

50 pointsprotomyth89 comments

> They also note that the federal office that supervises defendants on probation has concluded monitoring is no longer necessary because Chen has complied with all the conditions of his release and found full-time employment.

Wow, a company hired him? That surprises me.

What I'm wondering is that will the inevitable military espionage charge going to be added to the apple case or pursued in a separate case?

The article doesn’t mention if he had a security clearance when working for the defense contractor.

I'd be shocked if he managed to get a clearance, since he apparently has Chinese citizenship.

I don't know how the US would know this when doing his clearance check. It's not as if the US can call up China and ask to verify. And if they do provide that answer, should the US trust it?

The whole national origin thing, though, seems to be a red herring because there are plenty of Americans of Chinese birth who do not spy for China and there have been cases of non-Chinese born Americans who've sold the US out to various different countries, including China.

> I don't know how the US would know this when doing his clearance check. It's not as if the US can call up China and ask to verify. And if they do provide that answer, should the US trust it?

Presumably when he entered the US he did so with a Chinese passport, and applied for his visa from China. It wouldn't be difficult to determine that he was a Chinese citizen, unless he used false papers and a fake identity from a third country, which didn't happen in this case.

> The whole national origin thing, though, seems to be a red herring because there are plenty of Americans of Chinese birth who do not spy for China

Well, that's the standard for security clearance. There's a variety of reasons why you wouldn't want to give clearance to someone foreign-born. When you evaluate someone for a clearance one of the biggest things you look for is potential weaknesses. For instance, someone with a gambling problem and lots of gambling debts shouldn't be trusted because they would be vulnerable to bribery. If someone has family or friends living in another country, then that country's government could extort that person by threatening their family and friends with arrest.

Wonder how he got ahold of a document marked “confidential”, assuming it was actual national security information, and not “company confidential”. Either an insider passed it too him, or poor security practices at employer.

Why innovate if you can wait for someone else to and simply steal the result of expensive research and development?

This would mean China is always a step behind. China wants to become the leading country. To achieve that in the shortest time span possible, they copy whatever they can, learn from it and build upon it. In short, China copies, then innovates.

> This would mean China is always a step behind. China wants to become the leading country. To achieve that in the shortest time span possible, they copy whatever they can, learn from it and build upon on it. In short, China copies, then innovates.

They don't necessarily have to innovate to become a leading country. They could do that by achieving mere technological parity, but producing it at a larger scale.

For instance, if China slavishly copied all US weapons designs and went to war with the US, China would win. It has more population and a larger industrial base, which means more soldiers in uniform and more equipment on the battlefield. The slavish copying would neutralize the US "quality" advantage, turning the conflict into one about "quantity."

Can someone explain why China is hell bent on stealing IP from nations and companies?

Because it's easier and cheaper than developing it yourself. You can outsource the cost of R&D to another company/country and reap all the rewards for yourself. This is how many popular Chinese brands got to be competitive with more established companies so quickly. Alibaba is filled with devices that look like a Galaxy S10 and have the same chassis and screen and battery and processor and software as a Galaxy S10 but have the name of some fly-by-night company on the back... because if Samsung orders 100,000 phones and you already have the factory running, who will care if you actually produce 150,000 and sell the extras under your own brand? It's pure profit with no R&D costs.

The only thing their dictator cares about is China's economic success. International relations don't matter because... well, what are you going to do about it? Stop making stuff in China? Good luck.

Not trying to defend any side but :

> Because it's easier and cheaper than developing it yourself.

Why should the humanity invest resources twice to figure out how to make the same product or the same service on another place on Earth? That would be a bad allocation of our time, as a global specie. In the era of internet, sharing knowledge is instant, why not make use of it?

Well one argument is the same as for patents -- the prospect of having sole use of something for a while is an incentive for its creation.

Because the extreme opposite end of that is, no one will take the risk and invest the money to invent something if they're never going to make that money back. If I spent $1 billion creating something that costs $5 to make and someone just takes it and sells it for $6, I'm out of business. The impact of global sharing of inventions would be that expensive inventions never get made and the country with the lowest minimum wage will always come out on top.

Being enslaved by a despotic government with the world's lowest quality of life and no hope of improving your situation sounds worse for humanity than spending a little more time inventing something twice.

Because it works. The earliest industrial base of the United States was created from textile production IP stolen from the United Kingdom, which eventually outcompeted British textiles.

The American government has been captured by the American CEO class, who don't suffer from IP theft since they get paid before the IP theft bears fruit, so the government doesn't care.

Because it’s worth a ton of money and saves them the time of doing the R&D themselves.

Then why doesn't someone hold them accountable for this type of garbage.

Because the world outsourced the production of everything to China to save some bucks, and you cannot sanction them as a result. It's beyond electronics -- you cannot manufacture commodities varying from bras to certain chemicals without China.

US historians will not treat the people running the US from 1975-2005 well.

Accountability tends to come in terms of sanctions. But even sanctions are hard to maintain against the nation with the single highest count of human population; that's a market corporations positively salivate over tapping.

It also appears they're very difficult to hold, politically.

Their consumer market earn their wages in factories selling to foreign consumers using foreign IP.

How's that going for them?

Apple's a computing worldwide force thanks in part to Chinese manufacturing, so pretty well.

a major part of the problem that is often overlooked is the fact that US companies are often afraid to admit publicly that they've been the victim of state-sponsored IP theft fearing repercussions to their share price.

The IP theft issue is likely much bigger than we know publicly because ever decision a company makes focuses on the outcome to the bottom line. Admitting that the fundamental IP your billion-dollar company was built on has been stolen can't possibly do anything but harm to your reputation in the market.

Do you want them to be held more, or less accountable, than, say, the US government spying on a French aerospace firm? Or on an energy company, and selling their secrets to a state-friendly domestic firm? [1]

What kind of sanctions do you recommend against countries practicing industrial espionage against their allies? What about their enemies? Are you ready to apply them to all transgressors, or just ones that you consider enemies?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial... - the cherry on top was that the victimized company here was later banned from doing business in the US.

Yeow, I guess the truth hurts. Yes, you seem to be correct, and I personally found it somewhat shocking (though perhaps not surprising) that the NSA did exactly what we're denouncing China for. I suppose you could argue that "there is only one documented case of the US doing it, but dozens or hundreds of cases of China doing it," which might be fair. Still, kinda not cool. Let Germany have their patent on wind turbine designs, or whatever.

In fact, that seems borderline incompetent espionage on the NSA's part. We submitted a patent that was basically identical to theirs, shortly before they did. Really? Hmm, I wonder how anyone could have figured out that something strange was going on?

The referenced article is also interesting: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/electronic-spies-torture...

Apparently Germany's intelligence services are forbidden to participate in industrial espionage, which includes defense against espionage. Therefore they were aware of the espionage but unable to inform the target company. They could only sit and watch.

How? Are you willing to fight a war with China?

> Then why doesn't someone hold them accountable for this type of garbage.

IIRC, IP theft issues are one of the grievances cited for the current US trade war with China.

People have tried, but what's your suggestion? Sanctions? War? What do you think the end result of either of those would be?

To industrialize faster, the same way Japan did in the 1960s and the same way the US did (from Britain) in the early 1800s.

If you look at the history of countries stealing IP, the answer should be self-explanatory.

Because other countries have done it, because it works, because it's good to have the capability to be industrially independent from hostile states, because they need to defend their people against foreign aggression (Or whatever excuse nationalists trot out to justify outsized defense departments), and because this is an opportunity for friends of the state to make good money.

The US does this exact same kind of spying, but it also does it to its so-called 'allies'. [1] Does reading this cause the same amount of outrage and incredulity, as the original article?

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spy...

First off it says in that article also says:

"The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it does collect information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing.

"What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line," it said in a statement."

Secondly have you noticed there have been no additional news articles about this since 2015 when the story first broke? Don't you think if there was an actual violation that occurred that Airbus would still be looking out for its shareholders and there would be more legal cases and formal complaints?

If you look at PPD-28 you'll see that it strictly forbids economic espionage. I can think of lots of reasons why US Spy Agencies might be interested in looking at the network activity - "spying" - on companies such as Airbus, but one of those reasons isn't for economic advantages because it is banned by law. Executive order 12333 is also largely the legal basis for SIGINT and PPD-28 is a public policy directive that adds further legal and regulation nuance to how that executive order is done in practice. However 12333 clearly authorizing things on the basis that it is of importance to national security only. It is clear enough from reading it the authorization is not for economic advantages. So even without PPD-28 which confirms that is true and explicitly states it, even without it there has never been a legal basis in 12333 to do such a thing.

This is a quote from lawfareblog in an article linked below from 2014, also they did have some criticisms of PPD-28 when it was announced, however it states: "Third, it forbids economic espionage for non-national security purposes like advantaging US industry." In one of the most positive aspects of the author's analysis of PPD-28 they also stated how remarkable it is that the US even has a policy directive on SIGINT, because no other country states what they do with regards to SIGINT.

You can read more about PPD-28, what it says along with what I think is fair, informed and well researched analysis here:

From 2014:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/presidents-speech-and-ppd-28-gui...

From 2019:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/revisiting-legacy-restrictions-i...

Of course it's going to say that. What spies say, and what they do has never exactly been similar. Why on Earth would you trust them?

> Secondly have you noticed there have been no additional news articles about this since 2015 when the story first broke? Don't you think if there was an actual violation that occurred that Airbus would still be looking out for its shareholders and there would be more legal cases and formal complaints?

I expect that this was hush-hushed over diplomatic backroom dealings.

And there have been other legal cases and formal complaints. [1] [2] [3] As it turns out, complaining that the US spies on you, and steals your secrets accomplishes... Pretty much nothing.

> If you look at PPD-28 you'll see that it strictly forbids economic espionage. I can think of lots of reasons why US Spy Agencies might by looking at the network activity - "spying" - on companies such as Airbus, but one of those reasons isn't for economic advantages because it is banned by law.

As we've all discovered a few years ago, thanks to Snowden, the NSA is only somewhat constrained by the law when it operates domestically, and is not at all constrained by it when it operates internationally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enercon

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Germany

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm

Why not? Some research costs billions. Stealing it is practically free. It's clearly in their best interest.

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The fact that Raytheon is hiring mainland-born engineers to work anywhere near the Patriot missile system is basically malicious incompetence

EDIT I take it all back. There is nothing wrong with this.

IANAL, but I think the US presidency is the only job that requires one to be a natural born US citizen. For any other job, you may need to be a citizen (e.g., to hold a clearance), but basing eligibility on the country of birth is likely illegal.

Jizhong Chen is an American citizen.

And a Chinese citizen, according to the article.

> “The government’s argument that Mr. Zhang poses a flight risk because he is a Chinese citizen is insufficient to warrant GPS monitoring,” Olmos said in a filing

I'm not sure how he got a security clearance, or if he was able to get one at all

EDIT: my mistake, Zhang is the one accused of stealing confidential information from Apple alone, not from Raytheon

IIRC China doesn't allow for dual citizenship. So it's either one or the other.

Maybe they allow it if you're stealing missile secrets?

This is (at least, typically) the case. A friend of mine who was born in Shanghai but is now a Canadian citizen had to go through an arduous visa process to get a job in her home city.

My understanding is that Mr. Zhang is a different person from Mr. Chen.

My mistake, I confused which person was accused of which crime

Yes, born in (and trying to return to) China

Overwhelmingly, to the point of near-universality, foreign-born US citizens don't conduct espionage on behalf of their native countries. At the same time, native-born US citizens do in fact conduct espionage, often in more lurid and damaging ways than any foreign-born agent. What is there to learn from someone's country of origin? Nothing at all.

Penalizing citizens because they happen to have been born in disfavored countries is both immoral and, in ways we're still grappling with since Korematsu, un-American.

Do you have any evidence? Particularly, who is more likely to take American state secrets at company X and give them to China, American born citizens or Chinese born citizens working at company X? Those are the boundaries of this discussion. There are national reports about Chinese espionage efforts within the US, in fact according to wiki they are the single most active adversary in this regard (wiki Chinese espionage in the US).

There are as I understand it many hundreds of thousands of Chinese-born American citizens. Any claim that a significant number of them were agents for China would be an extraordinary one, and would be the argument that actually required evidence. Without that evidence, it's just a slur, and one with a very poor history in the US.

We are, by the way, the targets of espionage from virtually every industrialized country in the world, and, of course, the conductors of the same against other countries. When my career in information security was getting started in the mid-1990s, what I heard most often was the "surprising fact" that France was one of our biggest espionage adversaries. There is nothing unique about China in this regard other than the country's scale.

>> who is more likely to take American state secrets at company X and give them to China

This sounds very similar to sexist arguments like "who is more likely to better score at work" used to then discriminate. You cannot use just a single feature to classify people in this highly non-linear problem, you will get mostly false-positive predictions.

Do you think it will prevent people here from being racist?

Edit: it will not, I am not Chinese btw

Discriminating solely on country of origin is illegal, I'm pretty sure.

It's the other way around. For example, Elon once mentioned that since SpaceX is basically working on the same tech as missile systems, there are lots of restrictions on who SpaceX is allowed to hire. One of those restrictions involved country of origin, but I can't remember the details.

I worked on a government project once and they had the requirement that anyone working on the project had to be an American citizen. You could be naturalized, but you had to be a citizen. And this was a pretty unimportant project for a state government.

Often that has more to do with not wanting bad press about hiring foreigners with tax money than a security thing

Show me one article criticising a US government for employing a foreigner with your line of nationalistic reasoning and I'll belief you.

It sometimes happens with procurement ("buy American"), or for security concerns as in the linked article. But not for employment. Heck, even Trump employed dozens of Ukrainian/Greece/British people as we've learnt.

I wasn’t talking about the private sector.

I was talking about government work contracts, like the state work the parent comment was referring to.

My family members work in politics. These kinds of things are considered when making all decisions because they don’t want to attract any negative press or give potential narratives to future opponents. That’s how politics works from the inside, at least for Democrats in America.

Everyone on here so prickly lately

> One of those restrictions involved country of origin, but I can't remember the details.

Maybe security clearance restrictions? IIRC to get clearance you're not allowed to have dual citizenship (b/c divided loyalties) nor relationships with foreign citizens that could open you up to influence/coercion (e.g. a foreign citizen spouse or relatives residing in a foreign country that could be threatened for leverage).

Bloomberg:

> ... trips they were about to take to China when they were arrested were planned for the purpose of visiting relatives, not escaping prosecution.

So, they were vulnerable to overwhelming coercion.

What would you or I do if a man stopped us on the street, said he worked for "state security", that our parents were well and enjoying their pension in <small city>, and everyone hopes they will remain so, but that the motherland needed one little patriotic task from us just now?

That sounds made up. There's people from countries like China, Russia, and Iran that have been able to get security clearances in the US. You may have to give up your birth country's citizenship, and someone from Iran is definitely more likely to be denied a clearance, but there's not blanket discrimination based on national origin. I don't think ITAR even distinguishes between someone who was born here and someone who was naturalized (as long as they don't keep their old passport).

I think residency status can have some bearing but not ethnicity. Any company can refuse to sponsor a visa but if someone is eligible to work without sponsorship I don't think you can ask more than that.

In general yes, though there are some significant carve-outs for projects of military sensitivity.

But the legal tension between antidiscrimination and mandatory state-security-derived discrimination is there.

Source? I do not see any exemptions offered in the Civil Rights Act. If you're a citizen, I don't see how anyone can legally discriminate against you.

Carve-outs exist:

(e) Businesses or enterprises with personnel qualified on basis of religion, sex, or national origin; educational institutions with personnel of particular religion

Notwithstanding any other provision of this subchapter, (1) it shall not be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to hire and employ employees ... on the basis of his religion, sex, or national origin in those certain instances where religion, sex, or national origin is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise ...

(g) National security

Notwithstanding any other provision of this subchapter, it shall not be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire and employ any individual for any position, for an employer to discharge any individual from any position, or for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer any individual for employment in any position, or for a labor organization to fail or refuse to refer any individual for employment in any position, if-

(1) the occupancy of such position, or access to the premises in or upon which any part of the duties of such position is performed or is to be performed, is subject to any requirement imposed in the interest of the national security of the United States under any security program in effect pursuant to or administered under any statute of the United States or any Executive order of the President; and

(2) such individual has not fulfilled or has ceased to fulfill that requirement.

Thanks for the context.

It looks like the job required a security clearance, so they can deny you access based on a number of things. I've known people born and raised in the USA who were denied clearance to work on specific projects because they happened to be friends with foreign nationals outside of work.

Sure, but those things aren't a protected class AFAIK.

ITAR law. The company can't discriminate in hiring for reasons of national origin alone, but a US citizen doesn't automatically stop being a citizen of another country, and ITAR prohibits letting foreign citizens touch some sensitive missile tech secrets.

... and then an employer can refrain from hiring someone because ITAR prevents them from doing the relevant job.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324b

Paragraph 2, Section C

According to the article, this person is a dual citizen. You generally won't be granted a security clearance in the US unless you renounce your citizenship in the other country (generally, there are exceptions).

According to Chinese nationality law, dual citizenship is impossible for people who naturalize under another country. As a matter of law to the Chinese government, they would lose their Chinese citizenship automatically, to be enforced any time the issue comes up, such as for passport renewal or getting visas to visit under a foreign passport.

Apparently, the US naturalization process allows prior citizenship to be kept:

https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/dual-citizenship-all...

His lawyer said he has Chinese citizenship

> “The government’s argument that Mr. Zhang poses a flight risk because he is a Chinese citizen is insufficient to warrant GPS monitoring,” Olmos said in a filing

EDIT: wrong person, confused Zhang and Chen. Zhang is a Chinese citizen, Chen is the one accused of stealing classified material

Section 703(g)

See: https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/national_security_exemption...

I think they do it through their secret/top secret clearances. You just don't get them and aren't eligible to work on a project. And they don't tell you why, of course.

For critically sensitive defense contracts? I would hope not.

To be clear, you're saying that we should discriminate against naturalized citizens, which is directly opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Not the OP, but I would say that yes, sometimes the risk is just too high. There's no inherent right to be granted a security clearance.

To your point though, I'm not sure how a blanket ban of e.g. naturalized citizens from country X jives with anti-discrimination law. If I had a better internet connection at the moment I'd look into it.

iirc, I believe there is a national security exception, and there are obviously others. As a man, go ahead and try to apply for a position as a stripper at a male oriented club, or as a waiter at Hooters. The Christian Coalition of <whatever> isn't required to hire atheists.

They effectively restrict it by considering ties to certain countries to be a risk.

It's amazing how many people are misinformed here, because this guy is right. It's illegal to discriminate on country of origin, full stop[1]. It's illegal to discriminate on citizenship, unless it's mandatory. If someone is authorized to work in the US, you cannot take their country of origin into account[2]. If they require sponsorship, you are not required to provide it.

For the small class of jobs that require citizenship, it is illegal to discriminate on naturalization status.[3]

[1]https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/1123-national-origin-discr... [2]https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/1122-citizenship-status-di... [3]https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/employee-rights-discrimina...

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