If China was doing this with boots on the ground - with people physically acquiring this information on-site - it would be a major international incident. I don't quite grasp why doing the same thing over the Internet is significantly different.

They do plenty of that too, both at research institutions and corporations. If you look for news articles, you’ll find them, but it isn’t something that is generally noticed as a story. It’s been rampant for decades though.

What makes you think they don't do that? Of course they do that. They even send chinese women to seduce lonely pathetic FBI/CIA/etc officials to get information. There was a huge story about it a few years ago.

But everyone does it. The brits, french, russians, koreans, japanese, germans, saudis, etc all do it. Hell the nation with the largest spy network in the US is our ally Israel.

The chinese are amateurs when it comes to spying on the internet or in the real world. Once they get to israel's level, then you the media won't even report on their spying and if they do, they'll make excuses for it.

> everyone does it

In this discussion of 19 comments, I count around 5, more than 25%, that say some variation of 'everyone else does it too', but never with any support for the claim. It's generally true of any discussion mentioning China, though I don't have the precise numbers. The marginal value of these comments was low, lacking any support, and is greatly diminishing with use.

> but never with any support for the claim.

Because it's well known and established.

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/16/israel-wont-stop-spying-u...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intellige...

https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/03/politics/germany-media-spying...

That every major nation spies on each other is obvious.

Why do you think every major nation has a spy agency?

> The marginal value of these comments was low, lacking any support, and is greatly diminishing with use.

It's not everyone's fault you don't know the basics. What are you whining about? That you are ignorant of what government and spy agencies do?

If people said all governments pass laws are you whine about how people don't provide evidence of it?

I very much doubt that China is unique in this.

China is unique in their institutional use of criminal IP theft as a state strategy to catch up and eventually surpass the United States.

Are they? As a Canadian I'm quite ashamed of the hacking my goverment did in regards to Brazil. I'd presume Brazil is one of many.

But that was not to rip off their technology. Not similar to what China is doing at all.

I’m not making a moral judgment about which is worse, just pointing out that they are very different activities and outcomes.

We started with IP and now we're saying tech? Isn't IP IP, from a schematic, to a internal price list, or an org chart? Surly hacking to get ahead is hacking to get ahead, irrispective of industry.

No, it isn't.

This. I'm pretty fed up with this narrative. It's always either Russians or Chinese.

Apart from (quite obviously) USA there is a handful of other powerful actors (ie. Israel, UK) in the game but you rarely get to read about it.

It just makes me trust "western" news outlets less.

The “western” news spent a good part of 2015 covering Edward Snowden’s in great detail and sealing great damage to US reputation, despite the Chinese, Russian etc. governments having or aspiring for similar programs.

Generally the “western” (or at least American) press has a strong tradition of criticizing its own government, much stronger than some other nations. Criticizing foreign governments or running negative stories about them does not take away from that. There are lots of positive China stories in the MSM as well.

It’s the collusion between state and business that make this chilling. It’s not just information gathering driving policy decisions it’s IP theft from a state actor that is transferred to local players to compete with US companies.

there was plenty of intel gathered in Russia during the cold war that got fed directly to private contractors in the US. I would be stunned if it were not still happening.

Definitionally (for the word unique), they are not unique. Even this thread mentions other economies. So, You're right.

They might be the biggest by economic scale and consequence. They might be the most visible.

But this is not unique.

So IP theft is okay?

It's not a theft. Whatever information they took from hacked computers probably stayed on those computers, why would they erased it. It's copying. Not a theft. Theft is when someone break in to your apartment and steal your CD collection leaving you with nothing.

If you're a corporate entity and the copying of data you paid to assemble leaves you with no competitive advantage it's a lot closer to theft than your run of the mill "copying is theft" assertion.

It’s theft if you use that information to create products from that data for which you didn’t have to pay R&D for. This is what IP theft is. Don’t muddy the waters with a technical description of the crime.

Imagine there is one billion people- and they are deemed by their own government so incapable of innovating tech - and so not in need of future IP protection due to a lack of inventions, that such massive industrial espionage is deemed a better trade off.

For a Chinese developer- this is actually the hardest insult somebody could throw at them.

What trade off? They can both have internal innovation, which is hard, and steal others IP, which is easy.

You basically sacrifice all your rights to protect your own IPs if you go around stealing from your neighbors. If a Chinese company invents something - no matter how protected it is, i assume it would be one huge government sanctioned feeding frenzy free for all.

I can already hear the negotiation starting with- well if you want your IPs protected, all you need to do is sign here and here- and assure us our IPs are protected to. Its the same eye for a eye logic governing punitive dutys.

This is perfectly normal. As in, every country considers offensive hacking an espionage operation,not different from hiring moles at those companies to collect intel.

It isn't one way either,every developed country has multiple apt groups. What China does against american companies,america does against british companies,etc...

Can anyone comment on the reputation of the researchers at 401TRG?