This is bad read on the history of innovation. I offer two counter-examples, though there are many more:

(1) Japanese semiconductor industry, for which there is an excellent NHK documentary [1].

(2) After WW2, the British invited Soviet engineers to tour jet engine factories as a token of good faith. The engineers documented the factory layout, and wore adhesive on their shoes to gather metal filings for later analysis. A few years later, Mig-15's were shooting American planes out of the sky over Korea. A similar example: the British transferred huge bodies of knowledge to US aircraft engine manufacturers during WW2. This laid the foundation for the industry's future success.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihkRwArnc1k

(2) According to Mig-15 wp page, UK gave USSR an engine with blueprints. The part in your story about adhesive shoes sounds like an urban legend, unimportant detail at most.

Aerospace metallurgy is some of the most secretive aspects of development. Metal filings could literally have been more valuable than the blueprints. This is still a very competitive space a challenge for reverse engineering. Even with samples and atomic analyses, it is not always possible possible to reproduce without the proper method.

Here is a related link. https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/chinese-spy-accused-trying...

As you hint, raw composition isn't even half the story. You can put your microscopic samples in the mass spec and then melt the same elements together and not end up with the same stuff.

Treatment, how it's worked, how it's coated are just as important.

Not to mention how contaminated filings usually are.

No, I've heard about that in a few different aircraft programs, so it's likely real.

Not the origin of gumshoe

> Wang similarly told his supervising UCSF professor that he had duplicated some of the work of that professor at the lab in China. Some of the work of the UCSF lab was funded by grants from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health (NIH). Wang also wiped his personal phone of WeChat messaging content earlier the morning he arrived at LAX.

They are being thorough.

Everyone has OpSec.

And then he told them everything during an interview. Or maybe it's all lies to hide something else. Who knows.

He's a "Level 9" PLA officer (apx. Major officer), if he spilled that out easily to CBP, definitely there's something more suspicious than just copy-cat labs design.

The official name for that is I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

But something doesn't add up to him just confessing that quickly all that information

Level 9 technician is just a civilian employee, not an officer, let alone major.

Finally some effort to address the replication crisis

It doesn't say when the professors work was duplicated, it may have been a published experiment he duplicated at his university job. I imagine most US university medical labs have grant funding from those organizations, they don't even suggest Wang was involved with that research.

And wiping your phone before international travel, particular to China, is just smart. That doesn't imply wrongdoing.

Well, with TU 144 and Buran, the copying situation is rather interesting - both were substantially different that the Concorde and Space Shuttle. But the main copy aspect was that the politburo saw a cool thing and told the engineeres - we want THAT - NOW, get going on it or else.

> Well, with TU 144 and Buran, the copying situation is rather interesting - both were substantially different that the Concorde and Space Shuttle.

This is super common with industrial espionage. As a reductio ad absurdum after 1991 I believe the Russians sold working fighter jets with detailed blue prints and instructions on how to manufacture all the components to the Converse Chinese. They still failed to make a perfect copy. Same deal for whatever the Soviet copy of the B-52 was. Building a sophisticated piece of machinery when your supply chain is very different you have to make compromises and different choices and they all add up.

Not only that, but the Soviets realized that the STS (Space Transportation System) wasn't going to live up to its promises for flight rate and cost, and thought something else must be afoot.

IIRC the main thing Soviets feared was surprise strike on Moscow by nukes launched from a space shuttle.

This sounds rather absurd given that preparing a space shuttle for launch takes literally months. But the idea was, as far as I can tell, that it would launch on a regular mission, then use its heat shield and aerodynamic surfaces to change orbit inclination radically while out of reach of soviet radar, resulting in totally unexpected direct overflight of Moscow, making a decapitating strike possible.

> politburo saw a cool thing and told the engineeres

There was industrial espionage too. Considering they had the former and political backing, it's surprising how much of a disaster the 144 was - Not least because it was built for a market that didn't exist (comrade) in the Soviet Union, it was a noisy deathtrap. Their western equivalents flew somewhere on the order of a thousand times further (Concordski only did about 100 commercial flights)

They made a space shuttle though, and it was pretty capable. It could even fly autonomously.

That's misleading, and anyone who cares presumably knows.

It could be they’re duplicating the physical layout of the lab to make stolen documents easier to understand.

> then that's kind of hilarious and they've really missed the point.

Not quite, a layout, and process organisation of some high end labs are quite important, especially if you deal with some hazardous materials, and want to design protocols to avoid contamination/theft.

If he is a bacteriologist, then, moreover given what's in the news these days

Soviets also copied the B-29 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4

"... the type entered large-scale service in 1949. Entry into service of the Tu-4 threw the USAF into a panic, since the Tu-4 possessed sufficient range to attack Chicago or Los Angeles on a one-way mission ...

and early Intel microchips: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KR580VM80A , which included military versions.

Their "space shuttle" was not a copy and was also far superior to the Western one in design.

It was different which means their was some arguable advantages, but it was less reusable and even more expensive to operate. They effectively copped the worst aspects of the shuttle and then made a lot of sacrifices to get it to fly. Which is why it only had a single unmanned flight.

Pretty sure the Buran only had one flight because of timing with the fall of the USSR.

Here’s a good summary of its life: https://youtu.be/XLOCQw5s9Uw

It’s possible the USSR would have had more flights for propaganda reasons, but in a direct comparison the Souyuz was simply the better design. So it was the Soyuz program that continued after the USSR’s fall.

If the US had the space shuttle, the Soyuz, and common sense, they would also drop the space shuttle and fly the Soyuz. But apparently the US had neither the Soyuz nor common sense.

The Buran only existed in order to send a message. And it was also technically better designed than the space shuttle.

Sure it seemed more capable, but it was also designed for propaganda. For example the version of Buran that actually flew sacrificed the spacecrafts engines to get more stuff into orbit. The shuttle on the other hand returned with them. If you want a space truck, the Buran failed a primary design goal.

Now NASA did end up spending a lot of time refurbishing those engines, but if they wanted more frequent launches they could have simply built more engines. The program dramatically misunderstood how much they would be flying resulting in vastly higher costs over time.

Which was the major design flaw of both systems. Dig into things more and Buran was simply an even worse fit for either program than the Shuttle ended up being.

Well, if it wasn't a response to the shuttle, the timing would have been different, earlier, wouldn't it?

If you've ever heard a counterfeiting story from a chipmaker this is unsurprising. They'll copy anything and everything just to be sure.

Forgotten weapons has a great video on early 20th century counterfeit Chinese weapons that is relatable - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HNaB7l2GQk

I saw a Chinese copy of a Nazi pistol (mauser broomhandle) and at distance it is a 1-1 copy but on closer inspection you realize instead of being machined every single part was filed by hand by someone. It must have taken an incredible amount of time to make a pistol that way. Also they tried to copy the stamped lettering but most of it is jibberish. Very interesting.

People in the Philippines also still make pistols by hand filing. It's quite incredible.

Buran is a bad example, as it was very different from the space shuttle and likely superior

>It's like the Soviets copying the space shuttle and concorde.

they didn't though, please try again.

The resemblance is obvious, whether or not it's a "copy" by some standard.

It just occurred to me to check out the Mig-29 on Wikipedia, and it has an uncanny resemblance to the F-15.

It might be an optimum design for a glider, e.g., here is a design for India's Space Shuttle https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/c_fill,g_auto,w_1200,h_675...

I actually just saw a documentary about the Mig 29, seems like it was a pretty revolutionary design https://youtu.be/zCnpuoD1PLo

Both the Mig-29 and Su-27 are based on the same aerodynamics research. That they look similar to the F-15 is probably more due to the fact that they were all designed to be air superiority fighters than any espionage.

Something that caught my eye was not just the overall layout but the intakes' shape.

When I say it looks like the F-15, I'm saying, as opposed to, say, the F-16 or F-18 or F-14.

And it's just a comment on the superficial appearance, not based on aerospace knowledge or about espionage.

This thread isn't even about espionage, is it?

Maybe you misread something? If I think something obviously looks like something else, that's not something you can disprove with a citation. There's no assumption involved.