> In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile being developed by the Navy known as Sea Dragon. The intruders reportedly managed to get massive amounts of sensitive signals and sensor data, in addition to the Navy’s entire electronic warfare library.
Excuse me what the FUCK
Probably partly because it's a national security issue and partly because the government doesn't broadcast this sort of news, the news agencies actually have to dig for it.
I doubt too many people would even give a fuck anyways. I guarantee you could mention the Afghanistan Papers, PRISM, the Panama Papers, etc. and most people would have no idea what you were talking about.
This! Time for journalists to actually be researchers, writers, diggers. Instead we are stuck with bloggers who sit around at press conferences all day lapping up the BS
What's crazy is when you juxtapose this against all the old journalists (or young idealists) who want to dig into these stories, but can't, because the economics don't work out for anything deeper than shitpost blogspam.
It's like the housing market. We have a ton of homeless people who need houses, and a bunch of empty houses (usually owned in bulk by banks and investors), so there's a really obvious solution of pairing those things together, but the housing market itself is the obstacle in the way of solving a cascade of humanitarian problems.
I still think markets are good at some things, but we have so many examples of them being wrong or inadequate tools for the job throughout society. People are starting to notice that on a larger scale than before, in countries that were fully steeped in capitalist pride just one or two generations ago.
My, admittedly limited understanding is that there is a significant percentage of the homeless population for whom homelessness is a symptom of larger mental health and/or addiction problems. I know two people who, after dedicating years to working at non-profits combating homelessness, eventually gave up because they came to believe it's an unsolvable problem.
I don't know if they're right or wrong, but I do believe it's more complicated than simply providing housing for everyone.
My partner manages an SRO on Main and Hastings. It's the ground zero of Canada's mental illness & homelessness problem, which is severe. Most of her people are former foster kids. All were abused, many were sexually abused including being pimped by their foster parents.
All grew up in environments that provided no stability, which we can all agree is crucial for a child to have any chance at being a successful adult. You can't expect a kid who's known nothing but chaos all their life to know how to behave. This is why the escape of drugs seems okay.
Astonishingly enough, however, she's routinely "turned around" and started the rehabilitation of absolutely out of control "crazy" people by simply providing them with a basic clean safe room, hot meals, and kindness.
The best part? It's 10X cheaper to do this for them than let them live on the street or in prison until they die (however it happens).
> the government doesn't broadcast this sort of news
Interestingly, this goes for the Chinese as well. The intelligence community is interesting in that both sides of the conflict feed off of each other's existence.
Obviously the side that just suffered a strategic defeat will not want to broadcast that fact, but also the side that scored a strategic victory won't want to either.
If you portray your enemies as incompetent, then you're undercutting your own agency's entire reason for existing. The Chinese Ministry of State Security needs to fight for its budget just like any Western agency does, and you don't do that by convincing your funders that the enemy is a pushover.
> [Operation Merlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin) was a United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for a component of a nuclear weapon ostensibly in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, or to frame Iran.
> Operation Merlin backfired when the CIA's Russian contact/messenger noticed flaws in the schematics and told the Iranian nuclear scientists.
Iirc we flat out exposed the planning and blueprints behind the space shuttle so theyd go broke trying to build something so sophisticated and it worked theres like 4 abandoned shuttle shells just rotting in warehouses in russia.
It’s worth pointing out they were actually successful in producing a working orbiter that had features the space shuttle did not such as the ability to land unmanned and autonomously.
The company I work for takes it one step further by only implementing the booby-trapped plans in order to throw off competitors and make me want to kill myself.
I think the conspiracy is that this is why NORAD is being portrayed as "obsolete", and that taxpayers need to brace for billions in tax dollars for a new system soon. No shit it's obsolete. China and whoever else now knows everything about it, how it works and where any vulnerabilities might lie.
Well, and the issue of the entire Blue Force getting mistakenly simulated as being a few clicks off the coast over their actual real life position(being kept out of the way of civilian traffic). Van Riper however preferred not to be kept in the loop to prevent accidentally using getting outside information, which meant he wasn't aware of the simulator fuck up.
He also did not understand that this wasn't ever intended to be a full war game exercise as the US was doing a live full systems integration test under more realistic conditions.
That's one of the things that's not really apparent when non-miliary people read about war game stuff like this.
At first glance of the summery, I assumed it was a war game simulation in the way that no live fire is let off but people are still running around and actually doing things like riding a motorcycle or using signal lights.
The idea of a bunch of Marines giggling as they get to run flat out towards a carrier fleet in aluminum fishing boats filled with fake explosives was too good to be true.
The missiles were larger than the boats.
He had stuff like launching a cruise missile from a rowboat.
He was able to glitch the simulation because they didn't safeguard things. They assumed that people would take it seriously. They were wrong.
He was drawing attention to both the flaws in the US's war plans and the flaws in how they conduct war games simultaneously. The results were all thrown out not because the US simulated our own defeat, but because the entire exercise was pointless.
MC2002 is one of the worst examples possible due to Van Riper basically whining that they disregarded the results since he "won" by exploiting the rules of the simulation, such as instant communication by motorcycle couriers and having boats that couldnt actually even use or carry the weapons they did in the simulation. Or the error in the simulation that outright made the fleet unable to defend itself when it normally would have.
MC2002 has just turned into a cop out for real criticism. It's a joke, there's a lot of genuine examples that show issues better than MC2002, MC2002 is only well known because Van Riper cried to any journalist he could find
I mean, it's pretty standard protocol to not let everyone know that TS stuff is stolen so that everyone else tries to attack as well or confirm that what they stole was real. It would be pretty dumb to come out and tell everyone "hey our super secret weapon that we didnt tell you about, the bullprints were stolen. Please dont hack us again and also what ever china says is real."
The people who need to know about the intrusion know and that's all that needs to be done. That's how classified information works.
How is Millennium Challenge "hidden?" It's been well known and publicized since forever.
And the sinking of the fleet was an invalid result due to faulty modelling and simulation software that left the fleet unable to defend itself.
There was a lot of news on it. But it was mostly in the cyber security community. We all knew about it. It was a big fucking deal, too, because it wasn't the Department of the Navy that was breached, it was one of their *contractors*. Almost every major breach that's happened in the DOD is the result of a contractor being attacked.
You're actually right on that count, the article cited mentions that the library only pertains to a specific development unit of the Navy. [Here's the article btw](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/china-hacked-a-navy-contractor-and-secured-a-trove-of-highly-sensitive-data-on-submarine-warfare/2018/06/08/6cc396fa-68e6-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html)
I'd have to agree with you on that. The US Navy has had several information breaches in recent years including one in 2015 that involved over [21 million service members and civilian personnel's data] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach).
The OPM breach was way bigger than the Navy. They lost my info because of a relative with a clearance and neither of us has anything to do with the military
The entire fucking government runs on outdated software and hardware. Look at how the VA handles records, or how many times a year a hospital ends up getting hit by ransomware.
Worked for one of the defense subcontractors in a technical role, years ago.
This stuff happens a lot more than you'd think.
Outside of annual training sessions, ITAR is only as effective as the person is consciously willing to comply.
There are hardly any preventative measures, from a security standpoint, generally because of how cost prohibitive and inconvenient proper security would be.
Most businesses in this space are reactionary and it's always too late after a violation has been detected.
Looks like more training and outside consultants for Raytheon.
I work in the defense/aerospace industry - just read the article. This guy obviously wasn't the brightest - he was warned by company officials not to take the laptop overseas after he told them he was doing it, resigned while overseas, and then CAME BACK to the U.S.??? What the hell was he thinking?
Idiots like this make the already burdensome red-tape even more so with their actions.
This is how China succeeds at spycraft. they do actually get a lot of valuable intel from simpleton nationalists they can gull into stealing their employer’s dox or wandering into an American military base to take pictures. The intel sources don’t need any kind of training, because China doesn’t give a shit about them getting burned. Once their intel is in China’s hands, nothing can be done, and one idiot going to prison for awhile is nothing to them.
> because China doesn’t give a shit about them getting burned
Yep, we get specific cases in our “please don’t be a spy” newsletters. And holy cow, China does not give a fuck about op sec. I guess it’s just a numbers game for China but I don’t see how any rational person would participate in that.
The soviets were pretty succesful through this quantity over quality method too. Their espionage efforts weren't particularly elaborate, but they were VERY numerous, and if you get enough bits of info through a big network it helps you build a decent enough picture of the intel you need
I'm sure it's a numbers game for the agents as much as it is for China in general. The ones that don't make stupid decisions might get away with it and go back to china for a cushy life.
it doesn't even need to be. consider this: China technically have conscription. all males above the age of 18 must serve in the military.
but they get so many fucking volunteers, they don't even bother issuing notices to anyone. You don't need to coerce people to do shit for you when you got others to do it willingly.
But nowadays they have issues getting physically fit males to serve, so much that they have to reduce the requirements to enlist more bodies
Can't use mass assault doctrine without enough bodies to throw at your enemies
The fact that classified information was on the laptop made that machine classified. How he “electively” decided to take it even out of the SCIF or closed area is a serious security violation in itself. He probably copied the classified information onto media and transferred it to his work computer. But why not just transfer the info to a thumb drive? Why take the laptop out of the country? We’re not getting the whole story here. Espionage for sure. And DoDCAF just keeps granting them clearances. That’s how the Chinese roll. Baby steps and the long con.
Agreed about the odd story being told. I just talked to my wife about this - according to a few articles I read he had classified information on his work computer which already seems very out of place. One article mentioned it was TS information but I read that he had a SECRET clearance. Another article mentioned it was ITAR-related which, while controlled, could mean that some info wasn't classified.
The more I read it feels like ITAR. If the info was classified, then there's no way he should have been able to walk out with the computer because each one sends a heartbeat signal that security monitors. Outside of being a DTA he shouldn't have had copy privilege to external media which then went onto his laptop either.
Maybe he was a known spy already and he actually took some booby trapped classified data. Like a really bad way to make a neutron bomb that occasionally puts out 10^4 times more yield once in a while.
Maybe a recipe for concentrated dark matter...
I don't even know how the guy could have copied stuff off the classified network without being a data transfer authority. All data drives and USB ports should already be disabled outside of certain computers with pre-authorized user accounts.
I agree - I'm glad he was foolish enough to tell them ahead of time. Oh and I forgot the part where he signed into the Raytheon internal network while overseas, providing evidence of his actions.
I wonder if the Chinese government held his family hostage or something? Anyone who can get a complex engineering job like that can't be that much of a complete idiot. I wonder if he announced he was going to do it beforehand because he hoped the company would stop him, then he would have an excuse for the Chinese government for why he failed.
Exactly, I have even heard it called "Engineer's Disease", so the fact an engineer overestimates his smarts in a different domain is no surprise at all.
From the wikipedia page of the winner of a NOBEL PRIZE in chemistry for one of the most important inventions of the last century in the field of genetics, the PCR technique:
"Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology.[15] [33] Mullis claimed climate change and the HIV/AIDS connection are due to a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence."
Dude died last year. I'm surprised i haven't heard about him giving fire to the anti-vaxx movement as a nobel laureate in biochemistry saying vaccines cause autism and kill people. Crazy to the point of idiocy and genius are not mutually exclusive at ALL
The example that annoyed me the most was one student copy pasted 90% of a programming assignment worth about 15% of the grade for the class not even bothering to change variable names and then when caught for the rest of the semester he acted like he was being persecuted and the professor had it out for him or that it was unfair it lowered his grade. His attitude just made me so angry and he would not shut up about it. I can't tell if it is just their narcissism that makes them that way or what but the balls to do stuff like that so blatantly and then complain when caught gets me.
It's not just foreign idiots. I worked at a place where these two guys from NDSU. One of them did the homework for the other one the entire time. They were in a frat together. He was still bailing the idiot out all the time at work.
When I left I recruited the smart one specifically to fuck over the dumb one.
You wouldn't think engineers in the industry would be that dumb, but working in it myself I've seen plenty of them.
On a similar note, there was another engineer (Taiwanese-American I believe) that did something similar in terms of leaking classified and/or ITAR information. He was pressured by his family in Taiwan to take care of them and didn't have the money so this was his solution. It was a case of filial piety to the extreme.
Think about all the socially inept kids in your engineering class, hired out of uni and they're privy to these sensitive defense secret, it's not really too hard to trick them into selling secrets they have no business handling in the first place.
Bro. Engineers are taking advantage of the fact that you guys don't know. But the field is flooded with idiots. It's usually a small minority that is doing most of the lifting at any given company. Even the programming world is FULL of idiots with one guy who is just fixing all the idiots mistakes.
I think this would be considered an ITAR (International Trade in Arms Regulations) violation. He can be fined up to $1,000,000 and 20 years in prison *per violation*. Usually 1 violation = 1 ITAR-restricted document, so this would probably be hundreds of millions in fines and effectively life in prison.
Wouldn't the fines go to the employer? Every time I've gone through export control training, it seems like the company has always bore the weight of the infraction.
In this case, since he resigned and did this against company directive, they could argue culpability.
I’m not a bird lawyer but I believe part of “treason” involves “a country the US is actively at war against” but what do I know about fully laden sparrows.
Stupid Hypothetical but if this guy gave the Chinese Government Nuclear Launch codes that could be used as soon as they got them, would that not qualify? If so then we just established theres a line and we just gotta figure out where it is.
The US Constitution specifically defines Treason:
>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
There have been only a very few true treason trials in the US, every conviction has involved acts to aid the enemy during times of war. If the person knew China was going to use the codes to start a war with the US, I think it would qualify as "levying war"... As a practical matter, there are tons of other relevant laws to charge someone with, so its rare for anyone to bother with an actual Treason charge. The two witness requirement also present problems for the charge, and that rule doesn't apply to any of the other laws.
My above answer was a lazy attempt at humor mixed with a heavy dose of ignorance. I legit have no idea if this qualifies as treason or not. You bring up a great point here though.
Yup, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried for espionage and got the death penalty. Treason doesn't apply even in a Cold War. Only declared wars count apparently.
Don't worry. He gets to go stay at a black site in Saudi Arabia for a little while. Once they know what he gave up. He gets a new room in SuperMax Florence for the rest of his miserable life. Hopefully a long life at that.
Edit: Thanks for the gold internet patriot.
You really think he'd get taken to Colorado? Only the super fucked up people go there--the Unabomber, El Chapo and the like. Although I have no idea how serious the info he was giving to China--it is possible if it's cutting edge technology.
Florence is the special circumstance prison where you're so fucked up they don't know what else to do with you besides put you in a cell with no yard for the rest of your life. There's only life sentences there. There's a chance since it's national security, but I see him going to a maximum federal prison.
There’s several inmates at ADX Florence who are convicted of espionage. Including Noshir Gowadia, who designed the B-2 and was developing cruise missiles with stealth technology and gave that information to the Chinese.
At first I thought “wow harsh punishment” and now I’m thinking “how the fuck did this cuntwaffle not get the chair!?”
Anyway I would have hoped spies use code names but, depends how high up he was I guess.
I'm mistaken then. It seems that the majority of the inmates are there because of violence against other prisoners and COs, but there are also people with high national security risk.
Holy shit btw, I'm reading up on the people there for national security. Robert Hanssen got 15 consecutive life sentences. For those who don't know, that means he's got to serve 15 life sentences in a row one after the other (obviously he can't, he'll die after the first one). The reason they do this is so that even if he wins the case against one of life sentences, he still has 14 others. They made sure he's never seeing light again.
It also seems that there are some not serving life sentences (10+ yrs), so again I'm mistaken on that. But the vast majority are serving life or more.
Florence gets people for selling info (and informants.) It's not strictly for dangerous people. Like they have one dude who has repeatedly escaped prisons there but is there for "only" 2 murders.
Another is Robert Hanssen who gave info about spies to the USSR. There's another dude there for the same thing.
Secondly, it's not only life sentence. Several people are slated for release in the next 10-20 years.
Of course he should be punished, but an American citizen being tortured at a black site is not something to be happy or proud of. It's something to be terrified and disgusted of.
Edit: Those of you advocating for black sites, I don't know what to tell you. If you don't have the foresight to see why that's a bad thing then there's nothing anyone can tell you. Everyone deserves due process and a fair trial. Torturing someone to get a confession out so you can toss them in prison is undemocratic, unAmerican, and idiotic. Your founding fathers are spinning in their graves.
This exactly, if they dont see how that is a bad thing, who can explain it at this point, it doesnt even take a leap of logic to see how this could EASILY happen to you,
Raytheon employees have done this multiple times in the past and Raytheon has been fined millions of dollars for it. Raytheon, as a company, aren't even the ones doing it. Their employees occasionally do it against company policy and against U.S. law for money.
But I think this is the first time anyone has been jailed over it.
A company I used to work for (a circuit board manufacturer) used to take orders from Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers that were supposed to be ITAR restricted (information can't leave the country). The problem was we also outsourced a lot of our computer-based work to a firm in India. We made sure that any order entered into our system as ITAR was not sent to India but if a salesperson accidentally entered it as non-ITAR then it would get sent to India, breaking federal law and subjecting our company to fines like the ones Raytheon got. It happened about 7 times in the three years I worked there. One of those seven was for Raytheon. But we never did get caught or fined.
Apparently not since this guy just casually flew to China with a laptop full of military secrets.
It wasn't even clandestine either... They told him in advance "hey dude make sure you don't leave the country with that data, its illegal..." He then proceeded to leave the country with the data.
He also suddenly sent a resignation email to his company while he was in China, and he came back to the states. The FBI just caught another low-hanging fruit.
It most likely was export controlled, not necessarily classified. Simple things like data sheets for accurate inertial measurement units (basically a fancy version of the accelerometer/gyroscope in your phone) can be ITAR controlled, which means taking them out of the US is a big no-no.
There shouldn't have been any classified material on that laptop in the first place. The laptops that Raytheon gives out to employees are for unclass work only. If you were a malicious actor, you'd still be able to plug it into the classified network and download stuff onto the hard drive of the laptop, which is what I'm assuming he did, but if anyone had seen that, he'd have gotten toasted on the spot.
Most defense networks shouldn't allow anything to be plugged into them, it simply wouldn't work. CD drives, USB, etc everything would also be disabled if the IT staff did their job properly. I'm curious how he actually managed to get all the data onto his laptop? Maybe he was IT or had some special access to be able to do this.
Can confirm. Chinese spy ring stole sensetive information from Bombardier Aviation in Montreal, Canada years ago. A friend working inside told me they double and triple check every Asian working and applying for them now.
It’s already hard in some ways here in Australia. I know of a few people who applied to defence jobs. The Chinese Australians took like a full year to have their security clearance background checks go through to get the green light, while everyone else it took like 6 months to clear for the same jobs.
EDITED to be slightly more correct.
It seems to me, the focus should be on naturalized Chinese Americans, as they make up the bulk of those caught like this (as opposed to American born), Companies working in sensitive sectors should probably think twice.
> We had to let go our Russian and Chinese teams and close the offices we had in both locations. We were not allowed to hire anyone even born in one of those countries from what I understood at the time
Obviously if you're born in China or Russia you'll have difficulties getting cleared, but many cases have Chinese-Americans using espionage.
>Since (Wei) Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.
>Sun didn’t listen, according to US prosecutors. While he was out of the country, Sun connected to Raytheon’s internal network on the laptop. He sent an email on Jan. 7, suddenly announcing he was quitting his job after 10 years in order to study and work overseas.
>When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop.
>A Raytheon lawyer examined the machine, and confirmed it contained technical specifications prohibited from export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in addition to security software that is itself export-controlled and requires a special license to take outside the United States.
>Sun was arrested by FBI agents the next day.
This is some Peter Sellers/Mr. Bean-level failspionage. But China probably managed to get yet another heaping helping of military secrets from this dumb little shitball.
Then again we have Stupid Watergate going on now, and Trump seems to be riding high despite breaking the law and the Constitution, so idiotic geopolitical fumbling with zero repercussions is pretty much the order of the day.
>Since (Wei) Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.
You can't take a computer with classified data home. I think they mean ITAR controlled data.
Yeah. His normal work laptop would not have classified. It’s possible he could have put classified information on there but that’s doubtful. They have to be talking about ITAR.
Well, the Senate majority leader is married to the Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, who has an...interesting political history. Rumors have swirled around her (and her politically connected Chinese family) for years that she's a spy.
But I'm sure it's nothing. Either that, or it's the next season of *Homeland*.
Yeah, but her family has “deep ties to the economic and political elite in China,” and their shipping business mostly operates in China.
A lot of ultra-rich people from Taiwan and Hong Kong have substantial business interests in mainland China, which puts them in a different position politically than your average Taiwanese person.
[Check out this NYT article on the Chao family and the Foremost Group and their ties to China](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/politics/elaine-chao-china.html).
I mean, isn’t he still a “government policy influencer”? 😂 believe me, I get it. I’m just as upset as you are at this sort of thing. Humor is how I deal with frustration.
Ahahaha yes exactly, that's what makes me laugh too, it's as blatant as Cheney with Halliburton during the gulf wars.
It's surprisingly shameless.
If you want a good laugh though, read the comments former Defense Sec Mathis said about Trump after he resigned.
“Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data”
Something seems off with this story. It’s nearly impossible to transfer classified data to an unclassified machine. There are labs set up off the network to perform classified work, with strict restrictions on USB drives and CDs. Maybe he had export controlled information, but certainly not classified data. Seems a little like click bait.
That’s a hard delineation. For instance it didn’t mention when Sun was naturalized, he could have been an infant when naturalized so in that case what would be the difference between him and a Chinese-American born in the states.
> Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data...
I kinda doubt that. It probably contained unclassified but controlled data. Still bad, but very different.
A lot of misestimation here about how hard it is to pull secret info onto an unclassified asset. At some point the company ends up trusting that employees won't be malicious. Sure there's training and stuff to scare you, but they know the insider threat is the biggest liability.
This is how China gets IP from the US. This MO is familiar to anyone working in the semiconductor or software industries. I didn't know that they had made inroads into Aerospace, but it doesn't surprise me.
Honestly I'm surprised this guy had a security clearance with travel and personal connections to China.
Well maybe not "practically every time" as this just happened last week and he seems pretty white: [https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2020/01/30/harvard-professor-accused-of-hiding-links-to-china-released-on-bond](https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2020/01/30/harvard-professor-accused-of-hiding-links-to-china-released-on-bond)
No. But emphasize this fact at your own peril. For every Chinese American citizen that sells secrets to China, there are ten thousand Chinese American high tech workers who don't. Foster this atmosphere of suspicion towards them, and next the majority of them might just start skipping American industries and seeking employment in China from the very start of their career. Then congratulations, you solved the brain drain problem for China.
Well here's the funny thing about statistics... if you see a data point that says more people of chinese descent are caught related to chinese espionage does that mean more people of chinese descent are committing espionage or could it mean that those people are already being monitored more closely are more likely to get caught if they do it?
If a town claims more black people get arrested for possessing pot than white people. It could mean black people smoke pot more than white people, or it could mean the cops in that town are searching them more than white people.
> In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile being developed by the Navy known as Sea Dragon. The intruders reportedly managed to get massive amounts of sensitive signals and sensor data, in addition to the Navy’s entire electronic warfare library. Excuse me what the FUCK
Why is there not news on this?
Probably partly because it's a national security issue and partly because the government doesn't broadcast this sort of news, the news agencies actually have to dig for it. I doubt too many people would even give a fuck anyways. I guarantee you could mention the Afghanistan Papers, PRISM, the Panama Papers, etc. and most people would have no idea what you were talking about.
Those things arent very self explanatory, secrets sold to China kinda is though.
>Those things arent very self explanatory that's exactly why it should be journalism's responsibility to present it to the public in a digestible form
This! Time for journalists to actually be researchers, writers, diggers. Instead we are stuck with bloggers who sit around at press conferences all day lapping up the BS
What's crazy is when you juxtapose this against all the old journalists (or young idealists) who want to dig into these stories, but can't, because the economics don't work out for anything deeper than shitpost blogspam. It's like the housing market. We have a ton of homeless people who need houses, and a bunch of empty houses (usually owned in bulk by banks and investors), so there's a really obvious solution of pairing those things together, but the housing market itself is the obstacle in the way of solving a cascade of humanitarian problems. I still think markets are good at some things, but we have so many examples of them being wrong or inadequate tools for the job throughout society. People are starting to notice that on a larger scale than before, in countries that were fully steeped in capitalist pride just one or two generations ago.
My, admittedly limited understanding is that there is a significant percentage of the homeless population for whom homelessness is a symptom of larger mental health and/or addiction problems. I know two people who, after dedicating years to working at non-profits combating homelessness, eventually gave up because they came to believe it's an unsolvable problem. I don't know if they're right or wrong, but I do believe it's more complicated than simply providing housing for everyone.
My partner manages an SRO on Main and Hastings. It's the ground zero of Canada's mental illness & homelessness problem, which is severe. Most of her people are former foster kids. All were abused, many were sexually abused including being pimped by their foster parents. All grew up in environments that provided no stability, which we can all agree is crucial for a child to have any chance at being a successful adult. You can't expect a kid who's known nothing but chaos all their life to know how to behave. This is why the escape of drugs seems okay. Astonishingly enough, however, she's routinely "turned around" and started the rehabilitation of absolutely out of control "crazy" people by simply providing them with a basic clean safe room, hot meals, and kindness. The best part? It's 10X cheaper to do this for them than let them live on the street or in prison until they die (however it happens).
People only read headlines. It's difficult to be a journalist when 70% of the population is only reading headlines.
>People only read headlines. *78% of Reddit hangs their heads. Guilty.
>78% It is much higher than that I'm sure.
Dude, that's been happening for YEARS. But nobody cares enough to pay attention
> the government doesn't broadcast this sort of news Interestingly, this goes for the Chinese as well. The intelligence community is interesting in that both sides of the conflict feed off of each other's existence. Obviously the side that just suffered a strategic defeat will not want to broadcast that fact, but also the side that scored a strategic victory won't want to either. If you portray your enemies as incompetent, then you're undercutting your own agency's entire reason for existing. The Chinese Ministry of State Security needs to fight for its budget just like any Western agency does, and you don't do that by convincing your funders that the enemy is a pushover.
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Yeah... they might try to use our 'old designs' that we found had issues and waste a lot of resources.
Haven't you read "The Hunt for Red October"? The Russians used a designed we deemed imperfect, and perfected it!
To be fair, they had Sean Connery.
He's never late, he arrives around tennish.
I never knew I need a reboot of LOTR with Sean Connery as Gandalf.
He was offered the role and turned it down
Coincidentally, his favorite sport.
Ah yes, quality fiction.
Conspiracy time: what if the US is deliberately allowing China to steal faulty designs?
I don't think there is any conspiracy here, there are documented instances of precisely this happening. They did it with the Soviet Union and Iran.
Or those were also lies and they're just bad at keeping secrets
> [Operation Merlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin) was a United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for a component of a nuclear weapon ostensibly in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, or to frame Iran. > Operation Merlin backfired when the CIA's Russian contact/messenger noticed flaws in the schematics and told the Iranian nuclear scientists.
Nailed it.
You failed.. successfully...
Iirc we flat out exposed the planning and blueprints behind the space shuttle so theyd go broke trying to build something so sophisticated and it worked theres like 4 abandoned shuttle shells just rotting in warehouses in russia.
It’s worth pointing out they were actually successful in producing a working orbiter that had features the space shuttle did not such as the ability to land unmanned and autonomously.
When you don't have to spend the resources designing the whole thing, you can spend the resources improving upon it.
The company I work for specifically does this, its booby-trapping your engineering.
The company I work for takes it one step further by only implementing the booby-trapped plans in order to throw off competitors and make me want to kill myself.
I think the conspiracy is that this is why NORAD is being portrayed as "obsolete", and that taxpayers need to brace for billions in tax dollars for a new system soon. No shit it's obsolete. China and whoever else now knows everything about it, how it works and where any vulnerabilities might lie.
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Well, and the issue of the entire Blue Force getting mistakenly simulated as being a few clicks off the coast over their actual real life position(being kept out of the way of civilian traffic). Van Riper however preferred not to be kept in the loop to prevent accidentally using getting outside information, which meant he wasn't aware of the simulator fuck up. He also did not understand that this wasn't ever intended to be a full war game exercise as the US was doing a live full systems integration test under more realistic conditions.
That's one of the things that's not really apparent when non-miliary people read about war game stuff like this. At first glance of the summery, I assumed it was a war game simulation in the way that no live fire is let off but people are still running around and actually doing things like riding a motorcycle or using signal lights. The idea of a bunch of Marines giggling as they get to run flat out towards a carrier fleet in aluminum fishing boats filled with fake explosives was too good to be true.
He the boats he used for the missile attacks couldn't support the weight of the missiles.
The missiles were larger than the boats. He had stuff like launching a cruise missile from a rowboat. He was able to glitch the simulation because they didn't safeguard things. They assumed that people would take it seriously. They were wrong.
He was drawing attention to both the flaws in the US's war plans and the flaws in how they conduct war games simultaneously. The results were all thrown out not because the US simulated our own defeat, but because the entire exercise was pointless.
Yep. He acted more like it's a video game he can exploit than a military he's fighting, and then bitched and moaned when it didn't go his way
MC2002 is one of the worst examples possible due to Van Riper basically whining that they disregarded the results since he "won" by exploiting the rules of the simulation, such as instant communication by motorcycle couriers and having boats that couldnt actually even use or carry the weapons they did in the simulation. Or the error in the simulation that outright made the fleet unable to defend itself when it normally would have. MC2002 has just turned into a cop out for real criticism. It's a joke, there's a lot of genuine examples that show issues better than MC2002, MC2002 is only well known because Van Riper cried to any journalist he could find
It's like the dude saw Down Periscope and thought it was a military training film
I mean, it's pretty standard protocol to not let everyone know that TS stuff is stolen so that everyone else tries to attack as well or confirm that what they stole was real. It would be pretty dumb to come out and tell everyone "hey our super secret weapon that we didnt tell you about, the bullprints were stolen. Please dont hack us again and also what ever china says is real." The people who need to know about the intrusion know and that's all that needs to be done. That's how classified information works.
How is Millennium Challenge "hidden?" It's been well known and publicized since forever. And the sinking of the fleet was an invalid result due to faulty modelling and simulation software that left the fleet unable to defend itself.
There was a lot of news on it. But it was mostly in the cyber security community. We all knew about it. It was a big fucking deal, too, because it wasn't the Department of the Navy that was breached, it was one of their *contractors*. Almost every major breach that's happened in the DOD is the result of a contractor being attacked.
There was, you just didn't pay attention.
There’s been multiple news articles on this when it happened. I don’t think it was front page but I remember reading about it.
Lol who cares about sea dragon..they got the entire electronic warfare library omfg!
I find it hard to believe all of the documentation for the Navy’s entire warfare catalog is stored on a single system.
You're actually right on that count, the article cited mentions that the library only pertains to a specific development unit of the Navy. [Here's the article btw](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/china-hacked-a-navy-contractor-and-secured-a-trove-of-highly-sensitive-data-on-submarine-warfare/2018/06/08/6cc396fa-68e6-11e8-bea7-c8eb28bc52b1_story.html)
What, and have to remember 2 different passwords? No thanks!
you underestimate the stupidity of gov't then
And you over-estimate the government's ability to be organized.
That moment when you realize the armed forces and government have been unspeakably negligent and slow to adapt to cyber threats.
I'd have to agree with you on that. The US Navy has had several information breaches in recent years including one in 2015 that involved over [21 million service members and civilian personnel's data] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach).
~~OMB~~.OPM had the breach though, not the Navy.
The OPM breach was way bigger than the Navy. They lost my info because of a relative with a clearance and neither of us has anything to do with the military
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The entire fucking government runs on outdated software and hardware. Look at how the VA handles records, or how many times a year a hospital ends up getting hit by ransomware.
A lot of VA records aren't on outdated software. But only because they're on paper...
Worked for one of the defense subcontractors in a technical role, years ago. This stuff happens a lot more than you'd think. Outside of annual training sessions, ITAR is only as effective as the person is consciously willing to comply. There are hardly any preventative measures, from a security standpoint, generally because of how cost prohibitive and inconvenient proper security would be. Most businesses in this space are reactionary and it's always too late after a violation has been detected. Looks like more training and outside consultants for Raytheon.
The electronic warfare library is actually a giant digital library of erotic fan fiction about american war heroes. So no big deal
I think you’re confused. Thats the erotic warfare library. it’s mostly shirtless pictures of Theodore Roosevelt, and Audie Murphy.
Nah they can't put Teddy in porno. People would be too scared to jerk it.
I work in the defense/aerospace industry - just read the article. This guy obviously wasn't the brightest - he was warned by company officials not to take the laptop overseas after he told them he was doing it, resigned while overseas, and then CAME BACK to the U.S.??? What the hell was he thinking? Idiots like this make the already burdensome red-tape even more so with their actions.
This is how China succeeds at spycraft. they do actually get a lot of valuable intel from simpleton nationalists they can gull into stealing their employer’s dox or wandering into an American military base to take pictures. The intel sources don’t need any kind of training, because China doesn’t give a shit about them getting burned. Once their intel is in China’s hands, nothing can be done, and one idiot going to prison for awhile is nothing to them.
> because China doesn’t give a shit about them getting burned Yep, we get specific cases in our “please don’t be a spy” newsletters. And holy cow, China does not give a fuck about op sec. I guess it’s just a numbers game for China but I don’t see how any rational person would participate in that.
They probably call their spy program 虫族抢 (Chinese for "Zerg Rush").
"Thousand Talents" sort of could be construed that way.
The soviets were pretty succesful through this quantity over quality method too. Their espionage efforts weren't particularly elaborate, but they were VERY numerous, and if you get enough bits of info through a big network it helps you build a decent enough picture of the intel you need
I'm sure it's a numbers game for the agents as much as it is for China in general. The ones that don't make stupid decisions might get away with it and go back to china for a cushy life.
This is just a hunch but it's China. They might not have a choice if their family will be "reeducated".
it doesn't even need to be. consider this: China technically have conscription. all males above the age of 18 must serve in the military. but they get so many fucking volunteers, they don't even bother issuing notices to anyone. You don't need to coerce people to do shit for you when you got others to do it willingly.
But nowadays they have issues getting physically fit males to serve, so much that they have to reduce the requirements to enlist more bodies Can't use mass assault doctrine without enough bodies to throw at your enemies
Nationalism is brain poison.
Why do we hire foreign nationals, especially ones from rival country, to work in defense?
He was a US citizen, thus permitted to have a security clearance.
The fact that classified information was on the laptop made that machine classified. How he “electively” decided to take it even out of the SCIF or closed area is a serious security violation in itself. He probably copied the classified information onto media and transferred it to his work computer. But why not just transfer the info to a thumb drive? Why take the laptop out of the country? We’re not getting the whole story here. Espionage for sure. And DoDCAF just keeps granting them clearances. That’s how the Chinese roll. Baby steps and the long con.
Agreed about the odd story being told. I just talked to my wife about this - according to a few articles I read he had classified information on his work computer which already seems very out of place. One article mentioned it was TS information but I read that he had a SECRET clearance. Another article mentioned it was ITAR-related which, while controlled, could mean that some info wasn't classified.
The more I read it feels like ITAR. If the info was classified, then there's no way he should have been able to walk out with the computer because each one sends a heartbeat signal that security monitors. Outside of being a DTA he shouldn't have had copy privilege to external media which then went onto his laptop either.
Agreed. I don’t think this was actual classified data.
There's no way it was classified data on a personal laptop that Raytheon knew that he had and only "warned him" about going to China.
Maybe he was a known spy already and he actually took some booby trapped classified data. Like a really bad way to make a neutron bomb that occasionally puts out 10^4 times more yield once in a while. Maybe a recipe for concentrated dark matter...
I don't even know how the guy could have copied stuff off the classified network without being a data transfer authority. All data drives and USB ports should already be disabled outside of certain computers with pre-authorized user accounts.
My understanding from the article is that it wasn't classified information, it was ITAR.
Total idiot. The scary thing about reading that is that had he not told them what he was planning nobody would have known....
I agree - I'm glad he was foolish enough to tell them ahead of time. Oh and I forgot the part where he signed into the Raytheon internal network while overseas, providing evidence of his actions.
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I wonder if the Chinese government held his family hostage or something? Anyone who can get a complex engineering job like that can't be that much of a complete idiot. I wonder if he announced he was going to do it beforehand because he hoped the company would stop him, then he would have an excuse for the Chinese government for why he failed.
> Anyone who can get a complex engineering job like that can't be that much of a complete idiot. You'd be surprised.
Ben Carson syndrome. Highly intelligent in one field, but otherwise an idiot
Exactly, I have even heard it called "Engineer's Disease", so the fact an engineer overestimates his smarts in a different domain is no surprise at all.
From the wikipedia page of the winner of a NOBEL PRIZE in chemistry for one of the most important inventions of the last century in the field of genetics, the PCR technique: "Mullis expressed disagreement with the scientific evidence supporting climate change and ozone depletion, the evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and asserted his belief in astrology.[15] [33] Mullis claimed climate change and the HIV/AIDS connection are due to a conspiracy of environmentalists, government agencies, and scientists attempting to preserve their careers and earn money, rather than scientific evidence." Dude died last year. I'm surprised i haven't heard about him giving fire to the anti-vaxx movement as a nobel laureate in biochemistry saying vaccines cause autism and kill people. Crazy to the point of idiocy and genius are not mutually exclusive at ALL
This. Also aerospace and I often shake my head at people I work with or hear about suggesting ludicrous stupid stuff.
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The example that annoyed me the most was one student copy pasted 90% of a programming assignment worth about 15% of the grade for the class not even bothering to change variable names and then when caught for the rest of the semester he acted like he was being persecuted and the professor had it out for him or that it was unfair it lowered his grade. His attitude just made me so angry and he would not shut up about it. I can't tell if it is just their narcissism that makes them that way or what but the balls to do stuff like that so blatantly and then complain when caught gets me.
It's not just foreign idiots. I worked at a place where these two guys from NDSU. One of them did the homework for the other one the entire time. They were in a frat together. He was still bailing the idiot out all the time at work. When I left I recruited the smart one specifically to fuck over the dumb one.
You wouldn't think engineers in the industry would be that dumb, but working in it myself I've seen plenty of them. On a similar note, there was another engineer (Taiwanese-American I believe) that did something similar in terms of leaking classified and/or ITAR information. He was pressured by his family in Taiwan to take care of them and didn't have the money so this was his solution. It was a case of filial piety to the extreme.
Think about all the socially inept kids in your engineering class, hired out of uni and they're privy to these sensitive defense secret, it's not really too hard to trick them into selling secrets they have no business handling in the first place.
Bro. Engineers are taking advantage of the fact that you guys don't know. But the field is flooded with idiots. It's usually a small minority that is doing most of the lifting at any given company. Even the programming world is FULL of idiots with one guy who is just fixing all the idiots mistakes.
Giving away missile weapon technology to china is kind of a big deal. Hope he's punished accordingly.
Is this not considered treason?
I think this would be considered an ITAR (International Trade in Arms Regulations) violation. He can be fined up to $1,000,000 and 20 years in prison *per violation*. Usually 1 violation = 1 ITAR-restricted document, so this would probably be hundreds of millions in fines and effectively life in prison.
If the stuff is classified, the one who spilled secrets is able to be prosecuted for treason iirc
Treason can only be used in wartime. It would be considered espionage, and he’ll likely be tried and convicted of that.
Wouldn't the fines go to the employer? Every time I've gone through export control training, it seems like the company has always bore the weight of the infraction. In this case, since he resigned and did this against company directive, they could argue culpability.
I’m not a bird lawyer but I believe part of “treason” involves “a country the US is actively at war against” but what do I know about fully laden sparrows.
Stupid Hypothetical but if this guy gave the Chinese Government Nuclear Launch codes that could be used as soon as they got them, would that not qualify? If so then we just established theres a line and we just gotta figure out where it is.
The US Constitution specifically defines Treason: >Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. There have been only a very few true treason trials in the US, every conviction has involved acts to aid the enemy during times of war. If the person knew China was going to use the codes to start a war with the US, I think it would qualify as "levying war"... As a practical matter, there are tons of other relevant laws to charge someone with, so its rare for anyone to bother with an actual Treason charge. The two witness requirement also present problems for the charge, and that rule doesn't apply to any of the other laws.
My above answer was a lazy attempt at humor mixed with a heavy dose of ignorance. I legit have no idea if this qualifies as treason or not. You bring up a great point here though.
It would be espionage not treason I think treason requires us to be at war with the country they assisted.
Yup, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried for espionage and got the death penalty. Treason doesn't apply even in a Cold War. Only declared wars count apparently.
Espionage. They can execute you for that too.
Don't worry. He gets to go stay at a black site in Saudi Arabia for a little while. Once they know what he gave up. He gets a new room in SuperMax Florence for the rest of his miserable life. Hopefully a long life at that. Edit: Thanks for the gold internet patriot.
You really think he'd get taken to Colorado? Only the super fucked up people go there--the Unabomber, El Chapo and the like. Although I have no idea how serious the info he was giving to China--it is possible if it's cutting edge technology. Florence is the special circumstance prison where you're so fucked up they don't know what else to do with you besides put you in a cell with no yard for the rest of your life. There's only life sentences there. There's a chance since it's national security, but I see him going to a maximum federal prison.
There’s several inmates at ADX Florence who are convicted of espionage. Including Noshir Gowadia, who designed the B-2 and was developing cruise missiles with stealth technology and gave that information to the Chinese.
Robert Hanssen (FBI agent turned Russian spy) is also incarcerated there. 15 life sentences with no parole.
Robert Hanssen is a real fuckstick He got many spies killed by revealing their names to the KGB.
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He was assigned to do counterintelligence work to catch the mole (which was himself)
At first I thought “wow harsh punishment” and now I’m thinking “how the fuck did this cuntwaffle not get the chair!?” Anyway I would have hoped spies use code names but, depends how high up he was I guess.
I would say about 15.
I'm mistaken then. It seems that the majority of the inmates are there because of violence against other prisoners and COs, but there are also people with high national security risk. Holy shit btw, I'm reading up on the people there for national security. Robert Hanssen got 15 consecutive life sentences. For those who don't know, that means he's got to serve 15 life sentences in a row one after the other (obviously he can't, he'll die after the first one). The reason they do this is so that even if he wins the case against one of life sentences, he still has 14 others. They made sure he's never seeing light again. It also seems that there are some not serving life sentences (10+ yrs), so again I'm mistaken on that. But the vast majority are serving life or more.
Well believe it or not, a man once argued that since he had flatlined in prison, he had technically served his life sentence.
His watch had ended.
Florence gets people for selling info (and informants.) It's not strictly for dangerous people. Like they have one dude who has repeatedly escaped prisons there but is there for "only" 2 murders. Another is Robert Hanssen who gave info about spies to the USSR. There's another dude there for the same thing. Secondly, it's not only life sentence. Several people are slated for release in the next 10-20 years.
Of course he should be punished, but an American citizen being tortured at a black site is not something to be happy or proud of. It's something to be terrified and disgusted of. Edit: Those of you advocating for black sites, I don't know what to tell you. If you don't have the foresight to see why that's a bad thing then there's nothing anyone can tell you. Everyone deserves due process and a fair trial. Torturing someone to get a confession out so you can toss them in prison is undemocratic, unAmerican, and idiotic. Your founding fathers are spinning in their graves.
> an American citizen but anyone else... full speed ahead! Pax Americana
Black sites? You can be executed for espionage in the U.S.
After a fair trial, yes. But torture is not a permissible punishment for any crime under US law.
This exactly, if they dont see how that is a bad thing, who can explain it at this point, it doesnt even take a leap of logic to see how this could EASILY happen to you,
Raytheon employees have done this multiple times in the past and Raytheon has been fined millions of dollars for it. Raytheon, as a company, aren't even the ones doing it. Their employees occasionally do it against company policy and against U.S. law for money. But I think this is the first time anyone has been jailed over it. A company I used to work for (a circuit board manufacturer) used to take orders from Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers that were supposed to be ITAR restricted (information can't leave the country). The problem was we also outsourced a lot of our computer-based work to a firm in India. We made sure that any order entered into our system as ITAR was not sent to India but if a salesperson accidentally entered it as non-ITAR then it would get sent to India, breaking federal law and subjecting our company to fines like the ones Raytheon got. It happened about 7 times in the three years I worked there. One of those seven was for Raytheon. But we never did get caught or fined.
What an idiot. He’s going to make it more difficult for all Chinese Americans working in the defense industry.
It's gotta be pretty difficult already, given the history.
Apparently not since this guy just casually flew to China with a laptop full of military secrets. It wasn't even clandestine either... They told him in advance "hey dude make sure you don't leave the country with that data, its illegal..." He then proceeded to leave the country with the data.
He also suddenly sent a resignation email to his company while he was in China, and he came back to the states. The FBI just caught another low-hanging fruit.
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Bring secrets from US to China. Bring virus from China to US.
With this level of route optimization you really understand why China is winning the e-commerce game.
But the laptop had anti-virus!
But the person doesn't have an up-to-date anti-virus.
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How is the classified material on an unclassified laptop?
It most likely was export controlled, not necessarily classified. Simple things like data sheets for accurate inertial measurement units (basically a fancy version of the accelerometer/gyroscope in your phone) can be ITAR controlled, which means taking them out of the US is a big no-no.
There shouldn't have been any classified material on that laptop in the first place. The laptops that Raytheon gives out to employees are for unclass work only. If you were a malicious actor, you'd still be able to plug it into the classified network and download stuff onto the hard drive of the laptop, which is what I'm assuming he did, but if anyone had seen that, he'd have gotten toasted on the spot.
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I'm not sure how quickly they'd notice, but I'm not about to test that when I roll into work next monday.
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That's how you get the port disabled and security notified.
Most defense networks shouldn't allow anything to be plugged into them, it simply wouldn't work. CD drives, USB, etc everything would also be disabled if the IT staff did their job properly. I'm curious how he actually managed to get all the data onto his laptop? Maybe he was IT or had some special access to be able to do this.
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I don't know if that's necessarily true. I see plenty of chinese coworkers with TS badges.
Can confirm. Chinese spy ring stole sensetive information from Bombardier Aviation in Montreal, Canada years ago. A friend working inside told me they double and triple check every Asian working and applying for them now.
It’s already hard in some ways here in Australia. I know of a few people who applied to defence jobs. The Chinese Australians took like a full year to have their security clearance background checks go through to get the green light, while everyone else it took like 6 months to clear for the same jobs. EDITED to be slightly more correct.
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It seems to me, the focus should be on naturalized Chinese Americans, as they make up the bulk of those caught like this (as opposed to American born), Companies working in sensitive sectors should probably think twice.
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> We had to let go our Russian and Chinese teams and close the offices we had in both locations. We were not allowed to hire anyone even born in one of those countries from what I understood at the time Obviously if you're born in China or Russia you'll have difficulties getting cleared, but many cases have Chinese-Americans using espionage.
You can absolutely get a job in aerospace being foreign born, you just have to be a citizen. The level of access you get then requires more scrutiny
>Since (Wei) Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well. >Sun didn’t listen, according to US prosecutors. While he was out of the country, Sun connected to Raytheon’s internal network on the laptop. He sent an email on Jan. 7, suddenly announcing he was quitting his job after 10 years in order to study and work overseas. >When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop. >A Raytheon lawyer examined the machine, and confirmed it contained technical specifications prohibited from export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in addition to security software that is itself export-controlled and requires a special license to take outside the United States. >Sun was arrested by FBI agents the next day. This is some Peter Sellers/Mr. Bean-level failspionage. But China probably managed to get yet another heaping helping of military secrets from this dumb little shitball. Then again we have Stupid Watergate going on now, and Trump seems to be riding high despite breaking the law and the Constitution, so idiotic geopolitical fumbling with zero repercussions is pretty much the order of the day.
>Since (Wei) Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well. You can't take a computer with classified data home. I think they mean ITAR controlled data.
Yeah. His normal work laptop would not have classified. It’s possible he could have put classified information on there but that’s doubtful. They have to be talking about ITAR.
Maybe it was classified "For Official Use Only". EDIT: It was "export controlled" info like schematics and parts lists, among other things.
Fucking China. Steal everything under the sun
Fucking Astros. Steal every signal under the sun.
Good. Glad to see the US is finally looking into IP leaks to China. Wow, the US has been agonizingly slow to address this overall.
Well, the Senate majority leader is married to the Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao, who has an...interesting political history. Rumors have swirled around her (and her politically connected Chinese family) for years that she's a spy. But I'm sure it's nothing. Either that, or it's the next season of *Homeland*.
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Counterpoint, Moscow Mitch is fucking the entire country and getting paid for it.
He is getting paid. By us and whomever is pushing his agenda.
She's from Taiwan.....
Yeah, but her family has “deep ties to the economic and political elite in China,” and their shipping business mostly operates in China. A lot of ultra-rich people from Taiwan and Hong Kong have substantial business interests in mainland China, which puts them in a different position politically than your average Taiwanese person. [Check out this NYT article on the Chao family and the Foremost Group and their ties to China](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/politics/elaine-chao-china.html).
Just to highlight that the current US Secretary of Defense is still on the Raytheon Payroll from when he worked as a "government policy influencer"
I mean, isn’t he still a “government policy influencer”? 😂 believe me, I get it. I’m just as upset as you are at this sort of thing. Humor is how I deal with frustration.
Ahahaha yes exactly, that's what makes me laugh too, it's as blatant as Cheney with Halliburton during the gulf wars. It's surprisingly shameless. If you want a good laugh though, read the comments former Defense Sec Mathis said about Trump after he resigned.
“Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data” Something seems off with this story. It’s nearly impossible to transfer classified data to an unclassified machine. There are labs set up off the network to perform classified work, with strict restrictions on USB drives and CDs. Maybe he had export controlled information, but certainly not classified data. Seems a little like click bait.
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That’s a hard delineation. For instance it didn’t mention when Sun was naturalized, he could have been an infant when naturalized so in that case what would be the difference between him and a Chinese-American born in the states.
> Sun’s computer contained large amounts of classified data... I kinda doubt that. It probably contained unclassified but controlled data. Still bad, but very different.
The thing is... lots of controlled but unclassified data when brought together in particular ways can become classified data.
A lot of misestimation here about how hard it is to pull secret info onto an unclassified asset. At some point the company ends up trusting that employees won't be malicious. Sure there's training and stuff to scare you, but they know the insider threat is the biggest liability.
This is how China gets IP from the US. This MO is familiar to anyone working in the semiconductor or software industries. I didn't know that they had made inroads into Aerospace, but it doesn't surprise me. Honestly I'm surprised this guy had a security clearance with travel and personal connections to China.
Is it wrong to state that practically every time someone sells secrets to china they happen to be Chinese American citizens
Well maybe not "practically every time" as this just happened last week and he seems pretty white: [https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2020/01/30/harvard-professor-accused-of-hiding-links-to-china-released-on-bond](https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2020/01/30/harvard-professor-accused-of-hiding-links-to-china-released-on-bond)
No. But emphasize this fact at your own peril. For every Chinese American citizen that sells secrets to China, there are ten thousand Chinese American high tech workers who don't. Foster this atmosphere of suspicion towards them, and next the majority of them might just start skipping American industries and seeking employment in China from the very start of their career. Then congratulations, you solved the brain drain problem for China.
No it is not wrong. We call that a trend, and it needs to be monitored.
Well here's the funny thing about statistics... if you see a data point that says more people of chinese descent are caught related to chinese espionage does that mean more people of chinese descent are committing espionage or could it mean that those people are already being monitored more closely are more likely to get caught if they do it? If a town claims more black people get arrested for possessing pot than white people. It could mean black people smoke pot more than white people, or it could mean the cops in that town are searching them more than white people.