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Space Shuttle Secrets Stolen For China
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Department of Justice has announced the indictment of former Boeing engineer Dongfan Chung on charges of economic espionage in the theft of company trade secrets relating to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport aircraft, and the Delta IV rocket. Chung is a native of China and a naturalized US citizen. According to the indictment, Chinese aviation industry representatives began sending Chung 'tasking' letters as early as 1979. Over the years, the letters directed Chung to collect specific technological information, including data related to the Space Shuttle and various military and civilian aircraft. Chung allegedly responded in one letter indicating a desire to contribute to the 'motherland,' the DOJ said. It was not immediately clear how much, if any, damage the alleged espionage did to US national security but DOJ officials said the cases reflect the determination of the Chinese government to penetrate US intelligence and obtain vital national defense secrets. 'Today's prosecution demonstrates that foreign spying remains a serious threat in the post-Cold War world,' said Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security"
Seriously. At what point do we consider a country so dangerous that we will not longer do business with it? When do we finally say "go screw yourself" to dangerous governments?
Continuing to do business with China is like having a Gremlin as a pet. Or having a stuffed clown in your bedroom. Anyone growing up in the 80s will tell you those are two VERY big no-nos.
Um ... perhaps that's because they're the ones doing it. I mean, that's what enemies do. I hope you don't consider China to be a U.S. ally, because they're not and never will be so long as their government is what it is. They don't even qualify as neutral, given the effect they're having on our economy and their ongoing pillage of the U.S. economy and education system.
Besides, I'd be surprised if we aren't doing the same thing to China, at least I'd hope we are. It's a bit more difficult in our case, since we don't have tens of thousands of American engineers and students flooding Chinese companies and schools.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Because the Israelis are our friends. Espionage from Israel doesn't count.
Apparently the Chinese have stolen all the information they want on how to do things. Now they're down to stealing information on how not to do a space program.
They have lie detector tests in CIA? If you can't lie well enough, you get fired?
> periodic lie detector tests
Yeah, they should also undergo phrenology and palmistry exams too.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Ah well, the US probably stole that advanced technology from the crashed aliens anyway.
The first indication that this was a bad idea should have been that the alien had crashed...
The enemies of Democracy are
Bribing someone to get information - that's so last millennium. Real man just seize laptops at the immigration check point and ask politely for all the passwords.
While your signature already indicates your bias, might I ask you if you had considered the idea that Americans are being shut out simply because they don't work as hard as some of these Chinese students?
Since your evidence is entirely anecdotal, allow me to give an anecdote of my own (ie: one that was not passed onto me by a friend): I finished college 2 years ago and during my 4 years there the Chinese, Japanese and Korean students (1st or 2nd generation) were the ones who were consistently at the top of their classes in fields like math, engineering, science, etc.
Why is that?
In my experience it's the direct result of them spending their free time studying these subjects while the typical American student is taking bong rips or having sex.
Americans value the college experience for its education and social worth (bong rips and sex) while people from Asian cultures value college solely as a learning experience. They aren't there to have fun.
(Yes, these are generalizations and are based on personally experienced anecdotes, but none of what I said here was any more biased than the parent.)
And how would you fill up your WalMarts? Americans don't manufacture anything anymore... who's gonna make yer [stuff]?
India, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil, Columbia, etc. There are plenty of democracies or semi-democracies that would love to have our business.
And/or, we could put our own rust-belt back to work so maybe their crime and poverty will go down. The "evils" of protectionism are exaggerated by business lobbyists.
Table-ized A.I.
Even ignoring all that, it's still 1970s technology.
Yeesh, this canard again. Look, when we really think about it, don't you think it's only an occasionally useful rule of thumb that the age of a technology has some correlation to its quality and cleverness? Why should it? Is it really reasonable to assume that every technological problem has an infinite number of solutions, which will always be discovered in ascending order of cleverness?
I mean, do we argue that astronauts shouldn't use ball-point pens in orbit because that's 1960s technology, and surely there must be something better now? That they shouldn't use handkerchiefs to blow their nose because that's 16th century technology? NASA shouldn't use wheels on the design of a moon rover because wheels were invented 5000 years ago? They should use something other than calculus to calculate orbits because it was invented in the 1620s and hasn't changed a bit since? Sometimes the best solution to a problem is an old and well-known one. Newer isn't automatically better.
It seems to me that the Space Shuttle was designed at the end of the golden age of rocketry: in the 50s and 60s clever youngsters went into aerospace the way they went into computers and the Internet in the 80s and 90s. It was exciting, it was way out on the frontier, and it paid decently. NASA and their contractors collected most of the best, and they did pretty impressive engineering work. Yes, they didn't have some of the fancy electronics parts their descendants have now, but avionics is only part of the spacecraft -- and when you're talking about a spacecraft that has to survive two very high-energy events (launch and re-entry) -- the quality and coolness of the avionics is probably not the key criterion for design success. Something like airframe design, system robustness, and a canny use of materials is probably way more important.
Since the 1980s, however, aerospace engineering talent in the US has aged and shrunk, and far fewer of the best and brightest go into the field. Furthermore, the excitement and potential glory of a real frontier-type mission is missing. Designing reliable electric bus connectors for solar-power panels on the ISS isn't quite the same as trying to squeeze an extra 5 ounces out of the weight of the first manned Mars lander. It doesn't attract the very best young talent.
So it may very well be that the "1970s technology" design of the SS is as good or better than what could be done today, avionics aside. Certainly the difficulty which private aerospace has had recently in trying to duplicate, essentially, the circa 1965 Saturn 1B medium-lift launch vehicle should make one pause thoughtfully before concluding that it's just a piece of cake to design a combination heavy-lift vehicle and re-usable manned spaceplane seating 10 that leaves the SS in the dust. I mean, if it were easy to do better -- wouldn't someone have done so, already? It's not like there isn't a fortune to be made by the first organization that can get 50 tons of cargo and a crew of 10 to LEO for 10% of the price of a SS launch.
Excerpt:
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Based upon my personal experience teaching (and like hell I'm going to post non-anonymously) Chinese students are not particularly brighter than anybody else - where they stand out is in gaming the system. The myth of the "amazingly smart chinese student" arose before we all understood just how seriously they take this.
They will focus like maniacs on getting every little edge they can to get a few points up (cheating very much included). Once you try to test them to see if they actually *understand* anything, they fall apart pretty rapidly and quite often are well behind other members of the class - when this happens they will often jump straight into the "me no understand the english so well" routine, which is just another game.
I have met some extremely bright Chinese students, but in no higher proportion than from any other group.