Slashdot Mirror
Physicist Admits Sending Space-Related Military Secrets To China
piemcfly writes "Chinese-born physicist Shu Quan-Sheng Monday pleaded guilty before a US court to violating the Arms Export Control Act by illegally exporting American military space know-how to China. The 68-year-old naturalized US citizen, pictured here on his company profile, admitted handing over the design of fueling systems between 2003 and 2007. Also, in 2003 he illegally exported a document with the impossibly long name of 'Commercial Information, Technical Proposal and Budgetary Officer — Design, Supply, Engineering, Fabrication, Testing & Commissioning of 100m3 Liquid Hydrogen Tank and Various Special Cryogenic Pumps, Valves, Filters and Instruments.' This contained the design of liquid hydrogen tanks for space launch vehicles. He also admitted to a third charge of bribing Chinese officials to the tune of some 189,300 dollars for a French space technology firm."
Here's the FBI press release regarding Shu's plea.
Maybe outsourcing the US military to China wouldn't be a bad thing after all.
Only a few years ago, this would be called 'TREASON' and possible punishment could be death, but more likely life imprisonment.
What say he goes free...
I would say that china has many good research engineers to get new technology - but from my time working there I would say that industrial espionage and reverse engineering are perfectly acceptable methods to get new technology over there. I have seen new chips turn up that once decapped and FIB'd were seen to be *exact* copies of designs from the firm I worked for, complete with the same faults - but that's what you get for using a Chinese fab.
As always I am interested in this from a general viewpoint - I mean how many hours R&D is worth the hassle of paying for? obviously if something has been developed for many years and represents significant innovation it would be worthwhile, but they seem to be after anything.
It reminds me of the Tupelov 144 and Bakinor shuttle - both of which were uncannily close to planes developed elsewhere...
This is the problem with not properly promoting scientific education within American schools. If you can't get good scientists internally then you are putting your secure projects at risk.
I find it hard to believe that Chinamen ...
Also, Ethanol-fueled, 'Chinamen' is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian Americans, please.
My work here is dung.
If the Chinese got ahold of that new laser weapon system from Northrop Grumman, I doubt you would make such a neat little dichotomy there between industrial espionage and national security.
The Chinese government is actually quite hostile to the United States and many other countries. Just look at what they're doing to Africa if you have any doubts as to whether or not this is a country you want having technology that can be used to assist them in becoming a credible player in space on a military footing.
This Physicist should probably be executed or imprisoned for life if there is any way to get such a sentence. In a more honest time, what he did would be considered treason in spirit, if not exactly the letter of the law.
One of the things that keeps us safe, and keeps us from fighting long, protracted wars is the fact that other countries have a damned hard time competing with us technologically on the battlefield. The Chinese have, for a long time, been trying to steal said technology from us. They really ramped it up after the first Persian Gulf War when their soldiers actually got to see what our technology could do when we unleashed a largescale attack on another country with our new weapon systems. One of the most effective ways for us to prevent a war is to make betraying military applicable technologies to their government an offense that most of these guys would never commit because the punishment is so severe.
Dude, the chinaman is not the issue here!
If you can't get good scientists internally then you are putting your secure projects at risk.
Umm, wasn't he a naturalized American citizen? Or do you mean to suggest that it's a risk to employ anyone who wasn't a natural-born citizen on secure projects? This traitorous asshole notwithstanding, most immigrants to this country are fiercely patriotic. You tend to have an appreciation for the United States if you immigrate here from a poorer/more oppressive country -- whereas those of us who were born here tend to take what we have for granted.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Chinaman is a direct translation of äåoeä. When in "Greater China", I get damned tired of constantly being called å-åoeä and éè±ä".
I agree, those slurs are tired and racist. Plus, it's also difficult to tell if someone is talking to you or screaming in agony.
My work here is dung.
I can't claim any personal experience with counter-intelligence but everything I've read on the matter makes the feebs out to be completely incompetent jackasses. Potential intelligence assets will walk in the front door and the FBI and CIA couldn't manage to recognize them for what they were. It seems like the operative rules are along the lines of:
1. First, don't fuck up.
2. Doing things increases the chances of fucking up; the less you do, the less likely you fuck up, unless your fuck up was not doing anything.
3. Your primary enemy is other intelligence services competing for your budget and turf. Cut those bastards off at the knees.
4. In your spare time, see if any foreign agents might be up to something.
For a case in point, Operation Pastorius.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=949
German defectors walk right up to the FBI and the G-men had to be beaten over the head before they realized something was up. And Hoover, ugh, don't even get me started on that bastard. The Brits couldn't stand working with that transvestite media whore in WWII. No sooner would a German agent be sniffed out and the FBI would roll him up and bring in the pressmen so German intel could find out their operation was blown and there would be enough details blabbed to the press so the Germans would know how they were sniffed out. The Brit approach was to figure out who the agents were, then keep a close eye on who they associated with so they could discover the larger spy network. They would also use these agents to unwittingly feed bogus intel back into German hands. That that was all too subtle for the swinging dick approach favored by American intel.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's not exactly rocket science, as Werner Von Braun once said.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In order for it to work, you have to have loyalties somewhere else. If you are elected as the most powerful man in the world, I'm not sure what on earth would tempt you to "sell out", particularly to some dirt ball in the middle east. If you're crooked, you have all the power in the world to set up your own nice retirement...I think we can think of a few examples of that.
For a poor American scientist, there's a lot to be had back in China, or pretty much anywhere else, whether you are of chinese descent or not. We produce so few scientists and engineers, because the rewards are so pathetic for the capacity of work being done. Within our own country, various silly IP and anti-workforce laws protect investors from our knowledge and abilities moving to competitors easily (also forcing salaries down). But outside of our borders? Not so much. Reverse brain drain, and it's friend "espionage" are real problems. All we need is money, and we can recreate anything we've done before, and probably do it better.
In the 8 years I've been employed, this is the 3rd time I've heard of naturalized Chinese citizens sending back design data to the motherland. Having known personally one of the people later convicted, loyalty to "the party" had nothing to do with it. He was disgruntled at being laid off, believed in his product (but not his company), and was sending design files to his buddy back home so they could start their own business. Illegal, yes. Seditious? Not intentionally.
The saddest part is, that's how the US got its foot in the door. The British didn't really care for us all that much back then, and wanted us kept out of the loop, but had much the same problem with its industry as we do now. Enter a lowly engineer who had know how, but not $
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater)
It's a shame when history repeats itself, particularly since the US was founded on better ideals than China. What on earth do we stand to gain by promoting a country that, other than rabid capitalism (with a phony communist mouthpiece), is the anti-thesis to our way of life?
The real problem, the thing that makes China scary and has people talking about treason and execution in this case is this: deep down we're afraid we've lost our technology balls.
It's been 36 years since America has been to the Moon. An entire generation has been born since then, and have even had their own children. I remember watching Neil Armstrong take that first step on the Moon, an event that to my children that is like my parents talking about Pearl Harbor is to me. Space, to them, is a place where movies are set. The Space Shuttle program was a disappointment, and the Mars initiative is a transparent boondoggle with no significant program milestones on the calendar.
In my lifetime, I have watched the leveraged buyout of the American culture of invention. When I was a kid, America was a country that made things. Of the course of my adulthood, it became something remarkable when a thing was actually made here. Then we were a country that invented things that were made elsewhere, and that is still true, but for how long? The idea of free trade is that countries do what "they do best"; it's a good idea in theory, but in practice our role in the world economy has become to spend the accumulated gains of generations, to send investment overseas.
The idea that we can somehow protect our preeminence in the world by hoarding our past accomplishments is pathetic. Oh, I won't deny that this kind of thing doesn't help China somewhat, otherwise why would they do it? But if you could wave a magic wand and make all these sort things go away, it wouldn't make much difference at all.
China is pursuing technological and economic development, whereas we have become complacent. We have been acting in the last two decades as if national preeminence is not simply a legacy but a birthright.
So we get all worked up about cases like this, because it gives us an excuse for our own lack of initiative and vision. We have elected leaders who pandered to our laziness and anti-intellectualism, and mocked the thoughtful as out of touch, the visionary as insane. We have embraced hypocrisy, insisting the poor should shoulder their economic responsibilities, which is fine by me, but all the while demanding middle class prerogatives as our entitlement. I remember watching a movie in which people were singing that things were so wonderful in America because it is "God's Country", and cringing at the idea that some poor bastard in the third world was watching his children starve because God doesn't like him as much as he likes us. That kind of thinking is more in style today than ever.
Oh, I won't be surprised if lots of people want to hang this guy. That's what passes these days for "feel good" politics.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't know, man. The name of that project sure indicates he was born for government work:
> the impossibly long name of 'Commercial Hydrogen Instrumentation Nomenclature
> Affairs Reacquisition Officer -- Onboard Liquid Supplies Using Special
> Distillation Resevoir of Oleaginous Oxygen Lysimetrification System'
He worked on that? Lol.
Zomg, look:
Commercial
Hydrogen
Instrumentation
Nomenclature
Affairs
Reacquisition
Officer --
Onboard
Liquid
Supplies
Using
Special
Distillation
Resevoir of
Oleaginous
Oxygen
Lysimetrification
System
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So while someone who has been in this country for 20+ years may have the flag flying in their yard and be all "Go USA!" that doesn't change the fact that it would still be easier to get them to give up secrets than a US born.
And that's because natural-born citizens never sell secrets to enemies, right?
I agree that having families in oppressive countries is a liability—but, surely the U.S. government can help remove those liabilities (by shortening their immigration process) so that they can hire a qualified man for the job?
Not only him: more than one third of American Nobel Prize winners are immigrants. Many of our best and brightest, and, as people who have worked in agriculture and construction can tell you, many of the hardest-working and most dedicated, are immigrants.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
What "military space know-how"? No US weapons system uses liquid hydrogen tanks.
The Saturn V used liquid hydrogen, and the Shuttle does, but those are NASA programs. Unmanned boosters are usually solids, or the old standard, liquid oxygen and kerosene, like the V2 from WWII. ICBMs have been all solid-fuel since the 1970s. And according to the Outer Space Treaty, the US isn't supposed to have weapons in space.
There's no military threat. The only reason to limit the export of liquid hydrogen tank technology is to slow down the Chinese manned space program.
The entire country is founded on immigration obviously, aside from the natives who got mostly wiped out that is.
Believing immigration is bad for America is just navel gazing stupidity. There are no 20th generation American Citizens, from long lines of American ancestry. There are however thousands of years of Chinese dynastic and other histories.
To cut off immigration is to say "we have enough people now" since everyone else is recently immigrated too (from a global historical perspective). There is no otherwise functional difference between the immigrant and the naturally born citizen.
Who bombed the FBI building in Oklahoma after all? A chinaman? Maybe a Russian spy? Yeah.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)