Huawei's Efforts To Steal Apple Trade Secrets Include Employee Bonus Program and Other Dubious Tactics: Report (macrumors.com)

In a report published Monday, The Information [paywalled] has detailed tactics used by China's Huawei to steal Apple's trade secrets. These tactics include Huawei engineers appealing to Apple's third-party manufacturers and suppliers with promises of big orders, but instead using the opportunity to pry on processes specific to iPhone-maker's component production. From a report: According to today's report, a Huawei engineer in charge of the company's smartwatch project tracked down a supplier that makes the heart rate sensor for the Apple Watch. The Huawei engineer arranged a meeting, suggesting he was offering the supplier a lucrative manufacturing contract, but during the meeting his main intent was questioning the supplier about the Apple Watch. The Huawei engineer attended the supplier meeting with four Huawei researchers in tow. The Huawei team spent the next hour and a half pressing the supplier for details about the Apple Watch, the executive said. "They were trying their luck, but we wouldn't tell them anything," the executive said. After that, Huawei went silent.

This event reportedly reflects "a pattern of dubious tactics" performed by Huawei to obtain technology from rivals, particularly Apple's China-based suppliers. According to a Huawei spokesperson the company has not been in the wrong: "In conducting research and development, Huawei employees must search and use publicly available information and respect third-party intellectual property per our business-conduct guidelines." According to the U.S. Justice Department, Huawei is said to have a formal program that rewards employees for stealing information, including bonuses that increase based on the confidential value of the information gathered.

Comments

Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

To say this has been their known strategy for a long time is an understatement.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AmiMoJo]

It doesn't pass the sniff test. Why bother going to all this effort to get details of the heart rate sensor when they could just buy an Apple watch, rip it open and take a look for themselves? Or just wait for iFixIt to do a teardown for them a day after it's released.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they had binoculars and they were peering around trying to see if they could see into the factory

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Higaran]

Because it's alot easier and better to copy chips that are still in the process of being made, than ones that are already built and glued together.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Why go to the effort of tearing one apart and reverse engineering it when you can just ask somebody for the info?

A friend of mine did a job interview at Huawei and the interview was basically "tell us how you would design a node-b". My friends response was "hire me and I'll tell you, but for an interview that's not an appropriate question". This was over a decade ago. This is well documented behavior by this company.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

If can get information before it is sold....

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not interested in the technical components; China has always been good at replicating that portion. They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.

China only really knows how to make things manually in many areas, and doing something complex, say like building a plane, or making your own apple watch is rather challenging without the understanding of how it is made. In short, the process of making and designing the product is as valuable as the product itself to China.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[BLKMGK]

Chances are the Chinese build the watches so the actual assembly is something they could get more easily at home but some of the specialized sensors are going to be much more difficult for them to figure out.

Anyone having anything built over there has to be damn careful! A friend has some automotive parts built over there. He intentionally designed the parts so it's not obvious what they will be used in and he designed them to fit more than one application with just some machining needed to fit one car or another. He told me that he bet it wouldn't be more than 3 months before they would be trying to sell his stuff. Sure enough parts showed up on Ali-Baba within 2 months! Jokes on them, they don't know about the needed machining he only did in-house and those parts aren't going to fit jack shit! :-) He had a good laugh over it but it was really surprising to see how fast they figured out what this was for and tried to sell it. There's a saying, their manufacturing plants run three shifts, two for you and one for them and it doesn't seem to be far from the truth...

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

They sound like beggars

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[hackingbear]

1. "tearing one apart and reverse engineering it" would give you a lot more details than asking someone out of their memory.
2. asking interviewee for info is pretty prevalent in the Silicon Valley. for one, the company asking does not sign an NDA. it is the interviewee who has signed the NDA and hold the responsibility to guard such secrets.
3. in this country, this kind of things all come down to arguing over fine points by highly paid lawyers.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

If they could reverse engineer it, they would, but since they don't have the skills they resort to asking professionals for how its done.

I've interviewed with several companies that had no business in being in business, and I've usually ended the interview process after it became apparent I was the smartest guy in the room.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Shaitan]

Reverse engineering a chip is not simple, fast, or cheap. It's dramatically more difficult than reverse engineering software and protocols and look at all the efforts that never finish in that area.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Shaitan]

"1. "tearing one apart and reverse engineering it" would give you a lot more details than asking someone out of their memory."

It would also take much longer than the useful life of the information.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

i find it dubious that they wouldn't find out how the sensor works otherwise... like, its not like apple makes it.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[jellomizer]

There are a lot of products get released at the same time, that have had independent R&D and came up with a similar product.
If you were to steal the Specs in the design phase, you will have your product ready at around the same time Apple does.
If you are going to look like you didn't steal the data, but came up with it yourself, it would make sense to have it ready around the same time the competitor gets it out. Or even better a little before.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. That is why they ask questions. If you were not the designer you would find it surprisingly impossible to reverse engineer. I am surprised they target interviewees so badly. I would want to steal designs from a really successful Apple partner and not just anyone who happens to have the design info. If they failed to capitalize on an Apple partnership then something is missing and they have no way to tell you something they know nothing about.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AmiMoJo]

In the case of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor there isn't really much to tell. The sensor at that time is just a basic capacitative pick-up stack and an off-the-shelf amplifier from Analogue Devices, as the teardown clearly shows. Any cleverness is in the software, and back the it wasn't even that clever - extremely average battery life, average sensitivity and accuracy.

It might make some sense if it was the newer optical type of sensor, but even then it's not an Apple specific part and they could just buy one from the same place Apple gets them.

This claim needs some concrete evidence to back it up.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AmiMoJo]

They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.

That's the part that China taught Apple.

Apple doesn't do most of the manufacturing development for its products, Foxconn does. Foxconn has the expertise in that area, and they will sell it to anyone who pays.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[sjbe]

They're interested in the manufacturing process - how things are made, integrated, and put together. That's the part that China needs to learn.

Manufacturing processes for most products are typically not black magic. It's what I do for a living. There are some exceptions for some high tech or high complexity stuff where the magic is in how it's put together. But how most things are assembled are not big secrets - it's more in the execution than some secret sauce. That said, companies definitely have to be very careful about what technology they expose to manufacturing in China because the odds are VERY high it will be stolen and/or replicated in fairly short order if due care is not taken. This is true for both design and assembly.

China only really knows how to make things manually in many areas,

That's not really true as a general proposition and hasn't been for some time. China uses a lot of manual labor because they have lots of (cheap) manual labor and that makes it economical. But they're quite good with automation when they need to be and have been getting better rather fast for the last 20 years.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have asked AMD back in the day when they ripped apart intel chips. I know the article is meant to whip up anti-china sentiment, but US companies have been doing corp spying forever, Back to colony days. I know my marketing guy paid people to take other company training classes and report back.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt anyone knows for sure why they are resorting to all these tactics but the mere fact that they are obviously using these tactics seems to have eluded many in law enforcement until recently

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[DigiShaman]

Don't worry, in China, working for Huawei will be seen as a badge of your patriotic duty for the motherland. That is to say, they don't pay you, YOU PAY THEM for the privilege of having a resume' enhancement.

I'm not joking.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a scam. Stay away!

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[rilister]

I don't mean to be rude to you, but that is how a lot of people outside of product design and manufacturing think.

As an (ex)engineer, I'm often more impressed by *how* Apple (and their suppliers) make things than *what* they make. For example, the (steel) front bezel on the original iPhone was something that looked basically unmanufacturable to me: for a start, you can't hold the same tolerances on a steel casting as a plastic part, so it was astonishing that the back plastic clamshell and the steel bezel met almost seamlessly.

Turn out that Apple were making the back clamshell in a number of different sizes (three, I hear) and the bezel in a single size. They finished the bezel and then used an optical system on the production line to pick out which parts would fit with which plastic clamshells.

It's an extremely unusual process that involved a lot more up-front investment in technology and process, but gave the result their designers wanted and the customers thought was 'pretty neat'. So Huawei want to know about those optical systems, as well as what's inside an Apple watch.

Tear-downs won't tell you anything about a lot of the most interesting solutions that a designer had to devise: Toyota used to famously say that they weren't designing cars, they were designing a process to make cars.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't pass the sniff test. [...]

Of course it doesn't. This story is a work of fiction, like most stories here on slashdot.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, the orientals managed to convince us that we should give them Free Trade favours when they are state controlled, state financed, state-aided ( espionage) enterprises.

The White Man has been dumbed into prospective extinction.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the part that China taught Apple.

Apple doesn't do most of the manufacturing development for its products, Foxconn does. Foxconn has the expertise in that area, and they will sell it to anyone who pays.

Foxconn is Taiwanese, not Chinese.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, manufacturingâ(TM)s methods are not all the same and Apple probably uses their own custom techniques. We do the same at our company, methods of collecting and maintaining KPCs and SPCs, assembly workmanship tenents... These are all closely guarded trade secrets.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the why is lost. It's also more valuable to give your own team time to develop ^w copy that process.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[jgfenix]

Tearing it apart tells you how they do it. An engineer can tell you why they do it, what other alternatives were rejected, what problems you need to solve ...

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Aighearach]

People are missing the human component to the engineering.

There are important pieces of information, such as, what exact specs are necessary for QA purposes? Are they buying parts with a different performance guarantee than the basic ranges listed in the data sheet?

If you don't actually want the part, but you want to know, how good does this part actually have to be in this application so that when it is finally built and is running modern software, it works well enough to satisfy QA requirements?

You can find that out by asking the right people, but you can't actually calculate any of that from a product breakdown.

When you're negotiating with a Chinese chip supplier, you don't actually negotiate over price. Prices are basically fixed, with the markup varying based on your relationship with the company. When you ask for lower prices, you're actually asking for them to spend less money making the product. A lot of people don't understand this, and it leads to (false) accusations of contract dishonesty.

Huawei of course, being a Chinese company, understands that perfectly. They're not going to go to some local supplier and ask for a cheaper heart rate monitor. That would be stupid of them. Instead, they're going to try to figure out the actual minimum operating specs of the part, and then ask for the price of those specs. That will be the lowest price they can hope to get. But they can't learn that from a breakdown, because many of the parts actually made will (accidentally) be higher quality than the spec. And sometimes some of the specs will be higher than needed because of the manufacturing process, and they might have access to a different basket of processes. So they need to know which specs are actually important, and which involve tradeoffs.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[ChatHuant]

Why bother going to all this effort to get details of the heart rate sensor when they could just buy an Apple watch, rip it open and take a look for themselves?

That's rather... naive, to be kind.

Of course, they'll rip open the device, as you suggest, but that is only good enough for a iFixit YouTube video. Somebody who wants to mass-produce copies needs much more than that. To be able to mass-produce copies competitively, you need to know not only what parts is a device made of, but also HOW and WHY. This crucial knowledge can't be easily got from simply opening some device and peering inside. Why use a specific part here, and not replace it with a cheaper equivalent? Why use this special glue, and what treatment do you apply so it doesn't fall apart? Where are the bottlenecks in the process? And so on, and so on - there are thousand of gotchas in mass-production of devices - issues the maker had to solve.

Huawei could, of course, develop their own process - they do have the expertise. But that would take time and cost money and resources for R&D. It's much simpler and cheaper to steal as much of this info as they can, from the actual suppliers - who did go though the process and have solved the difficulties already.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the perennial abuse of the moderation system with sockpuppet accounts.

Everyone knows it happens, but nobody has the power on slashdot to defend against social bullies like Ami.

Never forget that he posts here so much because he was banned from all the other major tech news aggregators.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD got it's start in x86 as a second source supplier of 8088 processors. They didn't need to reverse engineer anything. I wish they had just stuck to their 2900 bit slice processors instead.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you mean the Taiwan autonomous region?

Call it Formosa. That's the name the Dutch colonialists gave it. You can in that way piss off ALL the Chinese who think they have a stake in the island.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[AHuxley]

Communism works like that.

Re: Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Except we are discussion the report and the report didn't say any of this.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is China still persists in conducting business like this? They have the resources and brain power to design and build their own products. China is reinforcing the "perception" that they rely more on industrial espionage than they do on conducting their own R&D. They also reinforce the "perception" that every piece of technology they develop has exploitable security flaws they can take advantage of. It's like authoritarian countries just can't help themselves. Their actions have all but guaranteed they get locked out of some of the most profitable markets in the world. In today's world "perception" is more important than truth.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[hoofie]

With factories in China. If you want to do that kind of business in China building parts for Apple, you do what the Chinese Government tells you to do.

If you make ANYTHING in China you run the risk of having your intellectual property lifted - period.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse engineering is generally not illegal especially in this case because no one spills the beans. It seems that a lot of people don't understand or know what trade secret is. In short, it meant as its name -- secret. It is protected under an agreement or contract (NDA). The person/party who spills the beans would likely be responsible for the damages. However, if the secret is discovered by reverse engineering, then it is pretty much a fair game.

Re:Thousand grains of sand

[dublin]

A "tear-down" of something you don't fully understand does not tell you how to replicate it, especially if it's a technology you're not fully fluent in. For chips, reverse engineering can be a pretty involved process, since you not only have to back out the design (which is still somewhat difficult for many chips these days, but is getting even harder with 3D structures such as finFETs and the like*), but also the manufacturing processes that produced it - and that is NOT always easy from looking at the end product. Even if you know what it is, you may have no clue how to recreate it...

Otherwise, we'd have flying saucers now after having retrieved that one at Roswell, right? ;-)

*Doing this right can mean obliterating the chip in very small chunks (at a molecular/atomic level) with exotic things like scanning Auger microscopes - doing that for an entire chip would be both expensive and very time-consuming...

Apple demonstrates

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple demonstrates that to avoid industrial espionage you need to make sure you don't have a chink in your supply chain.

Happened to a friend...

[BLKMGK]

I won't say what they manufacture but it's not electronics. Chinese company contacts them, says they want to buy some of their uber expensive stuff but could they come inspect it first? Sure thing! Several of the intended visitors unable to get visas... finally the TEAM of people shows up to inspect the product but want a TOUR of the factory. No sir, not allowed. Brings them to a room that's been walled off just for the inspection but members of this team keep trying to wander off and have to be corralled. Light no good, can't we do this somewhere else? Nope, here's more light! Table not flat enough for measurements don't you have someplace else we could do this? Nope, her'e s apiece of float glass deal. Finally they get frustrated and leave. Weeks later State Dept calls all freaked out by the team of scientists that visited - hmm! They explain the measures they took to the great relief of State Dept dude but he warns other folks might call and to just explain WTF. I ask friend about their network security - umm not good :( He tells me stories of employees plugging "music players" into production equipment USB ports to "charge them" and bringing the line to a halt as they got "infected". I swear sometimes we are our own worst enemy They did at least stop the direct physical inspection! I'm betting their network is owned up one side and down the other though...

Re:Happened to a friend...

[UnknowingFool]

I remember another story that some companies were advising their employees not to bring their work phones into China and to use a temporary burner phone that didn’t contain any company secrets. After a number of incidents where the phones appeared to be selectively stolen.

Re:Happened to a friend...

[BLKMGK]

and that is VERY good advice indeed. I haven't heard of phones being stolen but you can pretty much bet it will be hacked and it will almost certainly be used to track you. I only know one person who travels over there these days and she takes a burner phone just for those trips. Why take a chance? End of the day it's often not just the Govt doing the attacking either, if they think you have something valuable that can be sold or you're somehow a target that could be damaged to help improve their competitiveness you're a target. Apparently companies over there DOS and attack one another all the time, it's just apparently part of doing business

Re: Happened to a friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember another story that some companies were advising their employees not to bring their work phones into China and to use a temporary burner phone that didnâ(TM)t contain any company secrets

I think the Chinese figure you are bringing a burner phone and so they simplify the snooping to things that have a chance of being important.

After a number of incidents where the phones appeared to be selectively stolen.

Selectively stolen? Who would selectively steal burner phones? Or at least who would selectively steal more than a couple burner phones without realize how pointless it was right away?

Re: Happened to a friend...

[UnknowingFool]

The phones appeared to be selectively stolen regardless if it was a burner phone or regular work phone. If they steal a burner phone, the thieves don’t steal any company secrets.

Re:Happened to a friend...

[DigiShaman]

Nah, that comes from a USB flashdrive found in the parking lot. It reads "Hot Asian Porn". Indeed, someone got fucked in the process.

Re:Happened to a friend...

[captbollocks]

Most big corps send executives over to China not only with a burner phone but with a burner laptop which both get shredded when the exec returns.

Re:Happened to a friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can even see it on youtube. There is videos of construction companies duking it out on the roads in heavy equipment. pretty funny really.

Re:Happened to a friend...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who does contract work for Lenovo through an american company. The american company literally setup an isolated VM on a completely separate network. She remotes into the isolated computer and then VPN to the to Lenovo's Chinese network to access various tools and internal applications.

bad day for apple folk

[Anonymous Coward]

on one hand they don't like their tech status symbol manufacturer's secrets being stolen by hauwei and sold to the hoi polloi on the cheap, on the other they can't bring themselves to align with recent US+Trump admin actions against hauwei.

Re:bad day for apple folk

[Shaitan]

Maybe they will with it turning out there is evidence against Hauwei after all. With evidence of their practices and the increasing actions by China as a whole in industrial espionage and stolen plans sent to them for manufacturing it is only a matter of time before this escalates to international scale and the WTO.

Anti-Trumpism is only going to carry staying in bed with China for so long.

One of the better articles I've seen on the theft.

[BLKMGK]

https://www.popularmechanics.c...

Make sure you note the date on that article. This has been going on a long time! Another anecdote, company I knew manufactured DVD and CD, one of the contracts they bid on was to do the service manuals for the DOD but they kept getting underbid. They knew damn well there were VERY few US companies left that could do this and couldn't figure out how they were being underbid. They finally figured it out - a Chinese company was being used to make the media with a front company setup in the US. It took them ages to get the DOD to wake up and figure out they were sending the repair manuals for a ton of our shit over to China to have the damn DVD made. Good grief, why not have them produce our missiles too? Sheesh! Obviously years ago but man we've done some stupid stuff

Big deal man

[nikkipolya]

This happens all the time. Investment banks do this all the time in the name of interviews. A head hunter is hired to call up somebody from a rival bank, with the lure to double their pay. The candidate attends the interview at an unofficial location, such as a hotel, and the interview team questions him about the rivals products, algorithms etc. Once they get what they want, the interview is over. There are entire companies that are engaged in corporate espionage. They do this to extract insider information about companies on the pretext of interviews and sell the information to hedge funds for money.

Re:Big deal man

[Rick Zeman]

The answer to that scenario:

"If I can screw them (current/former company) like that, what's to stop me from screwing you like that?"

Re: Big deal man

[Anonymous Coward]

how good is the info though? wouldn't it be quite easy to game this system so they short the wrong thing?

as for pushing for freebie info, thats pretty standard industry practice. i dont view the hearthrate sensor as having that much that they couldn't find it on their own. or just buy a company.

and thats what patents and litigation are for anyways.

huaweis problem seems to be that they bought into the stereotype way too fully even if with their budgets they had 0 need to do that. its just that some execs or other ls thought that this is what they're supposed to do even if its actually bad for their business as they are now so big that they're the ones spied on and have a lot more to lose by losing a market region.

Re:Big deal man

[Anonymous Coward]

Except this isn't about a "rival bank" or "rival company" it's a despotic cabalist ethnostate government that is gearing up to try to assert itself militarily. Huawei = Chinese Communist Party scumbags. Not Wells Fargo scumbags.

It's an entire additional world you're intentionally not exploring the important distinction of. Where did you say you were from again, comrade?

Re: Big deal man

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Their goal is world domination by all methods legal and semi-legal.

Like all good commies, they steal whatever they can.

Stupid white people are their prime target.

Re:Big deal man

[Anonymous Coward]

See. Mistake in thinking "screw them".
Corporations are not people. So there is no them.

Screw it, the company, perhaps.

But....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not taking any sides, but please don't thank that Apple isn't doing what ever it takes to make sure that they know what their competitors are doing ... no one in this game is playing a nice game.

Re: But....

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is not worried about Huwai any more than mark Zuckerberg is worried about losing his spot as the third smartest person

Trade secrets and interviews

[sjbe]

1. "tearing one apart and reverse engineering it" would give you a lot more details than asking someone out of their memory.

That depends on precisely who is being asked and what sort of documentation they have/had access to. Reverse engineering does not usually provide more details than could be obtained from the memory banks of a talented key engineer.

2. asking interviewee for info is pretty prevalent in the Silicon Valley. for one, the company asking does not sign an NDA. it is the interviewee who has signed the NDA and hold the responsibility to guard such secrets.

So let's ignore any legal implications for a moment. Would you hire someone who would so readily spill the trade secrets of their current/former employer? I sure wouldn't. Because if they'll do it to them they'll do it to you. That is a question that says more about the character of the interviewee than it does the hiring company. Assuming legal niceties are observed, this would be a question to determine NOT to hire someone if they answer anything other than saying they either do not know or cannot divulge.

Re:Trade secrets and interviews

[Pieroxy]

2. asking interviewee for info is pretty prevalent in the Silicon Valley. for one, the company asking does not sign an NDA. it is the interviewee who has signed the NDA and hold the responsibility to guard such secrets.

So let's ignore any legal implications for a moment. Would you hire someone who would so readily spill the trade secrets of their current/former employer? I sure wouldn't. Because if they'll do it to them they'll do it to you. That is a question that says more about the character of the interviewee than it does the hiring company. Assuming legal niceties are observed, this would be a question to determine NOT to hire someone if they answer anything other than saying they either do not know or cannot divulge.

The point of such interviews isn't necessarily to hire someone. It may just be to get the trade secrets.

Re:Trade secrets and interviews

[godel_56]

So let's ignore any legal implications for a moment. Would you hire someone who would so readily spill the trade secrets of their current/former employer? I sure wouldn't. Because if they'll do it to them they'll do it to you. That is a question that says more about the character of the interviewee than it does the hiring company. Assuming legal niceties are observed, this would be a question to determine NOT to hire someone if they answer anything other than saying they either do not know or cannot divulge.

if I recall Uber had no qualms about hiring a Waymo engineer on the basis of the proprietary information that he had, so some US companies certainly will do it.

Re:Trade secrets and interviews

[parkinglot777]

if I recall Uber had no qualms about hiring a Waymo engineer on the basis of the proprietary information that he had, so some US companies certainly will do it.

Yes, Uber did. But that doesn't mean nothing happen. Waymo didn't care about their engineer but went after the bigger one -- Uber -- and it actually ended up with a lawsuit and settlement. That's how you do in the U.S. I doubt you can do that in China.

Re:Trade secrets and interviews

[Anonymous Coward]

And those US companies (that one in particular) are equally unethical pieces of shit as Huawei.

And again.. where's the proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also particularly funny given that Apple doesn't do anything of their own other than most of the iPhone software, and most of the physical design. All the actual building is done by Foxconn, so why would Huawei spy on Apple?

And it's not like Huawei can't build phones... they are the #1 seller of Android phones in the world. Evidently, they know everything they need.

Next.

Re:And again.. where's the proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly this. Im sure Huawei is just fine with stealing apple third rate tech.

Re:And again.. where's the proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

As with every other Android brand, they're sold in volume because they're the cheapest. Anybody can make a cheap shitty phone. The cheapest, shittiest phones move the most units.

Apple on the other hand makes a product people actually want to pay money for, and they make a lot more money (also known as "profit") from selling them, keeping Apple revenue and profit the highest and their market share easily in the game. Android flagship devices are overpriced, underspec'd, unreliable pieces of shit by comparison. Even the final gasps of WinMo in the Lumia phones were more attractive, and nothing's improved in the Android camp since.

Sounds like Huawei

[Anonymous Coward]

is using all apples stealing tactics to steal from apple. Look goods on apple. Why should apple be the only tech company to lie, cheat and steal.

Re:Sounds like Huawei

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL a paid apple shill trying to make apples thieving ways look normal.
Get lost SHILL!

Proof employees are untrustworthy

[davidwr]

If you will betray your past employer, how can I ever trust you with my secrets?

Come on now...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is typical business practices everywhere. It is not corporate espionage talking to suppliers, distributors, PR, other competitors,... In information security, it is a field to protect from information leaks.

I've seen companies in america directly does corporate espionage which I excused myself from.

Re: Come on now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you. I am a wannabe criminal too! We should hang out!

Huawei...

[jf_moreira]

In the very first year Huawei started to operate in Brazil, I was working for Siemens Telecommunications. We got very surprised to discover Huawei was getting contracts from our long term clients and Siemens was being left aside. Somene was able to get a hold of the equipment that has been sold and was operating in the customer and took many pictures of it working. We were surprised to found out Huawei had cloned all Siemens hardware and even the operating system for the devices, they did not even changed the prompt design, only replaced "Siemens" by "Huawei". And charged 70% cheaper than us. Nice company.

Re:Huawei...

[Anonymous Coward]

Having dealt with Siemens PLC hardware and software, if I had the option for third-party software at 70% the price I would take it in a heartbeat. That company could teach Cisco a thing or two about overpricing.

Re:Huawei...

[Anonymous Coward]

He said 30% of the price actually. Even now they want to stick to Huawei despite pressure from US, it seems they are a better deal.

China needs to pay!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, China needs to make a really good payment to US for all the Intellectual Property stolen from US!!!
(& it needs to clearly/strongly ban/punish any such actions in the future!!!)

There is already a trade war going on between US & China.
IMHO, it should/must continue, until all problems/disagreements clearly resolved!!!

Re:China needs to pay!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Should the world also make the US pay for everything they've stolen? What about founding its industrial revolution on IP theft mainly from Britain? I'm sure the interest will be high after well over a hundred years... or let me guess, it's fine as long as WE are the ones doing it?

Re:China needs to pay!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lend lease, support in the WW2 and Marshall plan was insufficient in your view?

Re:China needs to pay!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

All utterly irrelevant. You can't pay off your victims by returning some of their stolen property and letting them know they can sling you fifty bucks if they have it.

Does the USA still genuinely think any part of Europe owes them anything for past actions? It seems to come up a lot, like there's nothing more relevant springing to mind.

Modus Operandi

[ArhcAngel]

The Chinese have been doing this for decades...but so have most other countries including the US. China just has no shame in trotting out their copy to the world stage. And remember...

Good artists copy, great artists steal. - Pablo Picasso

Who... Us?

[guygo]

"Why we'd never..." should be emblazoned on Huawai's letterhead and logo.

Re:One of the better articles I've seen on the the

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah that seems completely objective, unbiased and trustworthy /s

What's next are you going to suggest that we get the truth from CIA and the Pentagon?

The Chinese are very good at this

[Solandri]

Actually, all of Asia is. The concept that companies shouldn't steal secrets from each other simply doesn't exist in Asia. The notion that you can protect an idea using a patent or copyright or NDA or non-compete agreement is alien. In Asia, if a company wants to protect its secrets, it should work to protect those secrets. If their secrets get stolen, people figure its their own fault for not protecting them well enough. Corporate espionage is the norm. You may have seen this in anime or manga, where an employee is required to infiltrate another company to spy on them. The employee can be fired if they refuse.

When East meets West, you have a bunch of naive westerners blissfully running head-first into espionage methods which have been honed for over a century. It's a lot like how it must've been when the native Americans with bows and arrows were slaughtered by European firearms. Westerners have never put much thought into protecting themselves from this type of direct espionage because they've always been coddled and protected by their social norm that it was inherently wrong for companies to steal secrets from each other. So they will blissfully plug in their devices to recharge during a visit, or hand them over for "security checks" at the airport (during which the hard drive is removed and an image is made), or install a state-of-the-art manufacturing tool relying on a few screws holding the cover in place to protect the secrets that are held within.

A good example is China's high speed rail. China had no knowledge about how to construct high speed rail. They opened up bidding to foreign companies, dangling the carrot of building thousands of miles of track and trains. TGV wisely passed. Siemens took the bait. They inked a deal where Siemens would manufacture trains for China for a few years, but with the curious stipulation that the manufacturing had to be done in China. Siemens probably thought that after a few years, they'd be facing bids from other high speed rail companies again. What actually happened was the Chinese strip-mined everything they could from Siemens' manufacturing processes in China, duplicated it on their own, and gave Siemens the boot once the period of the original agreement was up.

Re:The Chinese are very good at this

[Anonymous Coward]

Siemens still made more moneydoing that than TGV did.

Every company does it

[Shotgun]

I worked at the GE Appliance Park in Louisville, KY. They have an entire team that does nothing but tear down competitors appliances to see how they are put together. They are also nonchalant about their competitors doing the same. It is just what everybody does.

Re:Every company does it

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that even related to the behavior described in the article ??

Re:Every company does it

[Anonymous Coward]

"How is that even related to the behavior described in the article ??"

Maybe tearing open a MacBook can result in the following mentioned in the article?

"the company built a connector for its MateBook Pro that was just like the one used in Apple's MacBook Pro from 2016, allowing the computer's hinge to be thinner while still attaching the display to the logic board."

Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[sycodon]

China is a Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship with a thin veneer of capitalism.

Never forget that.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[dk20]

Their approach seems familiar. Many years ago your nation use to go to England, visit the plants, and steal textile manufacturing trade secrets.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/201...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012...

you forgot to find a way to include a reference to tiananmen square in your rant.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, at a time when there weren't any agreements between the two or international conventions and regulatory bodies on recognition of intellectual property globally. China is member of WTO and WIPO and is signatory to the Berne Convention and TRIPS and has ratified both.

If China wanted to pillage the IP of the other countries they should have never signed on.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[angel'o'sphere]

with a thin veneer of capitalism.
Define "thin"?

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

It gets a little hard to do that when you have a computerized system that tracks the activity of a country's citizens, scores them for how "appropriate" their beliefs, statements and associations are, and restricts their rights based on that.

You might see how countries that don't do that might be concerned about a country that does something like that trying to achieve dominance or parity. It will not be good for global freedom. And yes, freedom means something other than eagles and Michael Bay films.

By the way, the whole argument that the United States should shut up about this because they did it in the past is flat out stupid. People in the United States stole industrial secrets because it was in their best interest to do so. People in England tried to stop them because it was in their best interest to do so. People in the United States now should try to stop people from stealing their secrets because it is in their best interest to do so. It's as simple as that.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[dk20]

This is 100% incorrect. Stealing trade secrets was agasint british laws at the time. High ranking US officials still encouraged its citizens to steal them, knowing it violated british laws.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[dk20]

Not sure your comments are dirrected to me or not:

"If they choose to have a Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship so whats it to you? "

Agreed. They are 13,000 miles away, i really dont care if they are communist, or whatever. That is their choice and has very little to do with me.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Key phrase "against British law" there was no agreement between the U.S and England to respect each others intellectual property. Unlike the U.S back then, China has ratified the afore mentioned treaties obligating it to respect intellectual property of other WIPO members.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[sycodon]

Don't think I've heard a more fucking ignorant comment than that.

You seriously believe that the people in China choose to be a a communist dictatorship?

Fuck you.

And Textiles? Seriously? the U.S. sent government agents there to steal textile secrets?

Holy crap you are the dumbest piece of shit I've had the misfortune to step on.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[dk20]

Thanks for the time you wasted responding. Your post really contributed to the conversation and is a key reason Slashdot is what it is today.

Nothing impresses others more then someone sending angry rants full of profanity... Well done.

Do show me your passport and all the Chinese entrance visa stamps you have. Clearly you speak for all 1.3 billion Chinese.

And yes, your government encouraged textile theft to jump start the US economic engine. This is a rack, regardless if you believe it or not.

Have a great day.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[Anonymous Coward]

China's only communist in name, now. They've got a full-on market economy controlled by an oligarchy which appropriates anything the oligarchy wants to appropriate, usually without remittance or redress for those whose property has been taken. It's really crony capitalism run amok.....enemies of powerful PLA-owned business entities risk being charged with crimes against the state and can suffer penalties for the same, up to and including execution.

This is basically what the GOP market fundamentalists want to do in the US - they want absolute power without their opponents having the means or ability to establish standing in courts to expose and redress bad acts.....it's why they're all about tort reform.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[sycodon]

Sorry, I get that way when some asshole defend a totalitarian government and suggest people volunteer for oppression.

Re: Totalitarian, Communist Dictatorship

[dk20]

I didn't defend it. I said that is their choice. If they wish to overthrow, leave, etc they can do so (not easily, but my 22 year girlfriend left as did a number of her friends). Heck, I have a friend staying with me right now, her family left China for the states when she was only 12.

I don't get why people are so worked up over china. They are probably 10-12k miles from most on slashdot.

PS. If you are ever there hit me up. I own a home in guilin, not far from elephant trunk hill.. so I might have more insight then some on slashdot who post yet have never even been there.

Huwawei is owned by the government of China

[WCMI92]

Which is communist. So Slashdot will love it.

simple solder everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to steal, just remove connectors and solder everything.

Re:Stooping Whitey

[Anonymous Coward]

Come get some, Wang.

Really?

[Maelwryth]

How bizarre. There's a lot of hatred happening over an article that details nothing much happened. I am yet to see anything that we should be getting upset solely with Huwawei for. From a slightly historical view it wasn't that long ago that people were screaming at Japan for stealing trade secrets. This just looks like someone stirring the China hatred pot. Not your country, not your rules, and if you don't like it then don't buy the product (or manufacture there). Really, this entire story should be marked troll.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our company is in the same building as Bloomberg. Once their employees in the elevator complained that they were asked by their boss to find something negative to write about China. I guess they are delivering what their customers want though.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can asking questions be stealing? Nothing is a trade secret without reasonable efforts to keep it a secret ... i.e. the more people you give access to it, the less reasonable those efforts are. If you ask people what they know about x and they tell you, it's not really a "trade secret."

This is evidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Specifically, the company built a connector for its MateBook Pro that was just like the one used in Apple's MacBook Pro from 2016, allowing the computer's hinge to be thinner while still attaching the display to the logic board."

This seems like information in the public domain, i.e. eveyone can buy a Mac book. The article didn't talk about a patent so I assume there isn't one. So gas store A lowers its gas price by 5 cents and gas store B shortly follows and gas store B is stealing trade secrets?

P.S. to HACKINGBEAR

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, we have your mother dangling over a simmering bowl of soup.

Here in the wilds of Colorado, I like to have sex with my own mother, so I'm not doing this out of some misogynous intent just to be clear.
In fact, here in the wilds of Colorado, I'm the father of my own brother...copy that HACKINGBEAR GYNA!

Windbourne

Worked for Microsoft when Video for Windows sucked

[Lycestra]

When Apple's QuickTime came to Windows, Microsoft and Intel were astonished by its performance. When they couldn't compete, they just conspired to acquire the code from an Apple partner.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html

Take it back

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the more Apple outsources their products to another country in Asia, the more they leave themselves open to this. It's why more manufacturing should be done in North America, such as an inexpensive labour market like Mexico.

It's worth asking

[Anonymous Coward]

When was asking things about products on official visit outlawed? Motives might be shady, but it's up to component company to control which details they release about the product and manufacturing.

OMG it would be so unfair

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple had secrets stolen and used by competitors!!!
Said the Qualcom guy.

Why lie? Are you WindBourne?

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung sells more phones. Huawei sell more phones than Apple though, and just replaced Apple as the number two highest seller.