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by kube-system 1649 days ago
Regardless of attitudes towards commercial IP, most countries take it pretty seriously when defense-related research is stolen. You might get off the hook in China for stealing commercial IP, but I doubt you'd get the same response for violating research agreements with the PLA.
2 comments

That's not true. France constantly steals US Defence tech. China constantly steals Russian tech and they are still on good terms. The US probably also tried to steal what it can from everyone, and we know the US facilitated industrial espionage of German companies.

Also, China is pretty different in that the PLA allows their researchers to publish a lot of research that gives away their capabilities in sensitive domains like EW and submarine warfare. I'm not sure they would react massively to something that doesn't even entail any information leaking.

> That's not true. France constantly steals US Defence tech. China constantly steals Russian tech and they are still on good terms. The US probably also tried to steal what it can from everyone, and we know the US facilitated industrial espionage of German companies.

Can you tell me more or what to look for? I just remember an Israel stole some classified stuff and was sent to prison, an ally stealing secrets but I thought it was a rare occurrence.

I don't mean that it doesn't happen or that defense agencies keep everything a secret -- I mean that people routinely go to prison for leaking defense tech that wasn't supposed to be leaked.
China stole a lot of the fighter jet blueprints like this stealth one. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/hacked-how-china-stol...

What is the US response? I don't even know.

The US extradited the guy from Canada who did it and put him in federal prison, there were increasing threats of sanctions, and Obama met with Xi to talk about it.
I remember this other case too, look at all he stole, and almost 4 years in prison, I am sure he will learn his lesson and never do it again. https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/15/12196872/chinese-man-us-p...

>increasing threats of sanctions

So threats, no real sanctions, not that the steel sanctions did anything, somehow Vietnam started selling us all their steel after we sanction China for other reasons.

My point above is, that’s a lot more than will happen for pirating a DVD in China.
Some vague threat that had no teeth?

What happened? Nobody will be discouraged by such a short term sentence, and be emboldened by its opportunity cost.