Thanks for the link Steven!
via ARSTechnia.
Multi-national defense firms with offices in other countries...even if they're allies, makes it easier to steal our defense secrets.
The more doors, the easier it is to find a way in....
via ARSTechnia.
According to the Justice Department, Su and the unknown hackers based in China started to collect data in 2009, and continued until 2013. The Justice Department claims that the group "gained remote access from China to information residing on the computer systems of U.S. companies including cleared defense contractors.” In an email Su sent, he said the aircraft data would help Chinese aircraft designers “stand easily on the giant’s shoulders,” and ""allow us to rapidly catch up with U.S. levels," NBC reported.Yeah.
Multi-national defense firms with offices in other countries...even if they're allies, makes it easier to steal our defense secrets.
The more doors, the easier it is to find a way in....
This was expected. All this data stealing. Espionage of various kinds- Industrial, Tech., Military etc. has been going on since the cold war. I bet the most wired-in country for chinese hackers would be Taiwan. Millions of tourists and business people going both ways all with pen-drives and laptops, phones.
ReplyDeleteIt's not the level of espionage that the Chinese are conducting that interests me but the quality of the data this espionage is collecting.
ReplyDeleteTheir J.20 and other designs show clear influences from the F-35, F-22 and Eurofighter whilst their new transport aircraft seems to be a shrunken version of the C-17 (not exactly the newest design on the block). Yet their engines are still reverse engineered versions of older Soviet designs.
It's one thing to copy someone elses aircraft but if you cannot match it with a suitable engine then you will struggle, especially in the case of their C-17 clone. Is their espionage focused on the wrong areas or are the levels of IT security at Western jet engine manufacturers so good that they cannot be cracked?
and to think, there was a time when the German Army wanted to completly copy the russian T-34 including their diesel engines.
DeleteThough the Chinese are doing their best to get to the vital Engine technology. I heard that their Z-10 helicoptor engine was developed not natively but through the espionage route. Set up a trading company or a Fund House which specializes in technology........which is what the US govt. wants....more investment in Tech. Only, these Fund Houses are controled by the Chinese and are investing in everything. Small specialized engineering concernes to large organizations that own hundreds if not thousands of patents.
If this is true, why not just copy the engine design then. Ofcourse there will be design elements that are common between this plane and the F22, because they are both fighter planes, and they are both 5th gen fighter-planes.
DeleteI imagine that all the stuff regrading stealth, at least 80% of it is common public knowledge, easily acessible to anyone who has access to the academic literature that is published by universities, just like that guy from pakistan (the one who made the bomb), was saying that nearly everything you need to know to do this, is freely available, only a very little bit is left to figure out (his words).
This plane appears to be a tecnhology demonstrator, in that whilst it is actual plane, that will probably be actually combat ready, like the ATD-X from japan, it does not have orders. The plane to watch out for, will be the plane that comes out after this. What is interesting about this CGI image is that the A2A missiles are stacked....
And regarding china being 'backwards' this is fundamentally not true in many areas, for instance Huwei is now a proper provider of communication equipment, equipment that they designed rather than outright copied (as was initial) some areas like BGI genomics and BSB group (mass produced, prefabricated sky-scraper construction company) are lightyears ahead of the west. I have no doubt that if we continue with our low-quality education system, our high levels of buercracy, red tape (including outright bans on some avenues of science), taxation, etc..etc.. That in a decade or two it will be us who looks backwards, us who is copying them.