US government charges two Chinese spies over jet engine blueprint theft
The US Justice Department has charged two Chinese spies with stealing jet engine blueprints through a series of online hacks over the course of five years. Zha Rong and Chai Meng work for the Chinese government's state security ministry (JSSD), the US government claims, and collaborated with six hackers and two moles at the …
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Thursday 1st November 2018 09:38 GMT The Man Who Fell To Earth
Re: Not the first time
False equivalency. In the case of the Mirage clone, Israel legitimately had the airframe plans through its joint venture. When France decided to impose an arms embargo on Israel, all israel did was manufacture the airframes itself that it was originally supposed to purchase from France. The rest of the plane, which was always planned to use Israeli made avonics, went ahead as planned.
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Wednesday 31st October 2018 22:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
The US government should fund 'fake plans'
When they detect this, rather than arresting them, they should have designers design stuff that's deliberately flawed in subtle ways for them to "steal". Then when the Chinese try to copy it, it will fail spectacularly and they won't know where the problem lies or what parts of the stolen plans they can trust and what parts they can't.
The US government would have to pay them to do it, otherwise they aren't going to task engineers on this, but that's probably cheaper than bringing them to trial (even when they are located somewhere the US can reach them)
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Thursday 1st November 2018 06:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The US government should fund 'fake plans'
They'd never get these designs working well enough to put them into service, that's the whole point. So they'd never be over your house, unless your house is right next door to where China tests its planes using engines stolen from western designs.
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Wednesday 31st October 2018 23:29 GMT JassMan
They need to steal more than just the blueprints.
If they try to build a perfect replica of any commercial turbine from Chinese steel, it will fall apart before it gets up to half power. I managed to twist off a 10mm Chinese screw by hand using a Stanley screwdriver with only a 6mm shaft.I have also managed to open out a 15mm Chinese spanner so that it slipped round on a bolt head I was trying to undo by hand.
The big worry when the government allowed the sell off of GKN, who have some of the best alloys in the world, was that it would be taken over by the Chinese for the technology.
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Thursday 1st November 2018 00:15 GMT Palladium
Re: They need to steal more than just the blueprints.
Yup I'm sure bottom barrel Chinese made consumer gear is very indicative of their real industrial products like things that go into their HSR which has like half the accident rates per distance versus the Japanese,
But it's OK you can keep up with the cheap junk memes bro
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Thursday 1st November 2018 06:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: They need to steal more than just the blueprints.
While I agree he has an (unintentional) point, a lot of advanced aeronautics uses special materials. You could steal the design for the space shuttle, but unless you had the recipe to make the material used for the tiles or something that acts similarly, it wouldn't survive re-entry.
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Thursday 1st November 2018 10:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: They need to steal more than just the blueprints.
Yup I'm sure bottom barrel Chinese made consumer gear is very indicative of their real industrial products like things that go into their HSR which has like half the accident rates per distance versus the Japanese,
Citation needed, if you please.
A quick search on the topic indicates a series of very serious high speed rail accidents in China, far fewer than Japan, and that search picks up Chinese popular protests about state coverups on rail safety.
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Thursday 1st November 2018 10:24 GMT mhenriday
«The US Justice Department has charged two Chinese spies ... »
From what I understand, the persons concerned have neither resided nor worked in the US. Does the so-called US «Justice Department» really believe it enjoys universal jurisdiction and can «charge» persons residing in foreign lands ? Or is this merely yet another of those publicity stunts in which US authorities periodically indulge in order to distract attention from their own crimes ?...
Henri
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Thursday 1st November 2018 14:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
I'm still not clear why they would need to steal blueprints for an engine, when they could reverse-engineer one that they'd already purchased?
Because reverse physical engineering is either crude, or very time consuming on anything that may be made with real precision. All very well knowing that all the fan blades you measured were 54.002 mm thick, but unless you know the required tolerances you'll have to guess them, or assume them from variations in your sampling. Getting it wrong can mean excessive wear, component failure, lower efficiency or much higher cost.
But you have to wonder why the idiots involved allowed the designs to be held on internet accessible systems that could be breached. Admittedly if they were air gapped the Chinese may then have looked at alternative approaches, but that's really a separate issue. If something of very high value is connected to the internet, you might as well leave it on the pavement with a big sign saying "help yourselves".
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Friday 2nd November 2018 13:53 GMT not.known@this.address
Re: DECU
Um, no. The Concorde had, like all commercial jets at the time, that strange invention called a Flight Engineer who did all the hard work at his panel at the back of the cockpit while Captain Speaking and First Officer Here flew the jet (or at least backed up the analogue - not digital! - autopilot)...
They might have fitted DECU later but the Olympus originally flew without...
Mine's the one with "Coneheads forever" patches...
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