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  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    Eh, not sure what the point of this entire thing is going to accomplish. It seems like an unnecessary exercise catching a corporation between two national governments.
  • BedfordTim - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    Something is a bit weird here. Normally buyers are happy to share non-critical technology such as tappy with suppliers. Also a screen tapping robot hardly sounds like high tech in hardware terms. The software and sensors might have been special but it is hard to imagine there was anything magical about the arm.
  • pugster - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/j...

    It didn't. T-mobile sued Huawei a few years ago in a civil court and they weren't found guilty of 'stealing' Trade Secrets, but were fined for misappropriated T-Mobile’s trade secrets and the misappropriation was not “willful and malicious”.
  • Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    The whole thing doesn't make sense. T-Mobile has a public video on the robot:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv69ZxKOFSw

    Plus you can clearly see it's just a Epson robotic hand you can buy:

    https://epson.com/For-Work/Robots/SCARA/c/w810
  • sleepeeg3 - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    Nice find. Is the US pulling a Europe here and using this as an excuse to shake down Huawei? Hard to trust any globalist government or corporation nowadays.
  • versesuvius - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    It is propaganda. The US administration is, as always, counting on the fact that over 90 percent of its population only sees the headlines, if they do at all, and then does not read the reports anyway. So, to many Americans it will come down to: "China is stealing our money and destroying our jobs and ...". That is and has been enough for the US government since forever.
  • TETRONG - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    Uh, except for that part where Huawei has a policy in place rewarding employees for IP theft of any kind.

    They’re stealing tech from Samsung, Apple, Qualcomm, etc and now Chinese citizens are being discouraged from buying those brands or they can face penalties and ostracization at work for not being patriotic.

    You do know Huawei is directly funded by the government with sweetheart loans right?

    Kind of tired of people acting like this is just xenophobia against the Chinese and not giving Huawei a fair shot.. what they’re doing is despicable and the media needs to make their damaging behavior clear.
  • versesuvius - Thursday, January 31, 2019 - link

    Just read what you wrote again. "A company wide policy for rewarding theft"? "Ostracization for not buying Huawei"? "A government company"? I suppose there is more where all that came from, like Huawei encouraging its employees to wear a funny kind of mustache, that has been out of style for ages. More the reason for the US government to stick to the propaganda line of work.
  • tuxRoller - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    From the linked apnews article:

    "The indictment detailed efforts by Huawei engineers to sneak into the highly-restricted Tappy lab. One engineer succeeded in taking unauthorized photos of the robot. Another managed to sneak it out of the lab to take measurements and photos to send back to China. He returned it after being questioned by T-Mobile, prosecutors said.

    Huawei allegedly offered bonuses in 2013 to employees who stole information from other companies around the world, according to the Seattle indictment, citing emails obtained by the FBI. The bonuses were based on the value of information, which was sent to Huawei using an encrypted email address."

    So, now there is an, alleged, email trail which suggests intent.
    Also, no one said this robot is a big deal now, but this was a bot designed by a T-Mobile engineer back in 2007. The alleged corporate espionage happened in 2012, and, apparently, even then robots like Tappy weren't so typical (or at least those engineers and their handlers weren't aware of them).
    The emails are supposed to be hilarious.

    From the Justice department Press release regarding the indictment (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommuni...
    "
    According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance, stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. After T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these criminal activities, and then threatened to sue, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei corporate entities in the United States and China. As emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal, the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a company-wide effort involving many engineers and employees within the two charged companies.

    As part of its investigation, FBI obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies around the world, and provided to Huawei via an encrypted email address.
    "

    This all may be bs, but this IS new information. These emails weren't available to T-Mobile during the previous civil trial.
  • sonny73n - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    This is what it’s like when a country became a cooperation. Everyone in the government is just hired hitmen willing to do anything to hold on to their powers. They will not hesitate to use dirty tactics like smearing, intimidating, blackmail, extortion and kidnapping. All for the nation’s interest right?
  • heffeque - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    I'm not sure which country you are talking about... or if you're talking about both of them.
  • Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    I'd assume both.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    This sounds like intimidation tactics by the US government on behalf of Cisco and other vendors who are losing market share to Huawei. Another part of the Cheeto-in-Chief's trade war with China.
  • webdoctors - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    Maybe its just a cash shakedown? ZTE was essentially shutdown until Trump reopened them to qualcomm chips. Maybe he looking for a payoff?
  • DejayC - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    The US government’s heavy handed persecution of Huawei IS unjust, but so is the Chinese governments hacking of US tech companies, legally mandated IP transfer, and blocking of US websites. We are entering a new world of great-power rivalry and the US realizes it can no longer take the high road when countries such as China are taking the low road to economic and geopolitical dominance. While the Trump administration has certainly accelerated this economic retaliation, the rest of political establishment in the US has also begun to think “something needs to be done” to maintain America’s status as the worlds sole superpower. We can only hope that this rivalry remains an economic one, and doesn’t turn into WW3.
  • teldar - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    <i>the Chinese governments hacking of US tech companies, legally mandated IP transfer, and blocking of US websites</i>

    I have to imagine this is a large part of the issue. For years if an American company wanted to do business in China, they have had to partner with a Chinese company and give all their technology and trade secrets to their Chinese partner. This practice coupled with China's outright infringement of all IP they can get their hands on otherwise and their intentional devaluation of their currency to improve further the trade imablance in their favor are all issues the entire world should be concerned with.
  • joeyudog - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    It's about time somebody played China's game on their level. They have swiped so much of our technology over the years through the "right to steal IP" law, which says that in order for you to sell foreign merchandise in China you are forced to reveal and give a certain amount of your IP, of which they choose from what I understand, to them. That law just literally makes theft legal. Then they just manufacture the same thing at a drastically reduced cost, due to no R&D and dirt cheap labor costs, and sell it back to us. Since the IP was legally "given" to them they don't even have to wait for the patent to expire, etc. That's a massive reason why the US has seen a sharp decline in our manufacturing base, (because why should we?) which is why the so-called rust belt is now really rusting. Past administrations seem to have just tried keeping the peace by letting them run right over us rather than trying to stop the theft because it may cause a tiff. I'm all for keeping the peace, but you can't call it an even playing field when the other guy keeps sticking a knife in your belly.
  • Lord of the Bored - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link

    The decline in american manufacturing is almost entirely due to the cheap cost of overseas labor. Same reason we shipped things to Taiwan and Japan and Singapore and Mexico back in the day. China just has the cunning to KEEP those labor costs low instead of letting the economic boom spill out and raise the standard of living for the populace at large.

    Companies have willingly tossed China their patents because it is cheaper for them to share with chinese businesses than it is to make their crap somewhere that doesn't take advantage of them, so they decide the cost of doing business in China is worth it. Short-term profit is the one and only metric of value, so sacrificing the long-term value of a few patents to gain the immediate savings of criminally low wages is an unalloyed win.
  • BedfordTim - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link

    The average wage has been steadily rising in China, almost tripling in the past 10 years. Wages in the major cities are now higher than in European countries such as Croatia and Lithuania. China has also been raising minimum wages and reducing agricultural taxes to reduce wage inequality.
  • Diji1 - Friday, February 1, 2019 - link

    This is more news for idiots that haven't worked out that the US/other intelligence creates conspiracy theories and then the mainstream media helps spread them around. So Iraq has WMD and attacked America on 911, Russia controls the US elections and the whole world, China steals IP.

    China has already surpassed the USA for scientific output some time ago.
  • drwho9437 - Sunday, February 3, 2019 - link

    There are either a lot of naive people or a lot of people who want to help China's government line out... Why would Huawei want to steal from the US?

    Why did the USSR have spies in the Manhatten project?
    Where were core of the following invented:
    The telephone
    The laser
    Fiber optics
    The transistor
    The integrated circuit
    The cell phone
    The Smart Phone
    CDMA
    I could go on. Simply put the US has been the technological leader since surpassing Germany in scientific output. Many excellent Chinese (and other nationality) student come to the US. But simply put US culture towards innovation has so far proven the best. That doesn't mean it always will be but it is very natural for people to steal to try to catch up. China does steal. So does the US. The difference though is one of scale and cultural aversion to it. China's culture does not view intellectual property the same way, which makes the theft of it much more pervasive.
  • thomasg - Sunday, February 3, 2019 - link

    Here we go:
    The telephone - Multiple times: Invented by Philip Reis in Germany, developed by Italian Antonio Meucci (later in the US; he was not speaking any English at the time)
    The laser - Albert Einstein in Germany
    Fiber optics - (Swiss) Daniel Colladon and (French) Jacques Babinet in France
    The transistor - (Austro-Hungarian) Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, early development in Leipzip, Germany, finished in the United States after his emmigration
    The integrated circuit - (German) Werner Jacobi in Germany
    The cell phone - The cellular part (all other parts were well-known before) at Bell Labs in the US
    The Smart Phone - Nokia in Finland
    CDMA - (Russian) Dmitry Ageev and (Russian) Leonid Kupriyanovich in Russia
  • zmatt - Monday, February 4, 2019 - link

    That's straight up revisionist history.

    The telephone is credited to Bell because his actually worked. The experiments beforehand, while important and foundational did not make a viable technology outside of lab demos.

    Einstein did not invent the laser. He came up with the theoretical framework for the maser and laser but that isn't the same thing. Saying he invented the laser is the same as saying he invented atomic weapons. Which is ridiculous. The laser was developed by several teams in the US during the 1950's, primarily Bell Labs and Columbia.

    Fiber Optics were developed over a long period by many teams. It was truly an international effort.

    The transistor was invented by Bardeen, Schokley and Brattain at Bell Labs. Lilienfield made patents but didn't have any working examples and did not publish his research. Its easy to have an idea but to invent something means you have to make it work. Otherwise HG Wells would be credited with inventing just about everything from the 20th and 21st centuries.

    Same thing with Jack Kilby and his invention of the semiconductor. You have to make it to invent it. Jacobi submitted patents in Germany but didn't actually make any IC's.

    The first smartphone was by IBM and released in 1992.

    You are right about CDMA though. That is a Russian developed technology.

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