If you enjoyed this story, its worth reading up on how Huawei grew into a powerhouse through corporate espionage of product lines and R&D from Canada's Nortel Networks and Cisco. In Nortel's case the Chinese government reportedly had complete access to its internal networks for more than 10 years, and was constantly siphoning information (including designs, pricing and product roadmaps). I also highly recommend the book "The Hundred-Year Marathon Book" by Michael Pillsbury. I found it very insightful and well-written. The growth of SMIC and Huawei are such an important lessons for management in the securing of trade secrets. It's safe to say that all large companies are unknowingly having their corporate secrets siphoned away through ongoing corporate espionage (see the recent SolarWinds hack).
I agree, I have read about Huawei getting sued several times over the years. One incident happened at a tradeshow in Chicago 2004 when a Huawei employee came back after hours and was removing the cover from a networking device and taking photographs of the circuitry inside. Over the years Huawei has been caught over and over involved in espionage. SMIC is another company that has grown fast due to corporate espionage.
In the previous video I was kind of rooting for SMIC with the backstory of veteran Chinese natives coming back and starting something for themselves. But now I feel like the outcome of the lawsuit was probably justified. That email from that Marco Mora guy is imo as sleazy as it gets, putting pressure on people in the direction to do stuff you know isn't fair game. I don't know the full story, but on first impression it would possibly warrant personal trial as well. Awesome videos though!
No, you're mistaken if you think that's how business is done under the CCP. As the recent leaked video of the Chinese professor shows, stealing intellectual property and outright copying of foreign technology is strongly encouraged by the Chinese government. The Chinese have no intention of competing fairly; they intend to win by cheating, and have been doing so for over thirty years.
Awesome videos ? The uploader's high-falutin BS morals is a joke if not hypocritical. TSMC would have done the same thing to catch up. Patent infringement lawsuits are a dime a dozen in the tech industry and is a tool to stifle potential competitor's progress, TSMC is no more moralistic than any street hooker.
Very insightful and informative, but in all honesty, a few hundred million penalty for all that SMIC gained was well worth it by any measure. Their gain from this espionage and IP theft profited them billions relatively speaking and gave them a competitive edge allowing them to compete on the world stage in such a short amount of time. We'll have to see how this impacts them later but to go from 4-5 generations behind to 1-2 behind seems like that would be worth several 10s of billions easily. Even if they are locked out of the US market, their entire local FAB industry gained so much more than they lost from these shenanigans.
Ho ancora il TTL data book della National, ogni tanto lo sfoglio e provo un vero godimento nel poter capire almeno una parte di tutta quella montagna di dati....Una vera Bibbia per gli appassionati di elettronica !
Fucking hell, this channel is gonna blow up. Calling it at 7k subs. Hope you're making it a point to upload the content in every platform. I'd do Odysee, Bitchute, Vimeo, etc, Reddit tech boards, even as far as 4chan's tech board and making torrents of this stuff and putting it up on tpb. I expect this channel to do well.
Keeping up quality is key. Thorough research to create an insightful script with information that can't be gathered easily otherwise, good microphone recording with clear pronunciations, Pinyin displayed on screen for any Chinese words so interested English-speaking users can learn more themselves, and links to previous Asianometry videos.
I don’t mean to sound rude but, I really can’t think of anything made in China of recent technological importance that *wasn’t* stolen or ripped off from someone else
There should have been prison time for the employees involved in espionage. Escaping to China should not be allowed by the CCP but they push these sorts of efforts, so it makes sense.
Industrial espionage is so old, don't moralize or make a story about how "crime never pays in the long run". Edison patented in his own name all the inventions of European engineers in his labs. (That's why Nikola Tesla left him). At that time the US registered patents, ignoring patents issued in the countries that led in science and invention - England, Germany, France. And decades on, to this day, acquiring processes, tech solutions and collaborators is at the heart of competition between corporations. Otherwise they would become stagnant rent-seeking monopolies, like the American car industry from the 70s on. In that context, what SMIC probably didn't succeed to do, is to pay Californian justice more than TSMC. And maybe, play golf along with key judges. Having made my remark, I too appreciate this Channel's work. It is very informative.
Yeah sure. But are you gotta sit there and take it when someone does it to you? Or are you gonna do something about it? Edit2: I saw your edit and wanted to add this bit. Not meaning to be snarky. Thanks for watching and your kind words.
@@Asianometry I don't rebuke TSMC for fighting for their interests. It's part of being alive. I'm just making a point that all exchange of knowledge is in some sense "stealing". And owners of patents are nor necessarily honorable or learned people, most are simply buyers or inheritors. Furthermore, I give credit to the story that in the beginning of the 00s SMIC was moving too "fast", just literally plagiarizing. Japanese companies did it too, big time, in the 1950s-1970s. But they soon found that it's better to develop your own R&D and put engineers in the lead. Chinese hi-tech seems to be in the second phase.
@@Asianometry The fact that TSMC literally lobbied to get SMIC banned by the US shows they're just imperialist puppets and TSMC deserves to get shut down
Why does bringing a lawsuit in USA have any more teeth if the company's based in the Cayman Islands rather than China? America doesn't control the Cayman Islands.
That was 180nm, eons ago. what about 3nm now? when your smallest wire is only 30 atoms wide. when a single strand of hair on your head grows more length than a transistor channel during the brief moment you read this comment.
Bet Chinese companies are employing such tactics again in this new wave of techno-nationalism. Semiconductor industry still requires global cooperation though, so don't think any one player can afford to piss off its global partners/customers. May (seemingly) succeed for a while, but it will likely play out as death by a thousand cuts.
I think Asianometry might be a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series. First ~10 episodes are very funny and highly recommended to anybody familiar with the original Yu-Gi-Oh series.
hhh Yu-Gi-Oh was my favorite as a kid, btw we didn't have the cards to play, so I shamelessly made my own using my imagination, dictionaries photos and the power of friendship hhhhh
Technology often gets transferred "on the hoof". It seems unfair that when a person has spent part of his life building up knowledge about something, he is not allowed to use it in his next venture. You can't demand to unlearn what he has learned.
This is known and expected in the industry. And the usual way to get around it is that once people get good enough to work on the seriously important stuff they sign a period specific NDA in exchange for a golden handshake and a looong vacation when they leave. The lead times in the high tech fields is often close to five years. So just being cut out of the loop for 18 months before you're allowed to work in the exact same field for someone else pretty much takes the sting off. You'll have fallen enough behind, and you'll end up in the middle of a product development cycle when many things are already set in stone, or you'll end up at the beginning of a product development cycle with 18 months old info. My buddy is a sales engineer at a crane company. If he gets fired he will get 70% of his salary for 12 months (on top of his new salary), but cannot work with price projecting of crane projects. That doesn't mean he can't work on, say, designing a new hydraulic system for some specific type of crane. He just can't work for a competitor in a way that would put his former employer at a serious disadvantage. Being able to undercut every contract bid by precisely 0.5% (knowing the internal prices of the former place by heart) would not only be unfair to his former job, but also unfair to the customers who expect bids to be given "blind". Each company has to guess at the level of competition they think they are facing and make a competitive bid. Not doing so is considered price fixing. But in the above case it would effectively be price fixing for the customer and a practical monopoly for the new employer.
Yes, you can't demand to unlearn what they have learned. But copying documents out is not allowed. An employee is only allowed to rebuild everything from memory recollection.
ever heard about NDA? Theres an old indian saying which can be loosely translated to "dont poke the plate you eat on", the same logic applies here. TSMC's existence itself was the reason why those people got employed and learned what they learned, had there been no TSMC they would probably doing something else. I know this is unheard of in mainland China and this is why they'll never lead the world, because copying and innovating are two different things, copying can only take you so far.
@@pikachu5647 Its worse than that. When they run out of info they are no longer useful and they can be terminated and let go. If any of those were Taiwanese nationals that went over to SMIC, what they then find is that whatever they received, the banks in China will not let them transfer it back to Taiwan or anywhere else. So either they stick it around in China and have to work a more menial position for a lesser compensation or they go back to Taiwan effectively penniless.
so what makes China any different from the British empire of that time? and btw, planting a crop and creating a cpu are skill wise universes apart, British empire also stole textile know how from India to Britain which kickstarted their industrialization, does that mean that now India also has the right to steal? NO! Also what does Taiwan and TSMC has to do with what British did? last time I checked they are a sovereign country, not to mention how the hell are you on youtube? be a good CCP citizen, and browse whatever copy of youtube is currently popular in China, else you know whats gonna happen to your social credit score in case a CCP official finds out.
TSMC is not the one creating a 50 cent party to spread lies and propaganda everywhere. Everyone knows China goes around stealing intellectual properties all the time. They've not only stolen from TSMC, you can be sure they're in the process of trying to steal today and tomorrow.
I was wondering, what if Google, Apple, Tesla all secretly build and finance their own secret 50cents Army to deal with their competitors. No, that won't happen, because that's like telling the world they own nothing real but only by stealing from someone else. They would rather fight tooth and nail in the court instead. CCP Soviet styled remnants never die, as long as it's a cheap way to control and manipulate using propaganda.
Checkout this channel's "TSMC - Essays" for more great videos.
Direct link: ruclips.net/p/PLKtxx9TnH76SRC7ZbOu2Nsg5mC72fy-GZ
When I read TSMC sued SMIC and won, at first I thought, wow, Chinese legal system is more honest than I thought. Nope! Sued in the US!
It's honest as long as long as you don't piss off the wrong people - then it's gestapo
That's the only place where the Empire's rules applies to the spirit & letter. TSMC is an Empire pawn.
If you enjoyed this story, its worth reading up on how Huawei grew into a powerhouse through corporate espionage of product lines and R&D from Canada's Nortel Networks and Cisco. In Nortel's case the Chinese government reportedly had complete access to its internal networks for more than 10 years, and was constantly siphoning information (including designs, pricing and product roadmaps). I also highly recommend the book "The Hundred-Year Marathon Book" by Michael Pillsbury. I found it very insightful and well-written.
The growth of SMIC and Huawei are such an important lessons for management in the securing of trade secrets. It's safe to say that all large companies are unknowingly having their corporate secrets siphoned away through ongoing corporate espionage (see the recent SolarWinds hack).
"unknowingly"? If they grew to be big, they already have a security unit. And an espionage unit.
I agree, I have read about Huawei getting sued several times over the years. One incident happened at a tradeshow in Chicago 2004 when a Huawei employee came back after hours and was removing the cover from a networking device and taking photographs of the circuitry inside. Over the years Huawei has been caught over and over involved in espionage. SMIC is another company that has grown fast due to corporate espionage.
Well Done Mr. Jon Y. See! Your research work in this sector would be very well received! I am your follower now.
Wow, I wanna see a Hollywood movie on this!! Who said financial info could be dry! Loved it!
Man great content. I think this is gonna be my first substack subscription
In the previous video I was kind of rooting for SMIC with the backstory of veteran Chinese natives coming back and starting something for themselves. But now I feel like the outcome of the lawsuit was probably justified. That email from that Marco Mora guy is imo as sleazy as it gets, putting pressure on people in the direction to do stuff you know isn't fair game. I don't know the full story, but on first impression it would possibly warrant personal trial as well. Awesome videos though!
No, you're mistaken if you think that's how business is done under the CCP. As the recent leaked video of the Chinese professor shows, stealing intellectual property and outright copying of foreign technology is strongly encouraged by the Chinese government. The Chinese have no intention of competing fairly; they intend to win by cheating, and have been doing so for over thirty years.
Awesome videos ? The uploader's high-falutin BS morals is a joke if not hypocritical. TSMC would have done the same thing to catch up. Patent infringement lawsuits are a dime a dozen in the tech industry and is a tool to stifle potential competitor's progress, TSMC is no more moralistic than any street hooker.
Stealing at such a grand scale only add on to the Karma of all those perpetrators and thier future generations.
Just watched some of your video. pretty cool so i subbed :D
Very insightful and informative, but in all honesty, a few hundred million penalty for all that SMIC gained was well worth it by any measure. Their gain from this espionage and IP theft profited them billions relatively speaking and gave them a competitive edge allowing them to compete on the world stage in such a short amount of time.
We'll have to see how this impacts them later but to go from 4-5 generations behind to 1-2 behind seems like that would be worth several 10s of billions easily. Even if they are locked out of the US market, their entire local FAB industry gained so much more than they lost from these shenanigans.
Doesn’t look like SMIC learned anything if the news about stolen TSMC 7 nm process is accurate. Can’t say I’m surprised.
TSMC didn't learn new safety measures either
Ho ancora il TTL data book della National, ogni tanto lo sfoglio e provo un vero godimento nel poter capire almeno una parte di tutta quella montagna di dati....Una vera Bibbia per gli appassionati di elettronica !
Meanwhile smic kept copying the lithography up to 7nm
🤣🤦🏼♂️
Stealing, stealing
The British also stole tea planting technology from China and planted the so-called Darjeeling black tea in India, why don't you say?
Fucking hell, this channel is gonna blow up. Calling it at 7k subs. Hope you're making it a point to upload the content in every platform.
I'd do Odysee, Bitchute, Vimeo, etc, Reddit tech boards, even as far as 4chan's tech board and making torrents of this stuff and putting it up on tpb.
I expect this channel to do well.
Keeping up quality is key. Thorough research to create an insightful script with information that can't be gathered easily otherwise, good microphone recording with clear pronunciations, Pinyin displayed on screen for any Chinese words so interested English-speaking users can learn more themselves, and links to previous Asianometry videos.
Subscribed since 12k, now 18.5k.
Atoplay
175,000 sub as of today. Would you like your winnings in cash or stock options?
I don’t mean to sound rude but, I really can’t think of anything made in China of recent technological importance that *wasn’t* stolen or ripped off from someone else
There should have been prison time for the employees involved in espionage. Escaping to China should not be allowed by the CCP but they push these sorts of efforts, so it makes sense.
Lesson of the story : when you want to steal technology, don't get incorporated outside of Mainland China.
Industrial espionage is so old, don't moralize or make a story about how "crime never pays in the long run". Edison patented in his own name all the inventions of European engineers in his labs. (That's why Nikola Tesla left him). At that time the US registered patents, ignoring patents issued in the countries that led in science and invention - England, Germany, France. And decades on, to this day, acquiring processes, tech solutions and collaborators is at the heart of competition between corporations. Otherwise they would become stagnant rent-seeking monopolies, like the American car industry from the 70s on. In that context, what SMIC probably didn't succeed to do, is to pay Californian justice more than TSMC. And maybe, play golf along with key judges.
Having made my remark, I too appreciate this Channel's work. It is very informative.
Yeah sure. But are you gotta sit there and take it when someone does it to you? Or are you gonna do something about it?
Edit2: I saw your edit and wanted to add this bit. Not meaning to be snarky. Thanks for watching and your kind words.
@@Asianometry I don't rebuke TSMC for fighting for their interests. It's part of being alive. I'm just making a point that all exchange of knowledge is in some sense "stealing". And owners of patents are nor necessarily honorable or learned people, most are simply buyers or inheritors. Furthermore, I give credit to the story that in the beginning of the 00s SMIC was moving too "fast", just literally plagiarizing. Japanese companies did it too, big time, in the 1950s-1970s. But they soon found that it's better to develop your own R&D and put engineers in the lead. Chinese hi-tech seems to be in the second phase.
@MeGusta109 Wind down. You don't sound like someone with ideas worth stealing.
@@Asianometry The fact that TSMC literally lobbied to get SMIC banned by the US shows they're just imperialist puppets and TSMC deserves to get shut down
@@TheMinimumPC They should be shut down for stealing. People spent lots of time and effort to develop proprietary process.
I am sure when morris chang founded tsmc he did not bring any knowledge from texas instruments
I'm an engineer with specialty far from electronics manufacturing, but damn SMIC logo looks absolutely awful
That's the way many "me too" company grow not only the chinese company...
please tsmc grant me a second interview
4:21: The SMIC private school and kindergarten is officially opened
*what*
maybe you should do videos on china and its history of copying. like huawei using cisco firmware.
The British also stole tea planting technology from China and planted the so-called Darjeeling black tea in India, why don't you say?
japan and south korea also copying western tech during the early stage of their development
If you are going to do that, do a comparison on how the west copied and poisoned asia
Why does bringing a lawsuit in USA have any more teeth if the company's based in the Cayman Islands rather than China? America doesn't control the Cayman Islands.
That was 180nm, eons ago.
what about 3nm now? when your smallest wire is only 30 atoms wide. when a single strand of hair on your head grows more length than a transistor channel during the brief moment you read this comment.
Bet Chinese companies are employing such tactics again in this new wave of techno-nationalism. Semiconductor industry still requires global cooperation though, so don't think any one player can afford to piss off its global partners/customers. May (seemingly) succeed for a while, but it will likely play out as death by a thousand cuts.
The missing flight MH370
Finally memes included
As Darth Vader famously said, the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of friendship
I think Asianometry might be a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series. First ~10 episodes are very funny and highly recommended to anybody familiar with the original Yu-Gi-Oh series.
Screw the rules I have green hair!
hhh Yu-Gi-Oh was my favorite as a kid, btw we didn't have the cards to play, so I shamelessly made my own using my imagination, dictionaries photos and the power of friendship hhhhh
Technology often gets transferred "on the hoof". It seems unfair that when a person has spent part of his life building up knowledge about something, he is not allowed to use it in his next venture. You can't demand to unlearn what he has learned.
This is known and expected in the industry. And the usual way to get around it is that once people get good enough to work on the seriously important stuff they sign a period specific NDA in exchange for a golden handshake and a looong vacation when they leave. The lead times in the high tech fields is often close to five years. So just being cut out of the loop for 18 months before you're allowed to work in the exact same field for someone else pretty much takes the sting off. You'll have fallen enough behind, and you'll end up in the middle of a product development cycle when many things are already set in stone, or you'll end up at the beginning of a product development cycle with 18 months old info.
My buddy is a sales engineer at a crane company. If he gets fired he will get 70% of his salary for 12 months (on top of his new salary), but cannot work with price projecting of crane projects. That doesn't mean he can't work on, say, designing a new hydraulic system for some specific type of crane. He just can't work for a competitor in a way that would put his former employer at a serious disadvantage. Being able to undercut every contract bid by precisely 0.5% (knowing the internal prices of the former place by heart) would not only be unfair to his former job, but also unfair to the customers who expect bids to be given "blind". Each company has to guess at the level of competition they think they are facing and make a competitive bid. Not doing so is considered price fixing. But in the above case it would effectively be price fixing for the customer and a practical monopoly for the new employer.
Yes, you can't demand to unlearn what they have learned. But copying documents out is not allowed. An employee is only allowed to rebuild everything from memory recollection.
ever heard about NDA? Theres an old indian saying which can be loosely translated to "dont poke the plate you eat on", the same logic applies here. TSMC's existence itself was the reason why those people got employed and learned what they learned, had there been no TSMC they would probably doing something else. I know this is unheard of in mainland China and this is why they'll never lead the world, because copying and innovating are two different things, copying can only take you so far.
500.000 pages of stolen documents and this is what you think?
@@pikachu5647 Its worse than that. When they run out of info they are no longer useful and they can be terminated and let go. If any of those were Taiwanese nationals that went over to SMIC, what they then find is that whatever they received, the banks in China will not let them transfer it back to Taiwan or anywhere else. So either they stick it around in China and have to work a more menial position for a lesser compensation or they go back to Taiwan effectively penniless.
US: Sit! Roll over.
TSMC: Woof, woof, sure.
Samsung: Purrrrrr. Anytime.
5 yuan for that comment Tianamen Square 1989, now go write another one!
The British also stole tea planting technology from China and planted the so-called Darjeeling black tea in India, why don't you say?
so what makes China any different from the British empire of that time? and btw, planting a crop and creating a cpu are skill wise universes apart, British empire also stole textile know how from India to Britain which kickstarted their industrialization, does that mean that now India also has the right to steal? NO!
Also what does Taiwan and TSMC has to do with what British did? last time I checked they are a sovereign country, not to mention how the hell are you on youtube? be a good CCP citizen, and browse whatever copy of youtube is currently popular in China, else you know whats gonna happen to your social credit score in case a CCP official finds out.
When you can't compete with hem, you just smear them.
TSMC is not the one creating a 50 cent party to spread lies and propaganda everywhere. Everyone knows China goes around stealing intellectual properties all the time. They've not only stolen from TSMC, you can be sure they're in the process of trying to steal today and tomorrow.
When you can't make them, you just steal them.
@@WayneLinnlikestouseGeoGebra When your innovation fall behind, you start copying other homework immediately.
I was wondering, what if Google, Apple, Tesla all secretly build and finance their own secret 50cents Army to deal with their competitors. No, that won't happen, because that's like telling the world they own nothing real but only by stealing from someone else. They would rather fight tooth and nail in the court instead. CCP Soviet styled remnants never die, as long as it's a cheap way to control and manipulate using propaganda.
@@小肉肉-f4u Sooooo SMIC?