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Why are Americans particularly concerned about Chinese espionage? (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

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Whenever I see threads and comments about privacy-related or sensitive topics, I often see concerns about China in particular stealing all that data.

Why is China, a country across a vast ocean, is seen as a bigger threat in that regard than US itself? Unlike Chinese, the local government does have power over its residents and can actually use this information against you (and it does have a record for doing exactly that). The only places where Chinese espionage would be a concern (military, high-tech industry) lay way beyond what an everyday American faces regularly.

So, is it a new red scare, or is there a substance behind it that I fail to see?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

We (the US) off-shored our manufacturing labor to China because of cheap labor. We were able to continue to reap much of the benefits of this production with our intellectual property (trade secrets, patents, etc).

China will inevitably catch up in the IP game and have been quickly doing so, often through corporate espionage, sending students to study in Western schools, and just from experience building most of these physical goods.

It's IP theft and seen as cheating. And will erode the US IP dominance faster than we'd like.

I'm pretty on the fence over it as an American personally. IP laws in general are kind of bullshit but also, we're on our back foot economically because we have no infrastructure to build anymore. And if we no longer have the IP dominance, we have zero economic leverage.

And all that's ignoring all the governmental and civic espionage that has other uncomfortable implications.