Monday, April 2, 2018

U.S., Australian, German, EU high-tech building up Chinese military

10-30-15   U.S. tech companies forming new partnerships with Chinese firms that have ties to the Chinese military:
*In September 2014, Intel agreed to invest $1.5 billion for a 20 percent stake in a holding company run by Tsinghua subsidiary Tsinghua Unigroup.  
*In September, Unisplendour agreed to pay $3.78 billion for a 15 percent stake in American hard-disk-drive maker Western Digital.
*Tsinghua University is a member of IBM’s Open Power program to license advanced IBM tech.
*In May, HP sold a 51 percent stake in its China-based server, storage and networking business, H3C Technologies, for $2.3 billion to Tsinghua Holdings subsidiary Unisplendour.
    Chinese military uses Inspur computers, mobile mapping systems and communications systems according to Defense Group Inc. report.  Inspur also sells to China Air-to-Air Missile Research Academy and China Academy of Engineering Physics.
*Intel, Cisco and IBM connect to Inspur.
    China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (C.E.T.C.) is composed of many former military labs that have developed tech for China’s military, including electronics on China’s first nuclear bomb, guided missile and satellite.
*IBM and Microsoft connect to CETC.
    Beijing Teamsun sells satellite communications equipment and software and counts the Second Artillery Equipment Academy and the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force as customers and is registered as a military supplier, according to Defense Group Inc. report.
*IBM connects to Teamsun.      https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/30/technology/US-Tech-Firms-and-Their-Chinese-Partnerships.html
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12-15-17   a $20m partnership between Australian University of Technology and China Electronics Group Corporation (CETC) – a huge state-owned company that combines commercial activity with military development of bombs, guided missiles, satellites and communications jamming.
University of New South Wales has also been criticised for a $100m partnership – the Torch Innovation project – with multiple Chinese firms that develop dual-use military technology, including unmanned military vehicles.     https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/16/calls-for-regulation-of-universities-partnering-with-military-linked-foreign-companies
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6-9-17   last year the Australian Research Council awarded a $400,000 grant to Adelaide University for a research partnership with the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials, which is part of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China.  Government-owned AVIC is the major supplier of military aircraft to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.
As Mr Hamilton and Mr Joske say, “when the PLA unveiled its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, it was loaded with Shenyang J-15 fighter jets built by AVIC”.
The Adelaide University project is intended to help develop materials and devices that, the ARC’s proposal says, “are comfortable, quiet and energy-­efficient” for use in aircraft, motor vehicles and ships.  The authors point out: “It will also enhance the PLA Air Force’s capacity to improve the performance of its most sophisticated warplanes.”    https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/aussie-unis-boost-chinese-military/news-story/4f9cee33931cd08d5507d6e3c79ce6ea
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3-26-17   New York Times story this week says that among the startups are companies working on artificial intelligence for military robots, rocket engines, ship sensors and printers that could produce high-tech components such as computer screens for military jets.  Many of the firms making such investments are owned by companies controlled by the Chinese government or connected to its leaders.
A blog post last December on the website of CB Insights, which tracks startup investments, says that China poured $9.9 billion into new Silicon Valley firms in 2015 and made an additional $3.5 billion in tech investments in the first nine months of last year.  The number and size of those tech investments in startups developing military applications were not broken out.  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/26/china-gets-cutting-edge-military-tech-from-us-startups.html
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Harry Shum, right, Microsoft Executive Vice President of Technology and Research, demonstrates Micosoft's HoloLens device to Chinese President Xi Jinping / AP
11-5-15    A new Chinese aerospace company that produces commercial aircraft, A-Star, also "revealed a line of military aircraft optical sensors, one of which looked like it was copied from the Lockheed Martin F-35’s Electro Optical Targeting System," he said.  "A famous Chinese cyber theft raid against Lockheed in about 2009 may have gathered information on their EOTS."  "Perhaps A-Star was given that information to reproduce the Lockheed system," he added.  "We don't know for sure but this is plausible."
Fisher recommended that the U.S. government consider restarting the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls, a multinational body that previously controlled U.S. and NATO exports to the Soviet Union and China for security reasons.  http://freebeacon.com/national-security/us-tech-companies-partner-with-firms-linked-to-chinese-military/
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  • 354 companies from across China are displaying 422 new logistics and defense technologies.
Guancha.cn, a privately run news and commentary website that is usually enthusiastic about the Party line, headlined its website today with a story (in Chinese) about the civilian and military exhibition, and said that all 422 exhibits were “blackware” or “black technology” (黑科技 hēi kējì) — a slang term from online comics that refers to alien weapons and technology so advanced that Earthlings have no way of understanding them.  https://supchina.com/2017/09/22/chinas-military-industrial-complex-builds-black-technology-chinas-latest-top-news/
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3-14-18    The Chinese have perfected the weaponization of investment as a legal means to achieve this massive transfer of dual-use technology, bolstering China’s military modernization. ...China lures U.S. companies into disadvantageous joint ventures on Chinese soil with promises of access to the opaque Chinese marketplace. Through these arrangements and due to the Chinese government’s dominance over industry, U.S. companies are pressured into sharing their technology with Chinese entities.  Most don’t take the bait, but news reports illustrate the highly troubling activities of a handful of U.S. companies in China.
General Electric and IBM are working aggressively to defeat the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act and have employed an army of lobbyists to preserve the status quo  In 2011, GE formed a joint venture with Aviation Industry Corp. of China—one of China’s premier state-owned enterprises and the primary supplier of aircraft for China’s military—sharing cutting-edge avionics technology. ...In 2016, GE formed a joint venture with another Chinese company, handing over advanced battery technology that could have battlefield applications such as powering heavy ground vehicles....Likewise, IBM has systematically transferred high-end computing technology to China.https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-pushes-the-limits-on-military-technology-transfer-1521068465
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3-8-12   Collaboration between U.S. and Chinese information security firms, according to the report, "has raised concerns over the potential for illicit access to sensitive network vulnerability data at a time when the volume of reporting about Chinese computer network exploitation activities directed against U.S. commercial and government entities remains steady."
The report singles out the joint venture between Huawei Shenzhen Technology Company Ltd. and Symantec, under which for almost four years Symantec shared its security and storage technologies with Huawei to include in its telecom equipment. Symantec CEO Enrique Salem announced the joint venture had ended in November 2011, saying the two companies had decided it would be best to consolidate the venture under one owner. Huawei, which bought out Symantec for $530 million, still licenses Symantec's technologies.  https://www.networkworld.com/article/2186652/security/joint-ventures-by-us-tech-firms-with-china-pose-cyberwar-risk--report.html#tk.drr_mlt
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8-14-17    Beijing also strongly encourages global businesses to carry out R&D activities inside the country. 
In the past year, Apple (AAPL) has announced plans to open R&D centers in four Chinese cities.  And last month, in order to comply with new cybersecurity rules, it said it was setting up its first iCloud data center in China in partnership with a local firm.  Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) already have local partners for their cloud computing services in China. 
Beijing has other ways of getting its hands on valuable commercial information. Officials often insist on taking a close look at technology that foreign companies want to sell in China. 
"Chinese government authorities jeopardize the value of trade secrets by demanding unnecessary disclosure of confidential information for product approvals," the American Chamber of Commerce in China said in a report published in April.  http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-china-trade-intellectual-property/index.html
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Chinese  subs are allegedly fitted with diesel-electric engines supplemented by an air independent propulsion (AIP) system.  As I noted back in 2015:                                                  Diesel-electric subs are usually significantly stealthier than their nuclear counterparts, mostly due to diesel engines that are specifically designed to minimize vibration and noise in order to evade sonar detection.  For example, both the Song- and Yuan-class attack submarines are equipped with German-made state-of-the-art diesel engines — the 396 SE84 series — designed by MTU Friedrichshafen GmbH of Friedrichshafen, Germany.
  Type 039B subs are also reportedly fitted with the Kockums Stirling AIP technology, which increases the boats’ submerged endurance from days to weeks.  https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/china-resumes-production-of-its-quietest-attack-submarine/
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Type_214_1
The Type 214, predeccesor to the Type 218SG12-20-13  The U.S. and Britain will favor ally Singapore’s procurement of top-of-the-line German U-boats, but the purchase will certainly not please China’s navy. All Chinese warships underway to the Indian Ocean by the far-most economic route have to pass the shallow waters around Singapore, thereby coming in range of the barely detectable 218s.

http://cimsec.org/singapore-german-subs-strategic-value/9093
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12-19-13   Most of China's advanced surface warships are powered by German and French-designed diesel engines.  Chinese destroyers have French sonar, anti-submarine-warfare helicopters and surface-to-air missiles.

Above the battlefield, British jet engines drive PLA fighter bombers and anti-ship strike aircraft.  The latest Chinese surveillance aircraft are fitted with British airborne early warning radars.  Some of China's best attack and transport helicopters rely on designs from Eurocopter, a subsidiary of pan-European aerospace and defense giant EADS.

But perhaps the most strategic item obtained by China on its European shopping spree is below the waterline:  the German-engineered diesels inside its submarines.  https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-military-secret-to-success-european-engineering/1814104.html

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