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The makers of a super-hard smartphone glass made partially of synthetic diamonds took part in an FBI sting on Huawei, according to a new Bloomberg report. The operation apparently took place at a Prime Burger joint in Vegas during CES last month, while a Businessweek reporter watched from a nearby gelato stand. The embattled Chinese company had ordered samples of the "Miraj Diamond Glass" from US startup Akhan Semiconductor in 2017, only to return them badly damaged. Suspecting Huawei of intellectual property theft, Akhan's founder Adam Khan reportedly contacted the FBI, which drafted him and COO Carl Shurboff to take part in its Huawei investigations.
Email and text communications between the startup and a Huawei engineer were reportedly forwarded to the agency as part of the inquiry. A phone call between Khan, Shurboff and the same Huawei representative was also allegedly tapped on December 10th. Then came the Vegas sting, with the same Huawei staffer in attendance along with her colleague, Jennifer Lo, a senior official with the company in Santa Clara, California. Unbeknown to them, Khan and Shurboff were allegedly taping the entire get-together.
Throughout the meeting, the Huawei reps denied that it had violated US export laws, including provisions of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which control the export of materials with defense applications -- diamond being one of those materials. They also "claimed ignorance" when it came to the damaged samples.
The FBI also raided a Huawei lab in San Diego. This particular investigation has not resulted in any charges yet.
Also at CNBC.
Related: Arrest of Huawei Executive Causing Discontent Among Chinese Elites
China Arrests Former Canadian Diplomat; Chinese Companies Ban iPhones, Require Huawei Phones
Huawei Under Investigation by DoJ for Theft of T-Mobile Trade Secrets
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @10:21AM (1 child)
Folks, we filed the charges against these people. 23 indictments. Very strong move. Bigger story, right? But Goofy Soylent News Editors rejected the Sub for that. With ZERO explanation. Sometimes they put the explanation (usually dumb). Nothing for this one! foxbusiness.com/technology/u-s-files-criminal-charges-against-huawei [foxbusiness.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:26PM
23 indictments. Very strong move. Bigger story, right? But Goofy Soylent News Editors rejected the Sub for that.
They must've believed you when you said dozens of indictments don't mean anything.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by chromas on Tuesday February 05 2019, @10:27AM
Poor Huawei getting in trouble for installing the wrong country's backdoors.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @10:31AM (7 children)
Why are there always members of the MSM around for these FBI activities recently? Something unwholesome is afoot.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:10AM (3 children)
Bloomberg is very crooked, I absolutely wouldn't put it past them to collude with the F.B.I. Bloomberg makes it sound like, oh, their Reporter was just there for the C.E.S. And having a Gelato or two. I don't know. I don't know. You smell a rat. And there's a lot of rats in this story. Actually they're all rats.
But they say, "Khan and Shurboff had expected to conduct the sting in the safety and quiet of the FBI’s room at CES." Like they weren't expecting the Hamburger Stand. They met at the Hamburger Stand and it wasn't great for the "tape." Because it's at the Food Court -- too loud. Why are restaurants getting so damned noisy? And why didn't they do the Take Out? You buy the fast food, you take it somewhere nice and private.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:31AM
(cont) By the way, SoylentNews. Their headline says During C.E.S. Same time, could be anywhere. Bloomberg, different headline. And if you get into the story, they don't just say during the C.E.S. They say at C.E.S. At. And who knows, it might even be true.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @11:37AM (1 child)
Is this the same Bloomberg that made hard to believe claims about the China pwning stuff by embedding pencil tip sized stuff between motherboard layers? Instead of doing far more plausible stuff?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies [bloomberg.com]
https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414d35556a4e7a457a6333566d54/share.html [cgtn.com]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday February 07 2019, @12:03PM
This is the same Bloomberg that violated a firm OFF THE RECORD statement.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 05 2019, @06:28PM (2 children)
Why are there always members of the MSM around for these FBI activities recently? Something unwholesome is afoot.
Investigative journalism.
You must be a Republican if you think that's unwholesome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:32PM
I hope it is, rather than some quid pro quo thing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @05:24AM
Investigative journalism doesn't magically have journalists just appear at the right time, right place, over and over. You might want to look into the history [wikipedia.org] of the FBI [wikipedia.org] if you don't see a major problem with what seems to be probable collusion between the mainstream media and the FBI. And those are but a couple of examples of the very sordid past of this organization.
The media's role should be to be one of criticality of decisions, not propagandizers. In this regard they've finally returned to something akin to their proper role with the president, at least. Yet, simultaneously, they act as little more than cheerleaders for our wars and the actions that may eventually culminate in more wars. Oorah.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:04AM (4 children)
So the iijits were stealing something worthless!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bd on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:22AM (2 children)
By the way, how did Adam Khan think Huawei would test the brittleness of his Glass sample without destructive testing?
If his product is that easy to copy, he should have applied for patents before handing it out.
Odd.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:39PM
+1
May be the TOS did read that Huawei only was allowed to look at them in awe and take pretty pictures. Who knows.
(Score: 3, Touché) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:56PM
This exactly. I claimed that my glass was "extra super hard", but made via proprietary manufacturing technology that can be copied just by looking at the final product carefully. I didn't patent the technology before sending samples to one of the largest consumers, who also has their own manufacturing facilities. They send back my samples destroyed. Like, uh, yea.
The truth is hard to see in this one. I don't like Huawei more than anyone else, but it seems like a simple case of "we broke it, didn't like it, and sent it back".
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:22AM
The guy that made it. He doesn't say hard. According to Fake News Bloomberg. He says "lighter, thinner, faster, stronger" (they say). It's glass, but with a VERY THIN layer of Diamonds -- vajazzled. Very special stuff. So when you put your phone and your keys in the same pocket, less scratches. Sounds great, right? But the guy will never sell it. Because he tried to make a deal with Huawei. But he ratted them out, very badly. The whole World is finding out about it. And nobody wants to do business with a dirty rat fink. I'm a New Yorker, I've been hearing about people like him for 30, 40 years. And so many of them end up at the bottom of the East River!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:16PM (1 child)
This was mentioned around when the Chinese were accused of stealing F35 parts and designs a few years ago that the Chinese already reversed/stole/reinvented/bought from Israel or Russia jet canopy glass tech decades ago that is superior or at least similar enough and even placed it on the market so they aren't motivated enough to bother trying to use a company to steal/buy it.
Huawei's position is also pretty straightforward: They didn't buy anything. Technology didn't actually exchange hands. If they attempted reversing the samples they didn't violate any laws since trade secrets aren't protected against reversing. They could have just stress tested the samples - which is what production samples are made for - and decided they weren't good enough. They could have found the samples were in fact up to spec but they got a better offer after testing. They might have went ahead with the order and got the lawyers to check everything before making the order only to be notified they can't buy and use this sort of tech from the US over ITAR since testing showed the glass is too good so they returned the samples...
My guess is that Akhan Semiconductor was caught red-handed violating export laws by trying to sell smartscreen tech that also qualified as a defense product by some outdated regulation and ended up being pressured by the FBI to play along with this crude attempt at framing Huawei for something the administration could use to ban them as part of the trade-war agenda.
Overall, this story smells like an embedded reporting piece. The journalist probably never bother consulting any third parties regarding any of the details and just accepted the story they heard from the field. Wouldn't be the first time.
compiling...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @12:42PM
Seems to me more like the kind of publicity stunt a start up would love.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:58PM (6 children)
I'd rather have reporters *everywhere* the FBI and other government agencies are than not have them.
If they're doing nothing wrong, they should have nothing to hide and all their activities should be transparent to the public.
Unfortunately, most of the public is, well, you know, otherwise occupied (jobs, families, etc.) most of the time.
I wish there was a group of people whose job it was to keep an eye on what's going on in the world, then let everyone else know what's up. Gosh, you'd think that someone might have thought about this, right?
I suppose we could call such people who find stuff out and report on it "reporters." And they could work together to report the "news." That collaboration could be called a "news outlet."
Nah, that's just ridiculous. why would anyone want to do that?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @04:29PM (1 child)
So long as the reporters are independent of the FBI and not trading favors (to not cover any "bad deeds").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @08:29PM
Just make sure your you bite the click-bait to articles with FBI criticism. If they earn more writing shit about FBI, they'll write shit about FBI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:14PM (3 children)
If you think all of the recent FUD against China is not a result of the feds and MSM banging nasties, I have some WMDs in Iraq to sell you.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday February 05 2019, @11:33PM (2 children)
And that's related to my post exactly how? Even tangentially?
Are you saying that somehow the news media is responsible for federal indictments/arrest warrants?
Or are you saying that the news media shouldn't report on, you know, *news*? The arrest of foreign nationals on corporate (or governmental -- or a hybrid of the two, as the Feds allege) espionage charges is certainly newsworthy IMHO.
Should the news media just ignore it? I imagine you think they should ignore stuff like this [thinkprogress.org] too? Or how about this [usatoday.com]? Are the news media just perpetuating FUD?
Please. Your logic is opaque to me, oh wise one. On what sorts of stories should the news media report? Please, do tell.
What's more, if you have actual *evidence* that federal government officials are (as they did in the run-up to the second gulf war) telling specific lies about what Huawei is up to, please do tell us. What's more, what you call the "MSM" would jump all over any actual *facts* that bear upon that story.
tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @05:02AM (1 child)
My point is that if a reporter gets tipped off about the Prime Burger sting, and gets spoon-fed a story, that is not "sunshine", but rather propaganda.
And the last time the media helped bang the drums against an adversary, we got the disasterous Iraq War. Were those WMD stories sunshine, too?
(Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 06 2019, @07:00AM
Telling specific and verifiable lies to journalists on deep background is very different from what was, essentially, a ride along.
You're comparing apples to oranges. But you know that.
You're not really very good at this. But I have faith in you, son. Keep working on it. You'll improve.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Tuesday February 05 2019, @05:23PM
Well, somebody had to.