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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

US Nuclear Science Lab Removes Chinese Tech Over Security Issues


Looks like LANL is in for some more Congressional hearings.

Posted by The Congressional China Caucus | January 07, 2013
U.S. NUCLEAR LAB REMOVES CHINESE TECH OVER SECURITY FEARS. Reuters reports that a leading U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory recently discovered its computer systems contained some Chinese-made network switches and replaced at least two components because of national security concerns. From the piece: “A letter from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, dated November 5, 2012, states that the research facility had installed devices made by H3C Technologies Co, based in Hangzhou, China, according to a copy seen by Reuters. H3C began as a joint venture between China's Huawei Technologies Co and 3Com Corp, a U.S. tech firm, and was once called Huawei-3Com. Hewlett Packard Co acquired the firm in 2010. The discovery raises questions about procurement practices by U.S. departments responsible for national security. The U.S. government and Congress have raised concerns about Huawei and its alleged ties to the Chinese military and government.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/07/us-huawei-alamos-idUSBRE90608B20130107

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rather than risk destroying the reputation of their own crown jewel national champion (Huawei), FIS would be better off infiltrating and subverting supply chains of non-Chinese companies making network devices. The issue is also not so clear cut with regards to parent country of the corporation. US network device makers can rely on foreign OEM and OCM firms while companies like Huawei often use US OCM suppliers such as IBM.

Anonymous said...

How much longer until NNSA demands that all Chinese postdocs also be removed from their labs?

Anonymous said...

" How much longer until NNSA demands that all Chinese postdocs also be removed from their labs?

January 9, 2013 7:29 PM"

I guess the postdoc pool is about 40% Chinese, 20% Indian, 20% Eastern European and 20% Americans. Does this sound right?

Anonymous said...

That breakdown sounds about right from what I've observed, 8:42 PM.

I doubt that most members of Congress or the public realize just how few American citizens are left to do research as young postdocs at our national labs.

Anonymous said...

I expect to see this problem occur many times in the future simply because over the past fifteen years the national labs have been hiring more foreign nationals from all over the world, many of them from countries of our cold war enemies, to do the jobs than can’t or couldn’t find any white people to do. This my friends is only the beginning of the end. Mark my words. This is happening at all levels of our government. Hell, just look at what we have in the whitehouse, congress, senate, governor, etc. We have been taken over by those who have no interest in America’s well-being, but instead are aiding in its demise from within all while stealing our industrial secrets to better the counties they are still loyal too and it isn’t America. As usually the American people were and are too stupid the see what’s taking place right in front of their noses and they themselves basically have no pride. What a sad bunch of losers.

Anonymous said...

Hell, just look at what we have in the whitehouse, congress, senate, governor, etc.

United States citizens?

Anonymous said...

January 10, 2013 9:39 PM

How about foriegn national, non white anti-american minority traitors and to boot females. And you wonder why this country going down the poop chute at mach-1.

Anonymous said...

There are plenty of Americans available to fill postdoc positions at the national labs, which offer very generous salaries. Citizens, however, don't have as much motivation as foreign nationals to apply for and accept postdocs at national labs because:

1. They don't have to have a job to stay in the USA.

2. They don't find US nuclear weapons technology to be very interesting or the basis of a viable career.

To expand upon my second point, it is very disconcerting to see how many foreign postdocs from "sensitive" nations are working on projects that are connected to the weapons program. The national lab people that hire them seem to believe that, despite having a doctorate in a hard science, they, or the people that will be debriefing them, aren't smart enough to connect the dots.

Anonymous said...


"2. They don't find US nuclear weapons technology to be very interesting or the basis of a viable career."

This is an interesting point. A counter point would be that at Universities that
in STEM fields the US citizens make up
at best 20% of the the postdocs so the labs look no different from what I can tell.

Anonymous said...

January 11, 2013 8:12 AM

I view their employment as a domestic terrorist security threat and as far as I'm concerned those that hire them should be held accountable for the information leaks and prosecuted accordinly. Life in prison without possible parole.

Anonymous said...

...those that hire them should be held accountable for the information leaks and prosecuted accordinly. Life in prison without possible parole.

January 11, 2013 3:35 PM

Uh, you do understand that it is not illegal to legally hire someone who then "leaks" information, foreign national or not?? Get a grip.

Anonymous said...

Ah, here we go saying only AMERICANS can work at the labs. History lesson folks:

Hans Bethe - German
Enrico Fermi - Italian
Otto Fritsh - Austrian
George Gamow - Russian
Frederic de Hoffmann - Austrian
George Kistiakowsky - Russian
John Von Neumann - Hungarian
Rudolph Peierls - German
I.I. Rabi - Galicia (Austira/Hungary)
Emilio Segre - Italian
Leo Szilard - Hungarian
Edward Teller - Hungarian
Eugene Wigner - Hungarian
Stanislaw Ulam - Polish

Now can you guess what project they worked on?

Yes, Klaus Fuchs, a German, gave the keys to the kingdom to the Soviets and later China. Ted Hall, an American, was also leaking secrets.

Being a bonafide born in the USA citizen will not protect against espionage. The real "crime" here is that we don't seem to be able to attract students here at home to go into the sciences. It's tough and may not be a quick way to the riches. We have become a lazy society that wants instant and easy gratification. Money for nothin' and your chicks for free.

Anonymous said...

It doesn't appear that anyone said it was a bad idea to let somebody born in a foreign country work at a national lab.
The point was that it might not be wise to let citizens of "sensitive" nations hang around a nuclear weapons lab. I am fairly certain, for example, that Edward Teller was a US citizen, and, despite being born overseas, was not fond of Russians.

The argument that there aren't enough American science students to fill open positions is commonly recited, but likely not true. Ask any graduate student on his or her second or third postdoc. In the 1980s, I was reading in Physics Today about the upcoming shortage of physicists, which did not materialize. The situation (dire predictions vs reality) has not changed much since then.

Anonymous said...

I like the other side of history's who's who.

Henry Wallace, Vice President, 3 terms, before being sacked by a sick Roosevelt in favor of Truman, disclosed soviet archives show him reporting directly and regularly to Stalin.

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby, senior British intel official, scampered home to Mother Russia, after leading and destroying MI-6 and US counterintel assets.

Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, all nice Cambridge fellows. Turncoats. One of these gay blades, memory fails, sat on the trilateral commission over the Manhattan project and reported info to Stalin faster than Roosevelt, Churchill or Canada ( the third leg of the tri-) recieved it.

Alger Hiss, state department, confessed soviet spy.

Whitaker Chambers, journalist, reformed soviet spy, contributor to Buckley's American Spectator, author of "witness" disclosing his recruitment and activities in US soviet sedition activities. Fingered Hiss.

The Rosenburgs, nuclear scientists who got missing bomb into to Soviet Weapons establishment

Klaus Fuchs, scientist, passes on bomb data.

Oppy and girlfriends, let's say early, but reformed fellow travellers, but with a shall we say artist, independant streak?

Roosevelt's secretary of state, Morganthau, paid informant to Stalin.

A.Q. Khan, metallurgist, Framatone employee. Brings French centrifuge designs to the third world.

Life is a mixed bag, Grace sometimes prevails, sometimes Satan prevails. Judgement sorts it out.



Anonymous said...

What about those French guys, who conveniently placed bomb grade French material on a ship in the early 50s so that the Mossad could "hijack" it to safekeeping near Tel Aviv.

I'll bet they got rewards from modern Delilah's national assets that Sampson only dreamed about.

And what about the sneaky Canadians, original developers and co-owners of the bomb, but no longer keeper of the keys? I wonder.

One can't be too xenophobic.

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