South Korean police have arrested two former Samsung executives on suspicion of transferring $3.2 billion worth of the company’s trade secrets to China. One of the arrested, 66-year-old Mr. Choi, set up a chip manufacturing joint venture in China and served as its CEO. He was assisted by a fab designer, Mr. Oh, and tried to bring in other South Korean experts.
Choi is suspected of leaking Samsung’s memory technologies for the production of DRAM chips using the 20nm process at the Chengdu Gaozhen plant in China. Samsung is one of the leading memory manufacturers, working with many companies. Police said that Choi’s actions «weakened the country’s competitiveness in the global chip war». Authorities claim that the arrest will stop the Chinese company’s operations, but the investigation is ongoing.
This is not the first time that employees of South Korean tech companies have been arrested for stealing trade secrets. In May last year, a former SK hynix employee was arrested for printing 3000 pages of data on the semiconductor manufacturing process. She was suspected of passing these documents to Huawei, although she denied all charges. This summer Samsung ex-engineer jailed for 6 years for leaking sensitive OLED technology to China. Taiwan has repeatedly accused China of stealing intellectual property and poaching engineers.
China needs to develop its own semiconductor manufacturing technologies, as it is almost 99% dependent on Western tools. US sanctions have had a serious impact on China’s technological ambitions.
China is eager to develop its own chip industry, as it has many rare earth minerals. While the United States and its allies are waging a chip war with China, Chinese officials may secretly support such actions by stealing the intellectual property of other companies and countries.
Source: tomshardware
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