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Biotech China Crime Science

Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese 164

Posted by samzenpus from the nice-seeds dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Economic espionage is nothing new but one of the biggest areas being targeted now is agriculture. Here's a story about a FBI investigation to track down theft of seeds from research farms. 'The case of the missing corn seeds first broke in May 2011 when a manager at a DuPont research farm in east-central Iowa noticed a man on his knees, digging up the field. When confronted, the man, Mo Hailong, who was with his colleague Wang Lei, appeared flushed. Mr. Mo told the manager that he worked for the University of Iowa and was traveling to a conference nearby. When the manager paused to answered his cellphone, the two men sped off in a car, racing through a ditch to get away, federal authorities said.'"
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Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese More

Designer Seeds Thought To Be Latest Target By Chinese

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  • DNA wants to be free... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @08:59PM (#46168755)
    It's really hard to feel all that much pity for DuPont. They have a long history of being enormous pricks.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Open source generic engineering for all! Say, would you happen to know the nucleotide sequence for an enormous prick?

      • Open source generic engineering for all! Say, would you happen to know the nucleotide sequence for an enormous prick?

        I imagine you'll want the sequences for blond hair and a tan as well.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Nah. I just want something big for jacking off.

      • Open source generic engineering for all! Say, would you happen to know the nucleotide sequence for an enormous prick?

        Here you go: http://www.snpedia.com/index.p... [snpedia.com]

        Oh wait, maybe you mean the other kind of enormous prick?

        "Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert 'the genes for an elephant's trunk' into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant." -- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, No

  • Boycott (Score:4, Informative)

    by chebucto ( 992517 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @08:59PM (#46168761) Homepage

    I propose that we boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta.
    Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
    Commentors - only discuss Beta
    Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.

    Captcha: fuckbeta

  • Tank yu missa Clin ten (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Chinese have had an open field day stealing tech and killing of Western businesses since our beloved Bill Clinton opened the doors to them. Those roks are now coming in to roost, USA is over and screwed by its own doing. Manchurian Candidate - for real.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Chinese have had an open field day stealing tech and killing of Western businesses since our beloved Bill Clinton opened the doors to them.

      You mean Nixon.

    • how did you get modded up to insightful?
      Nixon opened the door. Then you had reagan send over LOADS of economic items. For example, he asked the original moly corp to help China with their rare earth, by turning over their technology on how to mine and process it. That destroyed moly corp. Clinton allowed China to buy neo-mag, but not to move it. However, W/ you neo-cons overrode the military's objections and allowed the company to move to China.

      Yes, clinton made a deal with China in 2000. BUT, it was W t

  • In other news... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In other news, slashdot beta sucks. More at 11.

  • If only (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @09:10PM (#46168835)

    Those Chinese spies could steal the slashdot beta code!

    • Those Chinese spies could steal the slashdot beta code!

      They stole the code to Slashdot Beta six months ago. And you don't see them using it anywhere because they determined that it was a western plot to devalue the entire Chinese economy. There's just no other explanation.

    • *Phbtbtbt* The Chinese spies planted it as a bit of culture jamming.

      They figure they can disrupt most of the US tech industry by making Slashdot into a steaming turd of ugly.

      Judging by the comments the last two days, it appears to be working.

  • Beta Developers (Score:3, Funny)

    by SenorPez ( 840621 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @09:12PM (#46168849) Homepage
    Serious question: Did the same people who developed the Beta Digg that destroyed that site develop Slashdot Beta? Because it reminds me of the exact same site-destroying arc. And when Slashdot goes down, where will I get my daily hyperbolic Bitcoin article?

    • reddit, duh. All the bitcoin pump and dump artists hang out there, it's the worldwide HQ of bitcoin bandwagonism.

  • Darth BETA: Help me remove these pants... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    a robot hand has invaded my space and now only Google searches for:

    FUCK SLASHDOT BETA

    sometimes in quotes, again and again!

    Cool! He dresses in black but his penis is cocaine white!

    (looks around)

    Just one suck to see if he regains his color.

  • Economic or Military? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Etherwalk ( 681268 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @09:22PM (#46168937)

    A major war between modern powers could be more effectively "won" with biological weapons than nuclear ones. Come up with something that will decimate the primary crop of the enemy nation (or even specific variations on that crop which might be planted en masse by Monsanto) and you severely weaken the country.

    • exactly. It is far far cheaper to destroy a nation/group of nation economically, then to engage in a hot war.
      The real problem here is that western leaders do not think of themselves in a cold war with China, while China absolutely is engaged.
      Worst, we have loads of kids running around screaming that China is not engaged in a cold war, while ignoring facts like this.

  • Which begs the question, what fuckwad insisted on doing so?

  • Buck Feta (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The_Star_Child ( 2660919 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @09:46PM (#46169127)
    Buck Feta

  • Down With Beta! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Ive been visiting Slashdot since the late 90s (during the "don't get a username because of privacy"-era). The new redesign is awful and I agree with all the criticisms that have been made. I think we need a comment bounty reward to anyone who can find ONE remotely positive comment about the redesign. What is the point of asking for feedback when you are just going to do what you want anyway? Slashdot has a readership that dates back to the early days of the Internet and boasts one of the best comment c

  • Why Beta Sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by labnet ( 457441 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @09:57PM (#46169207)

    1. Way too much vertical white space, which is more precious than dehydrated unicorn testciles thanks to 16:9 screens.
    2. A More Button. WTF! The bandwidth for text is cheap. Give me the whole converstaion.
    3. Coonversation context is lost because I can't see summarised comments nested under modded up comments.
    4. Thick borders. 1 pixel is enough.

    • ~1/4 of my horizontal screen space is used for comments. Doesnt work

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      My 16:9 screens are in portrait mode, you insensitive clod!

  • If these seeds are GMO'ed I say let them have them.

    That way several years down the road when only one company in China owns all of the food supply and it is ILLEGAL to grow your own food, we won't have to worry about their industrial espionage...

    Oh wait, our government does the same industrial espionage...http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/26/us-security-snowden-germany-idUSBREA0P0DE20140126

    Never mind.

  • Honestly, a much more sensible thing to steal... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Wednesday February 05, 2014 @10:36PM (#46169523) Journal
    Somewhat surprisingly, given its land area and population, China has total shit for arable land. Obviously more than zero; and a long history of intensive, relatively high-yield agriculture; but huge parts of the country are unsuitable in various ways (and various incidents of pollution, desertification, aquifer overdraw, and other mismanagement haven't helped).

    Given that, along with the nigh-universal tendency of people to eat more meat (far less efficient per calorie than stuff lower on the food chain) if they get wealthier, and to rise up in revolution like they have nothing to lose (because they don't) if food supplies are dangerously constrained, doing absolutely everything they possibly can to keep agricultural yields high, and preferably rising, is probably about the sanest policy the Chinese government could be pursuing.

    Sure, hypersonic missiles and supercavitating torpedoes and fancy fighter planes and stuff are good for dick waving, keeping Americans at a distance while rattling the sabre at Taiwan, and general jingoism; but it's not as though anybody outside of China wants to start a land war in Asia and directly slug it out with the PLA on Chinese soil, so all that stuff is really pretty secondary.

    1.2 billion people (including the ones who you've provided with guns, and their families and friends) who are starting to see more and more of the weekly grocery list slipping beyond their buying power? Now that is what has any sensible leader (whether of a despotism, a monarchy, a republic, a democracy, doesn't matter) wake up screaming and drenched in cold sweat night after night.

  • NO! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you move me to the beta slashdot abortion i'll add this place to the block list and never visit again.

    Too many other news sites regurgitate the exact same storys i see here. And all of them don't look as shitty as the beta slashdot.

    Stop being stupid

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Just looked at this article in /. beta. After comments are nested in a few levels, the text column is so narrow there is only one word per line! Like this:
      And
      that's
      an
      excuse
      for
      this
      rampant
      idiocy?
      Because
      last
      I
      heard
      the
      mature
      approach
      would
      be
      to
      provide
      constructive
      criticism,

  • Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam,
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam.
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam?
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam!
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam;
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam!
    Ceterum autem censeo $lashdot esse delendam
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam
    Ceterum autem censeo slashdot esse delendam

    If you can read this I've bypassed your "postercomment" compressi

  • Time for a slashdotting (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Here is Dice's "Contact Us" page. [diceholdingsinc.com] Everybody be sure to call them tomorrow using whatever numbers from that page you can get to ring. Tell every darn receptionist in every darn one of Dice's holdings, along with anyone you can get them to connect you to, that the Slashdot beta is terrible and you won't shut up until it goes away. Fax them a well-illustrated complaint or two or three. Send them a choice letter via snail mail, along with whatever memorabilia you wish.

    They keep soliciting our feedback, they can

  • Have been refined by millions of years of evolution. That a few scientists with an ego problem think they can do better is laughable.

    • You mean like seedless bananas and seedless watermelons? Surly those were made by nature, since sterility & seedlessness are such an advantageous traits. Or corn, which has its seeds encased by a husk preventing dispersal. Yep, a product of nature right there.

      Even if what you were saying wasn't an appeal to nature, the same nonsense spouted by every snakeoil salesman hawking naturopathic cure-alls I might add, you're still wrong. Everything you eat has been dramatically changed by human hands. Straw

  • Find the NAME of the man who gave the order! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Thursday February 06, 2014 @01:01AM (#46170547)

    A person directed the Slashdot redesign.

    Who is he?

  • No doubt they're in the 'research and development' department.

    "...on charges of stealing trade secrets in what the authorities and agriculture experts have called an unusual and brazen scheme to undercut expensive, time-consuming research."

    It stops being unusual when it's industrial espionage of absolutely anything that can be reverse engineered and copied on a constant basis.

    The western state departments need to get their balls out of cold storage and deal with this economic warfare against us.

  • Seriously, the faults lie with the companies that hire these ppl. Many of them will grab an opportunity to make large money while helping their nation. Chinese leaders are in a cold war with the west and will continue to steal all technology that they can. Look at Germany's transrapid. They put in a line because they were ASSURED by the gov. that the tech would not be stolen. In fact, Transrapid hired a 24x7 guard for their electronics cabinet. At the same time, transrapid quietly put in a camera to record

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