"Intellectual property protection and national security have long been intertwined. For as long as espionage has existed, spies and agents have tried to steal and copy foreign technology."<p>What I want to know is:<p><i>"Which country copied/stole/appropriated (use whatever languaging makes you feel comfortable) the wheel from which other country, first?"</i> <g><p>"Intellectual Property Theft", you gotta love it...<p>It's amazing, because all of Silicon Valley stands on the shoulders of pioneers; on the shoulders of giants, but not once in those silly interviews of the latest successful founder, who's only a kid, do they ever, ever <i>thank all of the people that made all of the infrastructure</i> that made their present day business able to function... people including, but not limited to: Boole, Tesla, Turing, Shannon, Von Neumann, Atanasoff, and others too numerous to count.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_s...</a><p>Also, most so-called intellectual property "secrets" -- usually appear in some form or other in academic papers <i>way before they are snapped up and patented by some multinational company</i>, some multinational company who is usually not the original researcher or researchers.<p>Which brings me to another other point... usually the multinational company profits more, way more, orders of magnitude more, than the original inventors/researchers, who might not (in some but not all cases) be compensated at all...<p>So now the next question is, <i>who stole what from whom, when?</i><p>a) Did some other country, i.e., China (or whoever) steal intellectual property from another "Country" (which are actually corporations/corporate interests in that other country)?<p>or<p>b) Did the corporation that was "stole from" -- steal that intellectual property from the original inventors/researchers? (You know, via legal means, paying someone a pittance and calling it a "fair deal" is still stealing...)<p>or<p>c) Did the original inventors/researchers steal their idea from ideas that were already floating about in the academic community and in previous academic papers, in that field of study?<p><i>Who stole what from who, when?</i><p>?<p>That's what I want to know.<p>And I also want to know which country stole the wheel from which other country, first... <g>