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Wonder what China is doing with all of those APTs? Now you know.

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Did you ever wonder what China is doing with all of those Advanced Persistent Threats that they are tossing at US companies, trying to steal their secrets (allegedly)?  The answer is they give them to their own home-grown companies.  Here’s a story from yesterday’s Financial Times entitled Baidu to launch low-cost smartphone:

Baidu is making its boldest foray yet into mobile search by launching a low-cost smartphone that runs on the Chinese search company’s own operating system.

Baidu will hold a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday to launch the smartphone, which will be priced under Rmb1,000 (£98) and will run Baidu Cloud, a mobile-phone operating system developed by modifying Google’s Android platform. The phone will have a separate brand, the company said.

Let me get this straight:

  • The US government has accused China of stealing secrets from US companies and giving them to Chinese companies.
  • US search engine Google competes directly with Chinese search engine Baidu.
  • Google makes a low(ish) cost smartphone, Google Android.
  • Baidu is making a low cost smartphone based on Google Android.

Geez, they’re not even hiding what they are doing.  I wonder how much of the code and design is based upon what other US companies have previously done?