Apparently me and the Google both have a significantly outdated definition for “pocket heater“. Friday news drop, from the NYTimes, “U.S. Drops Charges That Professor Shared Technology With China“:
When the Justice Department arrested the chairman of Temple University’s physics department this spring and accused him of sharing sensitive American-made technology with China, prosecutors had what seemed like a damning piece of evidence: schematics of sophisticated laboratory equipment sent by the professor, Xi Xiaoxing, to scientists in China.
The schematics, prosecutors said, revealed the design of a device known as a pocket heater. The equipment is used in semiconductor research, and Dr. Xi had signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret.
But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater.
Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen.
It was an embarrassing acknowledgment that prosecutors and F.B.I. agents did not understand — and did not do enough to learn — the science at the heart of the case before bringing charges that jeopardized Dr. Xi’s career and left the impression that he was spying for China….
There’s plenty genuine security threats from China, but for some reason “we” seem to waste an awful lot of energy looking in the wrong places to find them.
Roger Moore
Maybe Professor Xi can get together with Wen Ho Lee to commiserate.
jo6pac
Sorry I’m into the second bottle of whine but this looks to me like the so-called fbi case against Lee at the place he worked out. Sorry 2nd bottle is ?
Steeplejack (tablet)
Turned out to be plans for a pocket rocket, and the feds were too embarrassed to back down.
NotMax
So the schematics were inscrutable?
And the agents examining them disoriented?
srv
The Wen Ho Lee frameup:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/04/us/the-making-of-a-suspect-the-case-of-wen-ho-lee.html
The Chinese still had our nukular designs by the early 90s and nobody knows who or how. You might ask who they might ally with on that sort of thing.
Ames and Hanson were pikers.
Doug R
So China owned Asus isn’t a Trojan horse collecting our porn history and passwords for the Red Army?
Poopyman
Yeah. I’m thinking ” why are schematics for a snub-nose .38 so important?”
So …
a) If it wasn’t for a “Pocket Heater”, what was it?
b) What the hell is a Pocket Heater? (In the semi-conductor sense.)
NotMax
@Doug R
Nah, Lenovo got there first.
;)
HinTN
I’ve got a rocket in my pocket
Finger in the socket
Rocket
Pocket
dmsilev
@Poopyman: It’s part of a thin-film deposition system. One of the key steps in making semiconductor devices is taking a substrate (i.e. a silicon wafer) and carefully depositing a very thin and very uniform layer of something else, copper say, or perhaps an insulating layer. There are several ways of doing this, but one of the more common is to have a small pot of the material that you’re trying to deposit and heat it up until it vaporizes, and then the vapor plates onto the substrate. Making sure that the heating is uniform and consistent is very important when you’re trying to control the layer properties and thicknesses down nearly to the atomic level.
Poopyman
@srv: Kinda like “Chinese Android Smartphones Now Shipping With Pre-Installed Malware” ?
The Preznit made a few comments about China today when he visited Cybercom. Something to the effect that when Xi comes to visit, they’ll have words.
The truth is, of course, that we “visit” Chinese systems as often as they visit us. The Chinese aren’t going to broadcast that through the press like what happens here though.
pacem appellant
Read this outrage earlier today. A couple of things. 1) I’m a EE and would very much appreciate a technical analysis of what the blueprint was for. 2) Da hell?!?! They booked him because they thought the schematic was one thing, but it turns out it was another thing all together. Why do we need the FBI when we can have the script writers for Three’s Company instead?
Poopyman
@dmsilev: Sounds a lot like how optics are coated, which is fairly low-tech, and I’m having a hard time accepting* that semiconductors need higher precision than precision optics.
(* – I was going to type “understanding”, but after a couple of glasses of wine I’m not in shape or the mood to work through the physics even if you put them under my nose.)
Poopyman
@Poopyman: My sommelier just let me finish the bottle. I knew there was a reason I married her.
trollhattan
If’n any laydees would like to discuss my pocket heater and schematics thereof, I’ll be in the bar.
trollhattan
@Poopyman:
I’m certain they’ll compare notes on Christie whooshing over those contested islands in his (very large not small) jet suit.
dmsilev
@Poopyman: Are precision optical coatings specced to a tolerance of 0.5 nm in thickness? Serious question; my optics experience is only with fairly low-spec stuff. When you’re putting down say an oxide barrier in a transistor, that’s the sort of tolerance needed. And it needs to stay at that tolerance all the way across a 300 mm diameter wafer.
Mike J
@Poopyman: If it sounds easy you don’t understand the problem.
Brandon
Taking this in context with FBI framing on Charleston shooting as not terrorism and assorted other activity like entrapping idiots to buy rocket launchers, you could forgive me for wondering how far racial bias drives FBI investigatons and identification of targets. My guess is an awful lot.
Poopyman
@dmsilev: Good question. Typically, the coatings run about 100 nm (I had to look that one up), and that’s where the difference lies.
@Mike J: Truisms aren’t necessarily true.
wuzzat
There are a lot of weird loose ends in this story as it’s being reported. What was the blueprint that Xi sent to China actually for? The media is stupid and likes low-hanging fruit, so they’re pushing the national security angle hard, but I’m wondering if it was the more straight-forward, but also more boring, issue of not having an export license. Export law is srs bsns. Anyway, the FBI seems to have fucked up the “I” part of their job pretty thoroughly on this one, but I’d love to know who tipped them off. Overzealous customs agent? Jealous colleague? Mailed paperwork is not exactly in their usual scope.
Poopyman
@Poopyman: Although your question referred to the tolerance and not to the thickness. Tolerances aren’t supposed to (and in my experience do not) exceed the diffraction limit of the component, which is dependent on its diameter. Peak-to-valley deviation of a quarter wavelength is roughly the Rayleigh limit. For visual work, let’s call lambda 560 nm. So yeah, we’re still in the ca. 100 nm range for optics.
I told you I’ve had a couple (now plus) glasses of wine, dammit.
mclaren
How can you possibly say this?
It’s September 11, and no amount of 9/11 hysteria is enough!
I’m still waiting for the chanting wailing crowds murmuring “nine eleven…nine eleven…nine eleven” obsessively over and over, in a mindless mantra of blind fear and abject panic. Where are the Fox News shills prostrating themselves before videos of the Twin Towers while they inveigh against this evil traitor while whimpering “Never again”?
Where are the candlelight vigils and signs reading DEATH TO THE PROFESSOR by the self-appointed guardians of the American population who don’t give a shit about all the black men being choked to death or shot in the back by cops, who couldn’t care less about all the no-knock SWAT teams kicking in the doors of innocent families and shooting their dogs and kids and husbands in the head, yet who swoon and fall into a faint at the thought of 9/11?
Where are the sacramental hosannahs offered on every TV channel to our ignorant incompetent U.S. military with its rapists and gang members and misfits? Where are the craven explications of fear and mindless panic and cries from the no-neck American population for the corrupt socipoaths in law enforcement to protect them from the imaginary “terrorists” like this professor who allegedy hide under every bed and lurk behing every bush? Where are the shouts of “anything they want, give it to them!” from our gullible sheeplike populace to the wardheeling bribe-taking politicians sleazy enough to exploit 9/11 for more military procurement grifting and domestic police payoffs misnamed “national security”?
I’m really missing the national hysteria here. This is much too calm and reasoned a response to an obvious mistake. You know the drill, people — when the national security apparatus fucks up, it covers up — more charges against this professor, more public accusations, more leaked damning FBI documents, they need to parade this guy around in an orange jumpsuit and go on TV shouting “mad dog killers like this will DESTROY AMERICA unless you give us more money to KEEP YOU SAFE!!!”
Why aren’t you people falling on your knees en masse and slithering forward begging to hand over your sacred liberties to a bunch of thieves with badges, bribe takers in high office, and incompetent careerist military thugs who courts-martial a private for losing his rifle but give generals like Petreus a pass when he loses a war?
It’s September 11 again. Get moving, people. Prove once again you’re the lowest form of human being on the planet — you did it last year, it’s time again, now get to it, lazybones. Fox News isn’t running scare stories about pocket heater schematics to get you to play fucking yahtzee — they’re running those stories to turn you into sniveling crawling cowards eager to sell your constitutional birthright for a mess of fear-induced pottage. Now get moving! Crawl like the insects you are!
Brendan in Charlotte
@Brandon: Not only racial bias, but, in the case of material aid to terrorists, mental capacity. And they always seem to make an arrest on or just before a very important date. Methinks they want tacit approval to keep spying on the public at large.
PurpleGirl
@mclaren: Go away.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: The only one being hysterical around here is you. Contemplate that for awhile.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@pacem appellant: As dmsilev says at #10, it seems to be related to deposition equipment used in semiconductor processing. I’m not familiar with the term, myself.
The NYTimes story says a guy named “Ward S. Ruby” is an inventor of the technology. Here is a list of some of his patents. Maybe it’s buried in there.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus:
Contemplate? McLaren? Sure that’ll happen. Maybe McLaren and A Guy should get together for drinks.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
Can’t be stopped, won’t go away, is it the terminator?
Given the content I’d say no, but given the relentless key pounding maybe. Aims to kill by attacking your sanity, rather than physical being.
The cure?
Pie.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Brendan in Charlotte: The FBI is mostly about PR, self-promotion and blackmail, with a minor sideline in law enforcement. Been that way since the days of Hoover.
Anne Laurie
@mclaren: Ain’t it a bummer when people selfishly refuse to be the arseholes you just know they really are?!?
I’m old enough, when it happens, to be grateful for small mercies & not indignant about my lost chance on the soapbox.
Brandon
@Brendan in Charlotte: There is no doubt that espionage by China is a serious issue. However, when they have the clear capability to hack every US government computer system from thousands of miles away, this sounds just like lazy law enforcement doing something, anything to hit numbers to justify budgets and win promotions. Which is gross.
Even worse, and this permeates through every level of law enforcement, the most successful foreign spies that have been caught were white guys (just like whites are more likely to be drug users or caught in possession of drugs from stop and frisk searches and domestic terrorism seems to be dominated by white guys). However, middle aged white men for some reason don’t seem to be the ones falling under this level of scrutiny but instead are the ones more likely to say crap like “if you didn’t do anything wrong, then what are you worried about, you obviously did something wrong to be put under suspicion, just cooperate”.
Anne Laurie
@Snarki, child of Loki:
Who learnt everything he ever knew about “security” from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who gave him his first big break.
Anarchist terrorists, under every bed!
Roger Moore
@Poopyman:
I thought the quarter wave specification was for the overall optical surface. The spec for the thin film coatings would have to be much tighter than that; a 1/4 wavelength error in a thin-film coating is the difference between one that eliminates reflection and one that maximizes it. I would assume the spec would be closer to 1/40 wavelength than 1/4, and possibly tighter than that. That’s still big relative to modern semiconductor fabrication, but it’s not trivial, either.
Gin & Tonic
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Ward Ruby? Related to Jack, maybe? How deep does the conspiracy go?
Jerry
I got my cock in my pocket
And I’m reelin’
Down the old highway
Mike G
It’s so unfortunate the FBI has spent months screwing up a basic case like this. Now they can get back to what appears to be their main job, entrapping loudmouth losers into terrorism charges by fomenting their empty online blathering then plying them with weapons they would never otherwise get.
Whenever some genius blathers in a chatroom he will take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a pipe wrench, it seems the FBI is front and center handing the idiot the tool then sending him to Supermax for life.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Gin & Tonic: There’s a programming language called “Ruby”, too. There’s no telling how deep the tendrils go!
US Patent #8290553:
And so forth.
A “pocket heater” seems to be a box heated to some controlled temperature that is divided from some other region in a vacuum chamber.
Yikes! The Chinese will be marching on Capitol Hill if they figure out how to make one of those!!11
:-/
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who thinks this is yet another example of the dangers of trying to figure out technical issues from reporting in the popular press.)
Gravenstone
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: All those patents describe aspects of the general method being discussed above. I’m interested in so far as Ive done some work on CVD agents, but the process whereby they’re actually deposited us pure voodoo.
Brachiator
The other day, I was watching a plodding but still somewhat interesting film called “The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover,” which strung together a lot of factual details, but was weak on drama and insight.
One thing got to a bit of the truth. You got the idea that the FBI made quite a few mistakes, like this one, but that Hoover was great at charming and strong arming the press into selling a picture of the Bureau as being filled with near infallible and incorruptible agents.
And if you ever want to have fun with WTF were the FBI thinking, search for some of the “deep FBI analysis” of the communist subversion at the heart of the lyrics of the rock and roll song “Louie Louie.”
Matt McIrvin
Those Federation guys and their fancy heaters… if we learned how to make those, we could move in on Bela Oxmyx’s territory!
Chris
@Anne Laurie:
That was worth posting again.
Anoniminous
Fabs routinely work at 28 nm, unroutinely at 14 nm, and are playing around at 10 nm, Intel has announced they will start releasing 10 nm in ’17. IBM has announced 7 nm for research purposes, there’s no guarantee they will be commercially viable.
Poopyman
@efgoldman: It’s the wine talking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Poopyman: I’ve spoken to wine. It doesn’t sound like that.
Ken
@dmsilev: I must be missing something, because China already manufactures a lot of semiconductors – more than the US, I think. So are these pocket heaters for some really cutting edge technology?
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: Right! I mean, check.
Ian
@mclaren:
I wish my new computer could download cleek’s pie filter. srv’s comments were much better then.
yet another jeff
@Mike G:
A thousand this-es. “Look, we’re keeping you safe from threats we basically created and encouraged!”
J R in WV
And I still don’t have a clue what the blueprints Dr, Xi sent wherever were for. Of course, neither did the FBI when the arrested the good doctor. I’m assuming he said something like “Pocket heater? What’s that?” soon followed by “Oh, no, that’s a diagrams of a x.x.x.x.x.x.x, which is part of
1) an instrument on the LHC to detect tiny unicorns
2) an instrument on Mars Rover to detect tiny (but larger than unicorns) ponies
3) an instrument intended to detect traces of love and kindness in a Republican presidential candidate)
4) part of Kenyan Dictator Ubama’s time machine
5) part of a device to locate the “Intelligence” in FBI
6 – now it’s your turn! What did the FBI find in Dr. Xi’s pocket? You could win a date with Jewel!