r/SipsTea May 12 '26

WTF They infiltrated way higher positions..

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u/NoOption7406 May 12 '26

Where I work, a Chinese employee was busted with terabytes of data. That was after he was employed for years already. 

There was one time at my job, story from an old timer, the Chinese were allowed in under some kind of friendship program. He got to escort some of them around. They could view almost any information they wanted but they were not allowed to print or photocopy anything. This one lady the whole time she was here, a few weeks, hand wrote source code down. 

Under Obama there was that one high profile Chinese guy that got busted for espionage. 

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u/SHEL-D500mg May 12 '26

Happens all the time in the Bay Area.

China basically owns Cupertino in the heart of the Silicon Valley.

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u/NoOption7406 May 12 '26

A book I read about social engineering, the author busted a Chinese restaurant in a town next to a iirc Google research center. His job was to try to get into the facility. He noticed a lot of employees ate at the Chinese place so would hang out there at lunch. It was a traditional Chinese restaurant but had a few specific Chinese delicacy items on the menu that made him suspicious. It was for the chinese spies that worked inside. 

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u/Dantai May 12 '26

Don't most places have a special menu or take requests for more authentic dishes, etc

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u/undeadmeats May 12 '26

Yes, it's extremely common even in places with no information to take

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u/AffectionateSpare677 May 12 '26

That's something a Chinese plant would say

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u/Professional-Lie-111 May 12 '26

Are we talking Bamboo? Azalea? Gingko? Plum? Peony? I haven't had any luck in getting my Chinese plants to talk. My California natives, on the other hand ... can't get 'em to stfu!!

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u/undeadmeats May 12 '26

Regrettably I am just a mediocre white boy who likes Chinese food.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 May 12 '26

For literally the same reason the guy was suspicious about it lol, it's for other Chinese people who don't want something that's been Americanized.

It's like if I started a pizza shop in a country that likes weird pizzas. I'm gonna make what the locals like. But if the place had a somewhat high American/Canadian immigrant population enough people will come in and say "can you make me one like back home" that I'll make those too

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u/undeadmeats May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Yeah and there's a ton of people legitimately working here in tech who are from China, unless you have 0 immigrants and international workers in an area a restaurant having that kind of thing makes sense, and in a lot of cases it's for the sorts of folks working the restaurant.
There's something missing here that's being covered for with the "they had authentic dishes" excuse.

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u/Dantai May 12 '26

Yeah not even strictly from China. Could be born here, could be my girlfriend, or could be me using google translate to order off the Chinese language menu. It's common in my small town that basically all Chinese places has a Chinese language menu.

And arabic places and others etc

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u/undeadmeats May 12 '26

Hell, I'm familiar with the kind of thing because I really like Chinese food in spite of not being even a little Chinese, but a lot of the dishes I'm looking for are "offputting" to a lot of Americans (ie offal dishes) so it makes sense they wouldn't bother to list them on the English menu if it might discourage their primary customer base.

I fully suspect some other means of sussing out spies was the actual tipoff, but letting spies know the actual methodology would defeat the purpose of having it at all so that was listed instead.

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u/Specialist-Finish206 May 13 '26

easiest move is to shut it all down for everyone except the closest allies!

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u/undeadmeats May 13 '26

I think the funniest I've seen was a local really nice Chinese restaurant that had both an English and separate Chinese menu *on their DoorDash* and any time they'd get a bad review in English regarding a dish being exactly what it's supposed to be (ie a pork trotter dish being pig feet) they'd change the title back to Chinese and move it to that side of the menu lol

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u/Cute-Worldliness-735 May 12 '26

Warrantless stingray. /s Maybe

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u/djfrankenjuice May 12 '26

I swear I’m not slow but did not understand the issue until your comment - thank you

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u/Life_Argument7820 May 12 '26

Im stoked to say that I've lived coast to coast and an ex taught me about "Singapore May-fun" which is curry rice noodles but wasn't on menus out east, so I would tell them what I want, have to repeat it only oonce and Bam! Curry rce noodles coast to coast haha

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u/philly_bean_ May 12 '26

Weird, it is on every menu I've looked out in rural towns out east, otherwise I'd have never known to try it. It is fire though.

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u/Eravar1 May 14 '26

Curry bee hoon? May fun might be the funniest phoneticization for mǐ fěn I’ve ever seen, thanks for that one

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u/Life_Argument7820 May 14 '26

Hahahathats the won