China Attempts to Catch Up to US with Counterfeit Spaceplane
The X-37B, a highly classified US spaceplane, awaits its seventh launch into space this time aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket. China is aggressively trying to catch up with the US in space endeavors by launching its own pirated copy of a similar secret spaceplane for the third time. Just as the Soviet Union built a copy of the NASA Space Shuttle called Buran using KGB-provided information appropriated from the US, China may have used its hacking groups, like APT17 and “Aquatic Panda”, to steal classified secrets about the US military's spaceplane program to build their own slightly inferior copy. US military intelligence experts have speculated that China started manufacturing their spaceplane version after several hacking attacks were detected at US defense contractors involved in the construction of the X-37B. The CIA showed photos of the Chinese space plane and the US version to the US military space plane program officials, who could not identify the counterfeit one—except from the “UASF Hush Moon Craft” markings on the side of the Chinese spaceplane. The US has lodged a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) seeking damages for trademark infringement. The Chinese Xinhua News Agency released a report later that attempted to refute US claims of intellectual property theft showing the Tiangong Space Station (not like the International Space Station), BeiDou-3 (not like the US GPS navigation system), plans for manned Lunar missions (not like the Apollo missions), Yinghuo-1 (not like the various Mars orbiters), and Tianwen-1 (not like the Mars rovers).