Gizmodo Australia » sabotage

iRobot, Corporate Sabotage, Stolen Plans and Destroyed Evidence

Jason Chen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Noah Shachtman over at Wired has a very interesting look at iRobot’s six year battle with Robotic FX, a company started by a former employee who allegedly (and probably) stole schematics and plans in order to build a competitor. There’s too much detail to work into a short summary, but Jameel Ahed, the former employee, was caught by a private investigator deleting documents and shredding CDs containing data that belonged to iRobot.

What’s even more interesting is that the old phrase of “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids” might be applicable here, with Ahed standing a pretty good chance (thanks to a mysterious military contract backer) of getting away with this scheme if he didn’t destroy evidence. After all, even the military contacts who were trying to choose between vendors were angling for his robot to win. [Wired]

Tesla Sues White Star Ex-Designer for Sabotage

Matt Buchanan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:45:00 +0000

Tesla Motors, maker of the much hyped (and well reviewed) electric Roadster is suing Fisker Automotive, the outfit behind fake vroom-y Karma, for stealing Tesla’s design and trade secrets. Supposedly, this pushed the sale date for Tesla’s four-door sedan, White Star, back six months, to 2010. Henrik Fisker (the eponymous founder) was hired by Tesla to design White Star. Tesla alleges he took the US$875,000 contract, sabotaged Tesla’s project with sub-par work, and then made off with their secrets and designs, using the money to launch his rival electric car effort.

To fill the design gap and move things along, Tesla got some of the guys at Lotus to step in and massage the body design. Man, I thought people designing green tech were out there to help people and keep us from dying in crazy “Day After Tomorrow” freak weather. Not you know, actively undermining each other for their own selfish benefit. Capitalism at its finest. [NYT]

International Telecommunication Union Claims Cut Cables Were Sabotage

Adam Frucci — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:54:56 +0000

While we’ve been told that those undersea cables that were cut a couple weeks ago were slashed by errant anchors, the International Telecommunication Union now claims that it was deliberate sabotage.

The reasoning? While one of the cables may have been cut by an anchor, the others were too deep for that to be a possibility. Also, five cables being cut in one week is highly improbable. I don’t know how a saboteur gets that deep to cut cables in the first place, let alone five of them, so I’m highly skeptical. I mean, come on, aren’t we giving the terrorists a bit too much credit here? This isn’t a James Bond movie. The most likely culprit is still Godzilla as far as I’m concerned.

What do you guys think: terrorism, giant undersea lizards or some other explanation? [The Inquirer]