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MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

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Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#101
post #98
post #61

I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home. What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding” I want to be ca…

What grey area? It was bad enough they decided to send him home.

It's bad because MIT reprimanded him for "scrap[ing] every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home"? That's felonious territory. He should have been deported indefinitely.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#102
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jokes aside, why not include MIT or UChicago? ...How many schools do you think can fit in the #1 spot?

Touché! I suppose I'm partially criticizing the idea of a #1, but that aside, there's a fair point to be made that MIT would beat a smaller version of it on any nominal measurement rather than per-capita. Additionally, if you want to learn something academic that isn't technology, I'm not sure MIT or Caltech would win (or even be applicable), hence UChicago as a possibility for a general "best at academics" universit…

If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options. They're top-tier by virtue of the glory they borrow from their students. We judge the "eliteness" of a school by what you can predict about an individual by the fact that they were admitted there.

And by that measure, Caltech is significantly outperforming in "academics".

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#103
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What grey area? It was bad enough they decided to send him home.

It's bad because MIT reprimanded him for "scrap[ing] every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home"? That's felonious territory. He should have been deported indefinitely.

[deleted]

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#104
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence they are? I don't trust Huawei all that much, rather I think whatever alternatives might also be whoever's operatives.

As a matter of government policy, all Chinese companies are government operatives. The Communist Party claims "overall leadership over all areas of endeavour in every part of the country".

So it's like a National Security Letter on steroids?

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#105
post #82
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe US completes fairly and openly? Don't you see news on China import embargo and capture of it's executives.

You also don't see TMobile stealing robots from China or Facebook luring Baidu developers to "interviews" for interrogation.

You don't?

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#106
post #63

I just finished reading 'AI Superpowers' and I hardly understand now if US has any single chance to compete with China's Tech fairly, openly, democratically, with respect.

...in what area is China actually leading? Catching up and leading require two very different skill sets.

Here's an example, these are the golden standard. Which would be the US equivalent?

https://www.dji.com/gr/products/drones

Here's another -- better than Google by a wide margin:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/1/18290215/huawei-p30-pro-ca...

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#107
This is what a commerce war looks like.

It's not about China being an oppressive state, spying, etc. The former didn't matter all these decades, and the latter goes on forever from all sides and nobody bats an eye.

It's about China catching up to (and surpassing in some cases) US tech, and not being content to be the mere "factory of the US" but sell its own stuff. Like Korea, Taiwan, and Japan each did in their own timelines decades ago (from laughed at copycats and cheap foreign manufactures, to competitive themselves).

Expect to see more of China as the "enemy du jour" going forward.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an European, I would rather get spied on by the US than by China.

[flagged]

The US is not an imperialist power?

Are you kidding me?

We have military bases and troops all over the world. Our black ops interferes in the internal affairs of any country it wants with virtually no oversight.

We use our economic might to twist arms and bend other countries to our will.

We have a ridiculous treaty with Cuba that cedes use of Guantanamo Bay to us in perpetuity for $2000 a year.

We pretty much invaded Iraq for the oil. No one believes they fucked up so badly that they thought there were WMDs and then whoops couldn’t find any!

And then there's Puerto Rico. We won't let them become a state despite multiple referendums with the outcome in favor of statehood. Instead we keep them pretty much in colony status. Sounds great for us. Sucks for them when they have no right to provide input into their own national government.

The administration is threatening to invade Venezuela because they don’t like the government.

And to go straight to your specific definition of imperialism, the only thing you have is that we are done conquering. And now that we’re done we get to tell others that they can’t do it right?

I mean really there are good arguments that can be made here but “The same cannot be said of the US” is not one of them. We just make it look cleaner.

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...in what area is China actually leading? Catching up and leading require two very different skill sets.

Here's an example, these are the golden standard. Which would be the US equivalent? https://www.dji.com/gr/products/drones Here's another -- better than Google by a wide margin: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/1/18290215/huawei-p30-pro-ca...

DJI is impressive - but is DJI leading because of AI? To me, that is mostly manufacturing. And this is indeed an area where "the west" is severly lacking. (Disclaimer: I am no drone expert, so this is a real question)

The verge says the camera is "...somehow even better than Google’s Night Sight". That is nice - but not a "wide margin".

Re: MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that novaRom was not saying that we compete fairly. I read novaRom's comment to say that we can't win if we play fairly. I also read 'AI Superpowers' and I agree with the book's premise that long term China will win the 'AI war' economic competition because their society allows broad use of data and since they are more of an online Internet-connected society they have much more data to use for training…

I haven't read the book, I'm adding it to my encumbered reading list (this site spins off so many excellent recommendations it's difficult to keep up). 1) Is the argument then that only the government can succeed with large scale initiatives? Pretty much everything that government is involved with becomes encumbered, if it's liked to a code base it drives up complexity for diminishing returns performance wise. I like…

Thanks for your comments. For 1) occasionally the government does a fine job. I worked on two large scale DARPA projects that were well managed and had good results. Also early funding of the Internet, grants for university research, etc. 2) then why can countries like Germany provide tuition free college, even for foreign students? To me, education is starting to look like big business. 3) because the free food for hungry disadvantaged children is cheap with a large potential payoff. 4) well. It would be better to have a long talk about this, but briefly: I alternate from being a long term FSF/ACLU supporter and decide that the benefits of giving up privacy are worth it. My latest ‘sin’ in this regard is signing up for G Suite and using it for my whole work/research workflow. I try to be mindful about privacy and decide in a case by case basis the value from sharing private data.
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