MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by m0zg » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

thrwawayw434 wrote: post #91

eastendguy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you follow ML ? A lot of big-impact papers in Computer vision has come directly from mainland China and Hong Kong. MSRA, CUHK, Sensetime, and Baidu have made quite a few advances in the field.DMLC a group of members composed mostly of Chinese students basically wrote things like MXNET and Xgboost. Granted most of these are collaborative ventures, but calling China 'catching up' at this stage is ignorant.

And yet nearly all SOTA research is done in the US.

Eventually folks in China realize they could easily be making $500K+/yr at FANG and be financially independent in 10 years, so they leave for the much, much greener US pastures, and stay here.

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

#172

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

jdsully wrote: post #170

Barrin92 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US felt extremely threatened by Japanese manufacturing in the 80s and in fact most of the world had this cultural idea of Japan becoming the dominant global technology force. As a consequence the US government imposed a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics, accused the country of "currency manipulation" (sound familiar?). And on the topic of IP Japanese faced the very same copycat accusations that China does now.…

Your own article contradicts you with respect to Japanese and IP theft. Its thesis is that they were just playing the game better: ''Are the Japanese picking our brains?'' a congressional staffer asks. ''Yes. They're doing it very well. They're doing it legally. The question is whether we have a two-way street.'' The Chinese accusations are that illegal methods are used. Which is a major difference.

>The Chinese accusations are that illegal methods are used. Which is a major difference.

It's really not until the accusations are actually proven to be true. Remember that Bloomberg story about Chinese spy chips in every device on the planet ? Whatever happened to that one? In the current dispute with Huawei, how many accusations are substantiated?

Do the Japanese simply get the benefit of the doubt because we're just taking it on faith that they never cooperated with their government in a country that is notoriously corporatist, but the Chinese we'll just designate as thieves?

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

#173

Post by coldtea » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #164

Barrin92 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US felt extremely threatened by Japanese manufacturing in the 80s and in fact most of the world had this cultural idea of Japan becoming the dominant global technology force. As a consequence the US government imposed a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics, accused the country of "currency manipulation" (sound familiar?). And on the topic of IP Japanese faced the very same copycat accusations that China does now.…

The big difference is that while Japan was frequently accused of IP theft, the actual occurrences were few and far between as the result of individual corporate activity. Chinese IP theft isn't just rampant--it's actively promoted and paid for by the Chinese government, which even goes so far as to identify targets for IP theft and provides governmental assistance in extracting stolen IP from the victim country.

>The big difference is that while Japan was frequently accused of IP theft, the actual occurrences were few and far between as the result of individual corporate activity.

The accusations against Japanese companies at the time were including that the Japanese government were assisting them, and that the IP theft was part of national competitiveness policy. (And of course in Japan - as in S. Korea - corporations and state go hand in hand, though not to the degree of China).

Not that the inverse was also not happening (then and now):

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/31/national/wikile...

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

#174

Post by scruple » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

aurailious wrote: post #55

lexs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has been caught doing industrial espionage as well, more of a pest or cholera situation here.

This is an amazing case of whataboutism.

Every single time China appears on HN these days, it seems that it's nearly impossible to make headway in the threads because of the whataboutism that inevitably crops up. I was recently told that it's not _actually_ whataboutism, it's $SOMETHING_ELSE.

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

#175

Post by StudentStuff » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

om3n wrote: post #143

Here's an anecdotal story. My team was interviewing engineers last year. We had a Chinese engineer come interview with us. She was in the States on a work visa, and her first job here was for a state government project. She was on a team building a web application that had public-facing and internal-facing UIs, and she was apparently working on both of these. Anyways, she comes in for the interview, and shortly after…

Sounds like a FOIA request should fix that "open source" problem. If its software developed by or for a governmental agency in the US, we as citizens have the right to access it as the public domain work it is. The recent ORCA fare enforcement app shenanigans with Sound Transit is a great example, even with a contracting company as a layer of indirection for developing said software doesn't escape said code's FOIAbility.

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

#176

Post by darpa_escapee » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:34 PM UTC

throwaway29875 wrote: post #104

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No. The CCP has literal ownership in Chinese firms in the form of equity.

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

#177

Post by gnu8 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

balabaster wrote: post #138

gnu8 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By home, do you mean their personal network, their employer, or their country?

One would assume to the corporation donating the money. I wouldn't naturally assume it was to his Mom or "China." I think a fair number of corporations assume that if they're paying you to do research, that they're entitled to the research and any results you obtain from it. If I were sending data "back home" I wouldn't be sending it to "England." I'll be honest, I wouldn't have the first clue who to contact, unless…

The reason I asked the question is because sometimes there is a tendency to think of "China" as a monolithic entity and say "China" is spying on companies or putting bugs in the cellular equipment and so on. I've even caught myself doing that. But it's a lazy way of thinking because China is full of individuals pursuing their own goals.

It is for the same reason that I asked whether the person copied the files to his own system or his employer's. No doubt this person has their own interest in computers and technology, and it's entirely reasonable to think that they would want the MIT CSAIL files for themselves, outside of any orders from their employer to copy the information.

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

#178

Post by xster » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:54 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #162

str33t_punk wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However Taiwan, Korea, and Japan all did this without pissing everyone off. China needs to learn to play by the rules

Not really. See my answer with links and info above. Exactly the same things you hear about China (accusations, threats, fears, tariffs, etc) also happened with Japan for example in the 70s to 90s.

Or with the US from Europe with weaving, steel production etc.

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

#179

Post by oh_sigh » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:56 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #167

eob wrote: 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…

Uh, if there was explicit instruction at the beginning not to scrape internal data and code, then there would be no misunderstanding in the first place. Was there any NDA???

Maybe the cultural misunderstanding was that you actually need to pay attention to those explicit instructions.

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

#180

Post by cf498 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

CharlesColeman wrote: post #149

cf498 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Chinese dissident. China is not going around the globe putting people in execution vans there. So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited. The possible impact on my life is in no way comparable to the possible impact of the same by the US. I would like to not be mistook landing on no-fly lists, being banned from international banking as well as from making business with any comp…

> I am not a Chinese dissident....So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited. I would recommend that you think of yourself as a dissident, including as a foreign dissident, even if you aren't actually one . I think that attitude can be a great source of moral guidance and perspective.

Which has nothing to do with the question of what would be preferable to European citizens, US surveillance or Chinese surveillance. The possible effects are rather clear cut, which is why I dont understand why anyone would views this differently. I understand that for a lot of people this becomes a moral question quickly, but thats not whats up to debate here. Its not about the justifications for surveillance programs but their direct effect on people living in Europe. I also have less to worry about from North Korean surveillance, simply because I am not a north Korean. We dont have that luxus with the US, despite not being a US citizen. Or more fittingly because we are not US citizens.