Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 484 posts

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#111

Post by baryphonic »

automatoney wrote: post #85
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #32

Like McCarthyism it’s a noble cause, but I can’t help but wonder if these initiatives rather tend to be outsmarted by the real spies. People who are accidentally incriminated by clerical errors and misunderstandings are much lower hanging fruit.

Behold, "a noble cause": "On May 26, 1947, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a memo stating, 'With regard to the picture It's a Wonderful Life, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Co…

At that time, McCarthy had been in the Senate for all of five months, not nearly long enough for him to start grilling people for having associations with the Communist party.

Of course, few communists openly come out and say they are making communist propaganda. It's a bit silly to think Capra would have been one of them, or that "It's a Wonderful Life" doesn't also celebrate the banker George Bailey (portrayed by conservative Republican Jimmy Stewart), but I can understand why the government would want to monitor communist groups, even if they get it laughably wrong from time to time.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#112

Post by jcranberry »

luke0016 wrote: post #78
batushka3 wrote: post #23

Quoted post unavailable.

Some of us, governments included, believe that the presumption of innocence is a fundamental right. "That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved." That quote is from Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the US government.

Its somewhat important that this principal only applies to criminal court.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#113

Post by VictorPath »

> The son of two mathematics teachers who were sent to teach on farms during China’s Cultural Revolution, Dr. Chen grew up without any hope of becoming a scientist. His parents, the descendants of landowners, had a “bad classification” from the Chinese government, and were viewed suspiciously. His father warned him he would probably spend his life as a farmer. But then Mao Zedong died.

Chen moved to the US to experience the American equivalent of this.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#115

Post by lettergram »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #77

To at least attempt to think about this critically, and to try to ignore the amount of frankly shocking things people are saying here, can I ask, maybe from people in the field, is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world? We live in a global world where scientists in various institutions are constantly trading papers, findings. Why are we so worried that the U.S. migh…

What’s the primary export of the United States?

> Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" Are actual scientists concerned? Or just the state, and apparently most of the fellow commenters?

It’s intellectual property. The majority of the worlds cutting edge research are designed, developed, tested, and eventually marketed in the United States. That’s the advantage of free markets and gives the US first mover advantage.

Yes, it’s exceedingly important that is maintained (to the United States). If that stops occurring... manufacturing is gone, mining and energy sectors are regulated to oblivion. There’s not much left. Food and services? Healthcare? None of those produce enough wealth to maintain the nation, only information and advanced / advancing technology can support US growth.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#116

Post by MagnumOpus »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #82
gurkendoktor wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disagreement about ethics, but: > This is a basic truth of economics. Is this basic truth backed up by anything tangible? Ethnic Chinese already face unfair hurdles by the current push against standardized testing. But one more obstacle would suddenly make the US unable to compete? With whom, anyway - the only worthy competitor I can think of is hardly egalitarian. It seems like dangerously wishful thinking to me…

>>>Ethnic Chinese already face unfair hurdles by the current push against standardized testing. Please elaborate on this argument.

Asian-Americans (in particular ethnic Chinese and Indian) have, on average, far better ACT/SAT scores than white or black applicants to good US universities.

It is an open secret that in order to balance admissions (i.e. racially discriminate) against the former and in favour of the latter, most universities downweight test scores in favour of other subjective categories like "personality" scores where Asians magically get far worse scores than people of other ethnicities. A quite divisive practice, as it is quite clearly racist, but serves "affirmative action" of raising black representation in good schools.

See the famous case "Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College", to be litigated in front of the SCOTUS this year.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#117

Post by JaimeThompson »

lettergram wrote: post #115
beepbooptheory wrote: post #77

To at least attempt to think about this critically, and to try to ignore the amount of frankly shocking things people are saying here, can I ask, maybe from people in the field, is this level of industrial/scientific espionage even a critical factor in our current world? We live in a global world where scientists in various institutions are constantly trading papers, findings. Why are we so worried that the U.S. migh…

What’s the primary export of the United States? > Are you all really here in 2022, being like "we can't risk a Chinese national from even seeing our American semiconductor research, they will steal it and use it against us?" Are actual scientists concerned? Or just the state, and apparently most of the fellow commenters? It’s intellectual property. The majority of the worlds cutting edge research are designed, develo…

>That’s the advantage of free markets

The large amounts of research done for and funded by the US government helps a lot too as do the various methods to give R&D tax advantages.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#118

Post by rolling_robot »

In US you end up being free, but treated like a spy by some funding agency. In Russia you end up in prison having no hope of getting back. Arrested in April 2021, 69 year old professor Golubkin is still in remand prison. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/04/13/another-treason-case accused for governmental treason.

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#119

Post by elzbardico »

tsol wrote: post #31

>The dismissal is a setback to the China Initiative, an effort started in 2018 to crack down on economic and scientific espionage by China. Many of the prosecutions, like the case against Dr. Chen, do not allege espionage or theft of information, but something narrower: failing to disclose Chinese affiliations in grant applications to U.S. agencies. Critics say it has instilled a pervasive atmosphere of fear among sc…

The problem with law enforcement today is that they want their work cut out for them. Instead of doing the old school investigation stuff and THEN getting a subpoena, they instead want to have blanket access to all of our communications. Instead of proving real espionage, they want to merely assert "suspect" links and then you're the one who have to prove you're innocent. Instead of finding drug dealers and terrorists the old fashioned way, they want all of your bank transactions reported automatically for them, so they can sit on their chairs and deep learn their way into your data towards some flimsy accusation that they will use to pressure you into pledging your guilty to something. Really, it is about time we raise our voices agains that. It is about time we say enough is enough. It is about time for us to say, the State serve its Citizens, and not the other way around. Fuck this bureaucratic neo-feudalism.

Let us say no for this shit! ---

BASTILLE DAY

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Lyrics: Neil Peart

There’s no bread let them eat cake \ There’s no end to what they’ll take \ Flaunt the fruits of noble birth \ Wash the salt into the earth \ But they’re marching to Bastille Day \ La guillotine will claim her bloody prize \ Free the dungeons of the innocent \ The king will kneel, and let his kingdom rise \

Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace \ Naked fear on every face \ See them bow their heads to die \ As we would bow as they rode by \

And we’re marching to Bastille Day \ La guillotine will claim her bloody prize \ Sing, o choirs of cacophony \ The king has kneeled, to let his kingdom rise. \

Lessons taught, but never learned \ All around us anger burns \ Guide the future by the past \ Long ago the mould was cast \

For they marched up to Bastille Day \ La guillotine – claimed her bloody prize \ Hear the echoes of the centuries \ Power isn’t all that money buys \

Re: In the end, you're treated like a spy, says MIT scientist

#120

Post by selimthegrim »

There was a case at Caltech with an Israeli national and I don’t recall that receiving nearly the same level of scrutiny. Instead the supervisor who got her work stolen got disciplined for putting a cat as a coauthor on one of her papers as a joke.
Post reply on HN