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

nytimes.com

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

#131

Post by mc32 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #110
jason-phillips wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?" There are a number of issues at play here and I can speak to several of them, having either helped the federal government directly or having knowledge of industrial espionage in my industry at the time (semiconductors). Some technology is expo…

> The estimated loss was estimated to be $1 billion. I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. Not saying Hynix did nothing wrong, only that that number assumes a lot of factors that are in no way guaranteed (stability of the market, no third player independently developing innovations that would create an attractive alternative for customers, the ability of the st…

The time to bring technology to market is also worth lots of money.

Do you not think Intel is at a loss financially due to how they fell behind TSMC in fabrication technology?

If Intel instead had had the better process, how much more revenue would they have, what market cap would they have?

It has material impact. If someone unscrupulous could steal TSMCs tech, do you not think TSMC would suffer? Or how much better off the thief would be?

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

#132

Post by p_l »

mynameishere wrote: post #87
jvanderbot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"McCarthyism" is a derogatory term for overzealous political witch-hunts which cause irreparable harm to honest, innocent citizens. What you mean is counter-intelligence, and yes, that's absolutely an important thing.

The term probably shouldn't mean that since there actually was a wealth of communist spies, sympathizers, etc. Ie, it was not a witch hunt. McCarthy's problem was using the Congress in an executive role.

McCarthy's problem was being a daft c_nt on a power trip, with no idea how to actually deal with spies, and heavily based on violating supposed american freedom of thought and association. It was absolutely a witch hunt.

There's in fact no record he ever disrupted any actual spy work, as far as I know, and his legacy is that even in Warsaw Pact he became famous - famous enough to require redefining in popular vernacular "useful idiot" to include him and his supporters.

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

#133

Post by lucian1900 »

MadSudaca wrote: post #63
lucian1900 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McCarthyism was about class struggle. Persecuting all communists, socialists and trade unionists made it less likely the working class would rise up against the capitalist ruling class. It worked for the Nazis, after all. You seem to have internalised this logic, since you're assuming all communists are spies for another nation.

> made it less likely the working class would rise up against the capitalist ruling class It would make it less likely for the country to shoot itself in the foot and radically lower the standards of living of its citizens, like happened and, unfortunately, still happens, in every country that adopted communist ideas in their government.

You mean countries that started off much poorer than the US, yet the standard of living drastically improved during the socialist period? Then drastically dropped after 89, when the imperialists won the Cold War?

Just because poor countries become socialist doesn't mean socialism makes them poor. Consider that they were kept poor and socialism is the way out.

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

#134

Post by namelessoracle »

jason-phillips wrote: post #107
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…

> 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?" There are a number of issues at play here and I can speak to several of them, having either helped the federal government directly or having knowledge of industrial espionage in my industry at the time (semiconductors). Some technology is expo…

We (as in a company i have worked for) have caught employed chinese nationals try to install malware / provided internal account credentials to chinese ip addresses in simple retail big box industries. (I saw this happen personally and was shown what he was trying to install, and how a service account assigned to our group was trying to slurp up and probe the data from an IP address backtraced from China)

If that can happen in something relatively trivial you dont think a high stakes industry has it worse?

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

#135

Post by lucian1900 »

FredPret wrote: post #92
lucian1900 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McCarthyism was about class struggle. Persecuting all communists, socialists and trade unionists made it less likely the working class would rise up against the capitalist ruling class. It worked for the Nazis, after all. You seem to have internalised this logic, since you're assuming all communists are spies for another nation.

You, on the other hand, seem to have internalized a class-based worldview. I'm not sure that's healthy either

Class struggle is the engine of history. Whether that fact is healthy for myself personally or not has no bearing on its truth.

The company I work for keeps more of the value I create than they pay me. Whether I like it or not, I'm working class and in direct opposition to capitalists.

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

#136

Post by mc32 »

coliveira wrote: post #96
lordnacho wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also accusations of nothing specific. "Association with China" doesn't seem like it's specific enough to warrant sanction, all it can do it make people suspicious, which it does regardless of whether you've even done anything with China. I accept the US is having a power struggle with China at the moment, but this is not the way to win it. People who aren't actually in favor of freedom will welcome this "rec…

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

#137

Post by Veen »

locallost wrote: post #103
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. Why on earth would you want to have a bunch of Soviet or communist Chinese spies running around?

McCarthyism boils down to someone having absolute power to destroy somebody else's life based on their own beliefs. For instance, homosexuals were also targeted by McCarthy, simply because they were interpreted as subversive. It's nothing more than a modern witch hunt, a practice that can't be reconciled with what we consider the rule of law today. There is absolutely nothing noble about it.

There are two issues that should be separated. The first is that there were (and probably are) foreign spies in industry and government. That's damaging and they should be removed. The second issue is that those given the power to find and remove spies can abuse it. That's also damaging and should be prevented.

However, that fact that people abuse their power doesn't mean we should stop looking for spies, or that all spy hunting is a form of Mcarthyism.

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

#138

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

jvanderbot wrote: post #79
Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. Why on earth would you want to have a bunch of Soviet or communist Chinese spies running around?

"McCarthyism" is a derogatory term for overzealous political witch-hunts which cause irreparable harm to honest, innocent citizens. What you mean is counter-intelligence, and yes, that's absolutely an important thing.

> "McCarthyism" is a derogatory term for overzealous political witch-hunts which cause irreparable harm to honest, innocent citizens.

Yes, that’s exactly my point.

> What you mean is counter-intelligence

No, I do mean McCarthyism. The pitfall that counter-intelligence easily falls into where they end up targeting innocent people rather than actual spies.

A spy spends every waking moment trying to not look like a spy. Gang Chen on the other hand spends every waking moment trying to figure out heat transfer and nothing about not looking like a spy, because he “has nothing to hide”. That alone is going to make him look more like a spy than a real spy.

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

#139

Post by p_l »

retrac wrote: post #101
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think “communist ideas” is well-defined. Could you explain what you mean by the phrase?

Not OP but it seemed unambiguous to me given "countries that have adopted". The countries that proclaimed themselves communist at some point -- the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Angola, etc. (Most no longer exist, only Cuba, Vietnam, China and Laos are governed by self-described communist parties today.)

And a lot of those countries had standard of living sharply rise during communist era. People really, really under appreciate how bad conditions were in many of those countries for those who weren't creme de la creme of society, or how much for example interwar Poland history is kept silent about the squalor and poverty of huge portion of the society.

Yes, for various reasons economic systems in many of them failed (or in few cases, it was nationalistic strife that dealt the blow), but others learnt lessons from it (for example, about badly defining and strictly adhering to plans, or too high concentration in one company, etc.)

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

#140

Post by JackFr »

jhugo wrote: post #76
JackFr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When both the state and his lawyer were pressing him to take the deal, both the state and his lawyer believed he was guilty. The charges were withdrawn, as I understand it, when the Department of Energy clarified the understanding of the grant application for the US attorney and they came to the conclusion that there was not a duty to disclose the particular affiliation. There’s no doubt that this caused professional…

You seem to imply that he flouted the rules, but we don't know if he has any ties to China beyond the ties that anybody born there would have.

No I don't imply that at all. The article is clear, at least seemed to be to me, that he had affiliations with Chinese organizations, he did not disclose them, and most importantly to the charges being dropped, based on Department of Energy regulations, he was under no obligation to disclose them.

The US attorney brought charges based on the idea that he was obligated to disclose them. The US attorney was wrong according to the Department of Energy, who administered the grant.

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