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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

#141

Post by StreamBright »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #126
coliveira wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a paranoia induced reaction that is being fostered by the media and the war industry, who are interested in creating a new cold war scenario.

Incorrect. It is a MORAL issue. Technology stolen from the US companies is advancing the national security agendas of countries with no regard for human rights and the rule of law. It is immoral to turn a blind eye to this very real threat.

It is kind of curious fact that the US is not a member of ICC. Could you guess why?

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

#142

Post by shadowgovt »

jason-phillips wrote: post #127
shadowgovt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. That's a perfectly valid but also somewhat trivial point. Some number has to be assigned as human nature requires it. Maybe the best representation of the situation is to present it as a question. When fabs cost $xx billion and take almost a decade to reach fruition from R&D to the point where they start shipping a viable…

It looks like saving a billion dollars in redundant work, which is a net societal gain. Now consumers have two companies to choose chips from instead of one functional monopoly due to a trade secret moat... Win for consumers. ;)

... Hence my unease with the way the question is phrased. I'm not saying we should either mandate corporate espionage or enforce some kind of punishments for not publicizing designs, but my point is it doesn't take a lot of reframing of the question to completely change the numbers, and that makes the numbers suspect for being anything real.

It's akin to the sleight of mind that allowed us to put the burden of fraud on consumers with the concept of "identity theft," instead of asking why it should be the responsibility of the person who's information was used that some third party used that information to trick a company into giving away resources. What if the mindset were instead "it's not Alice in Topeka's responsibility that Visa allowed Bob Hacker to scam Walmart out of a bunch of free stuff by pretending to be Alice, and Alice should be required to do exactly nothing to fix Walmart and Visa's problem?" What if instead of having to contract credit monitoring agencies to look out for identity theft, the government held credit reporting agencies responsible with statutory damages for defamation when they incorrectly declare a person has done something they have not?

A slight reframing of the problem completely changes the proposed solutions and the value calculus of what was gained and what was lost.

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

#143

Post by prionassembly »

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…

Scientists do not necessarily see the global picture here -- if anything, they'll be inclined to downplay geopolitical and nat-security issues (or at look the other way) if it produces more and better science. This is excluding any consideration of funding -- just what a scientist is supposed to care about.

Some people need to take science more seriously, but there's a kind of crowd that needs to stop worshipping scientists.

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

#144

Post by synergy20 »

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…

Two sides of the sword: The reason China got nuclear weapon so fast is that USA pushed the top nuclear scientist back to China. This could happen to semiconductor or other fields.

I don't see any solution though, if you don't control, you will lose valuables faster, if you do, you will overdo it sometimes.

Nothing is perfect, if things went too far in the process, let's trust the legal system to sort it out.

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

#145

Post by Wiseacre »

mc32 wrote: post #86
luke0016 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is the principle, but, being a society made up of fallible people, we do have false positives. All systems of justice contain false positives. There is no escape from it. It’s a balance between order and disorder where too much disorder results in chaos and too much order in tyranny.

> All systems of justice contain false positives. There is no escape from it.

They should inscribe that at the entrance of court buildings. Really drives home the aspirations of the justice system.

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

#146

Post by luke0016 »

jcranberry wrote: post #112
luke0016 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why?

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

#147

Post by hiptobecubic »

> The dismissal is a setback to the China Initiative, an effort started in 2018 to crack down on economic and scientific espionage by China.

How is this a setback? The goal is to prevent espionage, not harass and punish people for being Chinese.

Honestly, what has happened to the NYT? When did they get so bad at this? They were the most well-regarded newspaper in the world and now they read like madlibs.

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

#148

Post by loudmax »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #52
teh_klev wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like McCarthyism it’s a noble cause I'm unsure if this is sarcasm or not.

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

McCarthyism led to the persecution of anyone with socialist political sympathies. It was an attack on unpopular economic beliefs.

Let's McCarthyism what it is: Unamerican.

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

#149

Post by newnamenewface »

shadowgovt wrote: post #142
jason-phillips wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always give side eye to the accounting that considers lost sales opportunities to be losses. That's a perfectly valid but also somewhat trivial point. Some number has to be assigned as human nature requires it. Maybe the best representation of the situation is to present it as a question. When fabs cost $xx billion and take almost a decade to reach fruition from R&D to the point where they start shipping a viable…

It looks like saving a billion dollars in redundant work, which is a net societal gain. Now consumers have two companies to choose chips from instead of one functional monopoly due to a trade secret moat... Win for consumers. ;) ... Hence my unease with the way the question is phrased. I'm not saying we should either mandate corporate espionage or enforce some kind of punishments for not publicizing designs, but my p…

> Now consumers have two companies to choose chips from instead of one functional monopoly due to a trade secret moat... Win for consumers.

If we were considering this purely from the lens of consumer choice, allowing IP theft seems like a no-brainer. But it's pretty clear from the last few years how important supply chains are to the countries they reside in (and how their absence is strongly felt). To phrase it another way, suppose IP theft makes an industry outright unprofitable in a country and those jobs disappear in that country. It can take decades to spin that stuff up again and the consequences can be disastrous. From that perspective, it's understandable why governments would want to tamp down on IP theft. That said, the story described in the OP is tragic and reflects a perverse situation where someone who came to America seeking those things we promise to the world was considered guilty for chasing the American dream.

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

#150

Post by jollybean »

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…

The opposite of 'wacky' - key R&D and especially know-how is critical to the development of specific industries and in some cases, it should be guarded.

It can take decades of effort, R&D, product development to develop the key understanding towards making for example, jet turbines, high speed trains, chip fabs etc..

Economic espionage is real and part of China's industrial strategy.

It should be noted that 'everyone else' will also steal R&D to the extent that it's related to weapons, but generally not industrial information.

That said - probably most research isn't that important, and this kind of thing can easily turn into 'Witch Hunt'. Paradoxically, the CPP will also use an overbearing posture by the US on this issue as part of propaganda efforts.

The CCP right now is fighting a 'narrative war' with all the touchy issues: they are circulating information indicating that COVID started in Europe, and in response to stern words by Canada PM Trudeau, China is telling it's citizens the a recent outbreak is due to 'frozen food from China'. Controlling information means being able to tell their citizens whatever they want and having them believe it for the most part. That a few independent thinkers want to 'VPN out' and form their own opinions isn't that important if you can tell 99% of people what the truth is.

CCP is playing 'full court press competition' - they are engaging and comprising students on campus [1] , seeking information from well placed ex-patriots [2], planting spies everywhere [3], grabbing people and re-patriating Chinese citizens abroad by force [4], running disinformation campaigns [5], compromising state officials [6] and more.

So it's important that our 'values' of true justice, equality, transparency etc. are not compromised, and we don't want to regress to early 20th century racism, but at the same time, it's a 'war' of sorts and it's incredibly naive to operate on the basis that this is not happening and affecting everyone.

Probably it will take more than just a simple plan, but a major new way of thinking about China, and a whole series of changes in that regard.

Even things such as governments new 'Trustless' IT policy published here yesterday, are a step in the right direction.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china...

[2] https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/surv...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/explain-the-chinese-...

[4] https://thethaiger.com/news/world/china-forced-nearly-10000-...

[5] https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/chinas-disinformation-campai...

[6] https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Barbara-Boxer-China-...

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