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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

#201

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #171
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, many military technologies developed by the US companies are being used to manufacture weaponries used to kill foreign civilians... what's the moral of that story? Also, by your logic what if totalitarian regimes are to steal medical technologies from US companies to develop medicines for their citizens? Is that moral or immoral?

false equivalence. If you actually cared you would acknowledge the vast difference between China's human rights record and that of the United States.

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

#202

Post by Diesel555 »

jollybean wrote: post #150
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…

> 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

This is a challenging problem for a democracy being exploited by an authoritarian government.

The challenge is 1) Not causing xenophobia (as the article implies) while still 2) recognizing and preventing the practices and influence of the CCP on our population, corporations, and economy which do not align with our moral values and also preventing the export of externalities onto democracies whose very structure allows it.

Most of the books I read have something along the lines of first recognizing the author's appreciation for and love of the Chinese people then discussing what the CCP is doing and what a democracy can do to protect itself without compromising its values.

If anyone looking into this dichotomy has not seriously studied the subject and just thinks the US government is trying to start a Cold War, is paranoid, or that open markets and will magically fix this problem I recommend a book published in 2022. "The World According to China" - Elizabeth C. Economy.

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

#203

Post by HarryHirsch »

varjag wrote: post #185
HarryHirsch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A former colleague married a Chinese lady whose parents had suffered badly through the Cultural Revolution. He told the story, how she went off to the US for her PhD and how her parents drove her to the airport and told her never to return to China. How things have changed within just a generation!

Can you elaborate how exactly? Was your former colleague sent to kill sparrows in rice fields too?

(It was the colleague's wife's parents.) Obviously I never got the full story, but from what I heard, the parents were academics who had their house vandalized by the Red Guards and were sent to work the countryside.

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

#204

Post by kragen »

varjag wrote: post #185
HarryHirsch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A former colleague married a Chinese lady whose parents had suffered badly through the Cultural Revolution. He told the story, how she went off to the US for her PhD and how her parents drove her to the airport and told her never to return to China. How things have changed within just a generation!

Can you elaborate how exactly? Was your former colleague sent to kill sparrows in rice fields too?

You're confusing the Cultural Revolution with the Great Leap Forward. If you read a little bit about the Cultural Revolution the connection will be obvious.

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

#205

Post by boredumb »

kragen wrote: post #196
matthewdgreen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a professor in the field of cryptography and there are export restrictions here as well. Under no circumstances would I allow the US government to block publication of my papers or talks based on the theory that my speech is “a technology export.” It’s not even clear that this would be allowed under the First Amendment. The government could obviously try to advance that theory, but I strongly suspect they would…

As you are of course aware, but perhaps some people reading this are not, the government did consistently advance the theory that publication of speech about cryptography was "a technology export" subject to export control --- specifically, cryptographic source code --- until Bernstein v. United States , which required a several-years-long court battle. You were a country that values free speech. Now you are a countr…

*jokes are hard

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by ethanbond »

Aperocky wrote: post #165
ethanbond wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Errr... pretty sure the allegation is more specific than you suggest. The allegation was that he was being paid by China and did not disclose this on grant applications.

Case was closed, allegation was rejected. Witch hunt begins when allegation holds more weight then the verdict, and when it becomes the verdict, you can say goodbye to all semblance of rule of law, which surprisingly many here will condone depending on the subject.

The really, really important thing about witch hunts is that witches don’t exist. Allegations that turn out to be wrong can be really harmful, agreed there. Pretty unclear how to do anything about that without infringing on 1st Amendment rights, especially when it’s not a criminal allegation (i.e. indictments should IMO be sealed til verdict, but not all allegations are indictments).

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

#208

Post by varjag »

kragen wrote: post #204
varjag wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how exactly? Was your former colleague sent to kill sparrows in rice fields too?

You're confusing the Cultural Revolution with the Great Leap Forward. If you read a little bit about the Cultural Revolution the connection will be obvious.

Deaths

Hundreds of thousands to millions of civilian, Red Guards and military deaths

Still not obvious.

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

#209

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

StreamBright wrote: post #141
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are good reasons why geopolitics cannot be held to strict interpretation of laws, not the least of which is the enforceability paradox, whereby countries more likely to break the norms are less susceptible to enforcement action. This, and attaching the name 'court' on something does not make it any less arbitrary or politically motivated

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

#210

Post by lucian1900 »

FredPret wrote: post #175
lucian1900 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1) I doubt you're actually working class, even if you're working for money 2) Capitalism is a decentralized system of allocating resources. By working and investing (even if just owning a retirement plan), you are taking part in it all. You may now collect your monocle and top hat. 3) Getting paid some fraction between 0 and 1 of the value you create is a fact of nature for all actors in the system. The company has t…

Capitalism is a mode of production in which production is motivated by profit derived from the private ownership of the means of production. Those that own the means of production (factories, companies, etc.) perform no labour, but get paid from the difference between the value produced by those that do work and the value generated by that labour. This difference is called profit.

I own no significant means of production. The vast majority of my income comes from selling my labour power for a fraction of the value it generates. Thus I am working class, generating profits for capitalists.

Wealth and progress is generated by labour. I wouldn't have a good job and a computer if the forces of production hadn't been advanced so far. This advancement does happen under capitalism, but not exclusively. Worse, the mode of production can inhibit further advancement, like feudalism was inhibiting industrial advancement.

Capitalism fails all the time, it does it so often it's called the business cycle. Sometimes is fails catastrophically, like the Great Depression or 2008. It's being kept just barely functional by those that benefit from it; most of us don't.

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