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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

#241

Post by DangitBobby »

nonethewiser wrote: post #239
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…

I don't understand how you think your point relates to it's parent. Are you just piggybacking off the point that the US does control export of semiconductor technology to make this separate point? Or are you suggesting the US shouldn't control export of semi-conductor technology in the same way they shouldn't restrict your publications on cryptography?

The point is that they aren't "controlling an export", they are trying to restrict free speech.

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

#242

Post by MichaelZuo »

cromwellian wrote: post #218
dannyw wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority, really? TSMC's fabs are in Taiwan, using ASML machines from the Netherlands. Much of their chips run ARM, from Cambridge. As I look at my tabs, I see Google Maps (invented by an Australian in Sydney), and Spotify (from Sweden). The world is far, far, bigger than the USA; and as an Australian, I'd say it's extremely pretentious or naive to think the US has a 'majority' of cutting edge tech.

ASML tech leveraged investments made over the decades by US national labs and consortiums like EUV-LLC as well as by companies like Cymer (DUV) which they acquired. IIRC, Part of the reason the US can forbid ASML selling EUV machines to China is they are covered by some patents held by US DOE/NIST. For sure, ASML did the “final mile” in perfecting EUV and making it work in a production environment vs the prototypes i…

The parent does have a point, a common argument for pharmaceuticals is that governments and universities fund, or participate in funding, everything except the ‘last mile’ of drug development, i.e. human clinical trials. So a naive reader may assume they were primarily responsible but in fact it is the ‘last mile’ that consumes the vast majority of resources. Although the breakdown may not be clear in the case of EUV, it is possible that the vast majority of effort was getting across that ‘last mile’ of development, and thus a primarily non-US effort.

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

#243

Post by nonethewiser »

VictorPath wrote: post #113

> 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 experie…

What do you mean? I don't understand what the American equivalent of demonization of personal property and a communist uprising is.

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

#244

Post by nonethewiser »

kragen wrote: post #228
varjag wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deaths Hundreds of thousands to millions of civilian, Red Guards and military deaths Still not obvious.

You posted that response literally three minutes after my comment. That's barely enough time to read the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution . I suggest you spend more than three minutes learning about a thing before complaining that things are not obvious to you about it. Three hours would be reasonable. You could spend the first hour or two just reading that article, or start w…

I don't see an equivalent turn of events in the US. Could you share what you mean?

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

#245

Post by pietrovismara »

sidlls wrote: post #195
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…

I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS). I've been on the defensive end of attacks by employees (all Chinese citizens, living in China) in our Chinese organization attempting to breach data and infrastructure firewalls. Once upon a time my work touched some sensitive, c…

> There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are.

Don't you think this group of politically powerful people might include the ones you research for?

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

#246

Post by kragen »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #240
kragen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. But public opinion has shifted; people in the US think "free speech" is a "right-wing issue" now, and as you can see every time China is mentioned on HN there are ten thousand xenophobic comments by assholes from the US who don't even know the difference between the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. In theory public opinion shouldn't affect the outcome of a court case unless it results in statut…

With due respect, the right wing is perfectly happy to use the power of government to suppress speech they don’t like. See eg the new bills banning discussion of sexual identity in Florida schools. I usually regret responding to OT partisan comments, but statements of belief like “ is the party of free speech” is exactly how you end up voting in a government that brutally suppresses free speech.

I didn't mean the right wing was actually in favor of free speech, and I should have been clearer about that. The right wing has never been in favor of free speech, nearly by definition. The consequence is that the US political scene is dominated by two illiberal parties, much like, for example, Egypt after Mubarak's flight, or the late Weimar Republic.

I'm surprised that you'd think right-wing US parties were my preferred political party; maybe you've forgotten who I am because I stopped using Twitter. Still, I'd think even my comments in this thread would provide abundant evidence of my commitments to liberalism and distaste for authoritarianism.

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

#247

Post by dnautics »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #123
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…

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…

If you didn't take money from the federal government, I would be inclined to agree with you, that export controls are an abridgement of the freedom of speech, but if your work is taxpayer-funded, then the government absolutely has the authority to restrict how you use the fruits of those funds; if you cannot abide by them then perhaps consider stop taking federal funds?

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

#248

Post by nonethewiser »

commandlinefan wrote: post #167
biohax2015 wrote: post #158

Please read about the Cultural Revolution. To call this “equivalent “ is laughable.

> To call this “equivalent “ yet.

Protecting intellectual property is about as far away from the Cultural Revolution as you can get.

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

#249

Post by kragen »

nonethewiser wrote: post #244
kragen wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You posted that response literally three minutes after my comment. That's barely enough time to read the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution . I suggest you spend more than three minutes learning about a thing before complaining that things are not obvious to you about it. Three hours would be reasonable. You could spend the first hour or two just reading that article, or start w…

I don't see an equivalent turn of events in the US. Could you share what you mean?

No, nothing equivalent to the Cultural Revolution has happened anywhere else ever. Hopefully it never will.

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

#250

Post by Siira »

Symbiote wrote: post #122
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…

A friend of mine is a scientist in a relevant field, and has caught Chinese PhD students photographing documents in one case, and taking a video recording of a sensitive part of a laboratory in another case. In both cases, what they were recording was not related to their own work. Not everything is published openly. Some research is kept quiet until the economic value has been realized, and sometimes the "what" is p…

Is that illegal? If not, their actions are not exactly nefarious. Sharing unpublished knowledge is a boon to humanity. (Not that the Chinese are publishing their “findings” openly.)
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