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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

#361

Post by welshwelsh »

the_doctah wrote: post #334
KerrAvon wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you can be "objective," live through the past twenty years, and wind up thinking "both sides" are equally problematic/at fault for the current situation? Maybe a little history will help? America has been prone to succumb to demagoguery for a long time. Here's a novel from 1935 that you should be familiar with: https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Happen-Here-Sinclair-Lewis/dp/19... The reason it's finally happening now i…

You provided a perfect example without realizing it, it just wasn't contained in the links you provided.

But he's correct. That's the part you're missing. If he was wrong, that would be completely different. You're focusing on the appearance of the rhetoric, when you should be attempting to determine the truth of the points presented (i.e. which party is correct).

Sometimes- more often than not, I would even say- there is at least one political faction in a society that is completely batshit crazy.

It's never both/all sides. But it can look that way, because whatever accusations are thrown at one side, even if true, are returned with the exact same rhetoric, even if false.

For example you see this in domestic violence court proceedings. Usually, the abuser will accuse the victim of being the real abuser and accuse them of all sorts of things, some of which might even be true (such as hitting an attacker in self defense). This is surprisingly effective, and often times people will side with the abuser or conclude that both parties are part of the problem. But that doesn't change the fact that there is ONE abuser (usually the party with a power advantage) against whom the accusations are justified, and the other party who is comparatively innocent. Even though they accuse each other of the exact same thing and their behavior looks identical from a distance.

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

#362

Post by tasha0663 »

neither_color wrote: post #26

Last week, the government dismissed the case against Dr. Chen, which alleged that he had concealed seven Chinese affiliations in applications for $2.7 million in grants from the U.S. Energy Department. Prosecutors announced that they had received new information indicating that Dr. Chen had not been obliged to disclose those affiliations, undercutting the basis of the case. I feel like this part could use more detail…

> Prosecutors had floated the idea of a deferred prosecution agreement, which would have allowed him to return to work and apply for government grants in the future. In return... he would have to admit to having some ties to China, none of them a violation of the law.

I'm a little confused as well. It reads to me as if they offered him a deal to get out of this by saying what they eventually found out anyway.

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

#363

Post by sam0x17 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #301
sam0x17 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But… tell China this same argument. That they should not protect their self interest and see how well it goes over. Note that my argument is one of prioritization -- to protect our self-interest, we have a lot more pressing problems at home than Intel et al losing a few bucks because they let the wrong people see the secret formula, and wasting precious human and financial resources on the wrong problems can be wor…

The irony of all of this, of course, is that we already have a system in place for protecting secret formulae: you patent them. But here we get on the issue of the question of international espionage and whether it matters if you patent something in the US if China will just refuse to enforce an international patent. Perhaps there's a case to be made that in a world where superpowers don't obey each others' laws, thi…

It just goes to show that patents are stupid at the end of the day. From a harm-reduction standpoint, they do way, way more harm in the form of astronomically high drug prices, core pieces of technology being off limits even though almost anyone could have invented them, etc., etc., than they help. Patents, like intellectual property, are an imaginary legal construct, and if you want to compete in a global economy, you have to assume others aren't going to buy into your imaginary concept, particularly when it comes to opposing global powers.

A lot of knock-off technology is actually _created_ by people reverse-engineering things _from_ the patent as well, which they then mass-produce in a jurisdiction that doesn't respect U.S. intellectual property (AKA China where most things are mass-produced).

The real system of protection in place for protecting secret formulae is simple and more effective -- don't show it to the wrong people, and don't outsource your factories.

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

#364

Post by ren_engineer »

pietrovismara wrote: post #253
ren_engineer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Surely, everyone is working on different things here and there, but this idea that there is such critical intellectual property the US that needs to be guarded so intensely in this like James Bond scenario, just feels a little wacky lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? Protecting IP isn't some new thing, humans have done it for thousands of y…

> lots of technology that took billions of dollars and decades to develop? Why would you give that away for free? I don't know, ask Alexander Fleming maybe. To save lives? Make the life better for scores of other people, no matter their nationality or class? Why do you even do research, just for the bilions?

>Alexander Fleming

not a great example, Penicillin was only made possible due to government funding to refine the manufacturing process for war

>As to the chemical isolation and purification, Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford took up the research to mass-produce it, which they achieved with support from World War II military projects under the U.S. and British governments

and you could make the case that if the Allies just handed that research over to their enemies it would prolong the war

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

#365

Post by tasha0663 »

ok_dad wrote: post #340
neither_color wrote: post #26

Last week, the government dismissed the case against Dr. Chen, which alleged that he had concealed seven Chinese affiliations in applications for $2.7 million in grants from the U.S. Energy Department. Prosecutors announced that they had received new information indicating that Dr. Chen had not been obliged to disclose those affiliations, undercutting the basis of the case. I feel like this part could use more detail…

The “none of your business” kind. Why is there a whole thread of this reasoning here? You have read the article, he was totally innocent, and now you’re questioning his “Chinese ties”. I guess he was right in that his image was tarnished permanently. What a sad world that such an accomplished person has been ruined. Imagine the awesome impact he could have had. His research area could have revolutionized many things…

Maybe they updated the article. The archived link suggests they found out that he was not obligated to reveal any such ties. This is subtly different than finding he has none at all.

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

#368

Post by tasha0663 »

vishnugupta wrote: post #310

This is just such a sad situation. The scientist's reputation has taken a big beating and he will now be looked through the lease of these accusations for rest of his career, if not more. The last paragraph stood out for me. “My love is science. I did not want politics, right? I saw that, and I got away from it. I do my devotion to science. I help people, I support. But I learned that you can’t get away. Politics imp…

> The scientist's reputation has taken a big beating

While this really sucked, this is an exaggeration. No charges. Still has his job. He can still file for government grants. The article starts with his colleagues offering up opportunities for him and celebrating that he is back.

Yeah, the feds screwed the pooch and messed things up, but I don't see where his reputation was actually harmed.

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

#369

Post by laputan_machine »

kragen wrote: post #350
varjag wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote was literally from Cultural Revolution WP summary, so you may well heed your own advice and read it for once. My point was that any parallels between that and events in the USA are nothing but disingenuous exaggeration. Consider just how vague your allusions are: without knowing your political views I would be at loss figuring if you allude to the rise of proto-fascist American right or lament the assault…

Quoted post unavailable.

To me, his response to you was identically snarky as your response to him.

I think you could both do with being a little kinder to each other

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

#370

Post by [deleted] »

pphysch wrote: post #357
KerrAvon wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you can be "objective," live through the past twenty years, and wind up thinking "both sides" are equally problematic/at fault for the current situation? Maybe a little history will help? America has been prone to succumb to demagoguery for a long time. Here's a novel from 1935 that you should be familiar with: https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Happen-Here-Sinclair-Lewis/dp/19... The reason it's finally happening now i…

USA was created in the wake of perhaps the largest ethnic cleansing in human history (virtual entirety of the North American continent) and has been at war for >90% of its history. It has always been deeply racist (whether overt like KKK lynchings or subtle like census reporting and tokenism). Whatever these rightoids are allegedly plotting, you can't say they are "remaking" America into something radically new.

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