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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

#421

Post by echelon »

kragen wrote: post #230
echelon wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nortel comes to mind. Think about all the highly paid engineers that lost their jobs. An entire domestic sector wiped out.

Nortel was sunk by mismanagement before the espionage episode, not by the espionage itself. Quite possibly a lot of Nortel's technology would have been lost in the confusion of bankruptcy if the spies hadn't saved it.

Do you have any info or reading on this? I tried to Google "nortel mismanagement", but it's unclear any of the sources put it in light of the espionage.

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

#422

Post by javajosh »

openknot wrote: post #303
javajosh wrote: post #284

As bad as this is, it could have been so much worse for him. The government does not usually correct itself like this, preferring instead to continue with prosecution, notch up another corrupt win, and call it a day. And in fact, for this reason, the (current) government needs to get major kudos! And Dr. Chen should get more hugs, and more support - as many as he needs to help him forget this nightmare and get back t…

>And in fact, for this reason, the (current) government needs to get major kudos! From the article: 'The 15 postdoctoral students he worked with were transferred to other research groups, taking their knowledge with them. “We are all losers, right?” Dr. Chen said. “My reputation got ruined. My students, my post-docs, they changed their career. They changed to other groups. M.I.T., the country, the U.S., we lose. I ca…

I made my comment in light of my recent education about how the government actually functions, specifically its criminal justice system. On the spectrum of outcomes this is actually pretty good, considering the alternatives. Countless men are wrongfully convicted, spend their entire lives in prison, and are eventually exonerated. What do they get? They get released.

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

#423

Post by wolverine876 »

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.

> perhaps the largest ethnic cleansing in human history (virtual entirety of the North American continent)

We're measuring by geographical area? If we are, very few people lived (or has ever lived) in most of the continent.

To suggest that the worst of someone is all there is, is just an old means to tear down the best, and to demoralize. I'm sure you can find much more.

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

#424

Post by wolverine876 »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #416
fennecfoxen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing people today may not know about McCarthyism is that there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed. The reason people forget this is because McCarthyism itself was not actually a very good remedy. It was great for the self-aggrandizement of Senator McCarthy (until he went too far, and his target Mr. Welch called him out while being interrogated before the Sen…

I'm sure there were spies - but this is not what McCarthyism was about. Primarily it was about communism. Spying for a foreign govt is bad, and we don't want them in our govt, regardless of their ideology. Communist beliefs, tendencies and association are protected by our (US) constitution. Targeting spies is good, but McCarty was targeting communists (or alleged communists).

McCarthy was targeting people whose ideology he didn't like, and using communism as a justification.

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

#425

Post by wolverine876 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #102
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.

The thing people today may not know about McCarthyism is that there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed. The reason people forget this is because McCarthyism itself was not actually a very good remedy. It was great for the self-aggrandizement of Senator McCarthy (until he went too far, and his target Mr. Welch called him out while being interrogated before the Sen…

> there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed.

Where can I find some serious research on that?

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

#426

Post by pphysch »

wolverine876 wrote: post #423
pphysch wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> perhaps the largest ethnic cleansing in human history (virtual entirety of the North American continent) We're measuring by geographical area? If we are, very few people lived (or has ever lived) in most of the continent. To suggest that the worst of someone is all there is, is just an old means to tear down the best, and to demoralize. I'm sure you can find much more.

Ethnic cleansing apologism on HN? Really?

> By the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million [prior to colonization]—with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Indige...

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

#427

Post by kragen »

wolverine876 wrote: post #423
pphysch wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> perhaps the largest ethnic cleansing in human history (virtual entirety of the North American continent) We're measuring by geographical area? If we are, very few people lived (or has ever lived) in most of the continent. To suggest that the worst of someone is all there is, is just an old means to tear down the best, and to demoralize. I'm sure you can find much more.

There isn't a "someone" to tear down here. Everyone who lived in North America before 01900 is already dead, colonizer and colonized alike. And none of them were angels --- or devils. But this is not about whether they were good or bad; it's about how racist they were, which is important for understanding the degree to which modern US reactionary racism is or is not a novel phenomenon.

There's a lot of debate over the pre-Columbian population of North America, with modern population estimates ranging from under 4 million to over 15 million, all of which are much higher than estimates that used to be popular before 01960 or so, though still much lower than its current population. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Indigeno... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A....

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

#428

Post by kragen »

pphysch wrote: post #426
wolverine876 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps the largest ethnic cleansing in human history (virtual entirety of the North American continent) We're measuring by geographical area? If we are, very few people lived (or has ever lived) in most of the continent. To suggest that the worst of someone is all there is, is just an old means to tear down the best, and to demoralize. I'm sure you can find much more.

Ethnic cleansing apologism on HN? Really? > By the end of the 20th century most scholars gravitated toward an estimate of around 50 million [prior to colonization]—with some historians arguing for an estimate of 100 million or more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_Indige...

To be clear, those 50 million and 100 million numbers are for America as a whole, not North America.

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

#429

Post by kragen »

echelon wrote: post #421
kragen wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nortel was sunk by mismanagement before the espionage episode, not by the espionage itself. Quite possibly a lot of Nortel's technology would have been lost in the confusion of bankruptcy if the spies hadn't saved it.

Do you have any info or reading on this? I tried to Google "nortel mismanagement", but it's unclear any of the sources put it in light of the espionage.

There are some comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30114607, but I admit I haven't verified them. I'm interested to hear what you end up concluding if you do dig into the sources.

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

#430

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #285
throwawayarnty wrote: post #10

The worst part of these accusations is that your reputation is tarnished whether you are guilty or not. This instilled a sense of fear in every person even if they are innocent because you can still be targeted and your career ruined. If this scientist was just stating out, rather than already established, he would likely have had to quit science. There should be some penalty for false accusations that can compensate…

That's true and that's unfortunate. At the same time, how do you balance national security versus avoiding situations like this one? One of my takeaways from studying the McCarthy era was that there really were a lot of spies and communist sympathizers in America at the time. It wasn't some figment of someone's imagination. Likewise, I think we have good reason to proceed under the assumption that China is trying to…

There still are spies all over the place, so I don't know what's all that probative about the fact that there really were Soviet spies in the McCarthy era.
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