Charles Lieber [1] or Houston Chinese Consulate vibes [2].
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/harvard-university-p...
[2] https://abc13.com/fire-chinese-consulate-documents-being-bur...
FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
121–130 of 517 posts
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#122- "None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Mastodon. He continued: "Has anyone been in contact? I hear he’s been missing for two weeks and his students can’t reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???" Prof. Green also posted about the vanishing of Prof. Wang here on HN the other day, https://news.ycombinator.com/…
I’m missing the chronology here
So he was missing for two weeks already and then the FBI raid occurred Friday? Who was the woman at the house if not his wife
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#123[flagged]
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried in huge public media-heavy trials. The USSR even did huge public trials for American spies, because there's no incentive to forgo the nationalist boost to public opinion when collaborators would be aware of the disappearance either way.
Being removed from your employer's web pages isn't "being vanished"; we don't even know if Wang is in custody. All I'm saying is, in the fact pattern where this is another unhinged ICE raid, IU doesn't strike a tenured faculty member in an endowed chair position from all their websites. I've got nothing past that. Later From the TPM follow-up link downthread: faculty at IU were notified more than a week before the ra…
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Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have no evidence that Wang "was" disappeared. We know that he's nowhere to be found, that the university put him on leave weeks ago [0], and that the FBI recently searched his home. Notably, the university put him on leave weeks before the FBI searched his home. That sequence is better explained by the hypothesis that Wang vanished himself suddenly and the university called in the FBI to investigate things that th…
On the long list of problems caused by the government "disappearing" people (which they have objectively been doing lately) is that it destroys trust and therefore makes even valid legal proceedings seem more shady than they would in a world in which due process was a universal guarantee in practice. I don't fault anyone for jumping to conclusions implicating the government is in the wrong here rather than Wang.
I understand why people are tempted, but I worry that jumping to such conclusions is counterproductive. If everyone who gets in trouble with federal law enforcement is considered "disappeared" in the public imagination until they make a public statement about it, we're going to end up with a lot of justified cases bundled in with the unjustified ones. The source article quotes two professors at other schools who rightly note that this story is very abnormal, but nobody in particular seems to be saying that they've lost contact with Mr. Wang. (The neighbors told local news that they rarely saw and never spoke to him in the first place: https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2025/03/2...)
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#126Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. How can you be confident in this? Is it possible that you are saying this because the only cases we know about are when they have happened to leave "a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow"?
Sure, it's possible, but it's also speculation. You can't rationally use speculated possible hushed-up disappearances as evidence to fuel further speculation: there lies the road to totally unhinged conspiracy theories. If we see more cases like this one of someone disappearing without a trace and their disappearance getting documented but not explained, I'll accept this one as evidence to fuel future speculation. Un…
My first comment was not speculation. I only speculated in my second comment to highlight how your rather definitive "they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here" was also in fact speculation.
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Permanent green card residents have been sent to El Salvador prisons without trial in the recent stuff. This incident does say it was with a court behind it though.
The FBI does not deal with immigration action.
Yes it does. It's always had Title 8 authority, and several recent executive orders have directly expressed support for such action.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhs-authorizes-federal-law-enfo...
https://www.wsbradio.com/news/local/fbi-atlanta-confirms-new...
https://www.wkrg.com/baldwin-county/fbi-immigration-enforcem...
https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/2025/02/27/fbi-arrests-coache...
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
ICE has and is arresting US Citizens ICE is immune to prosecution for improper behavior so they've dialed that up to 11 this year Who exactly is going to stop them? Courts just say "don't do that" and they nod
Read the article. It's the FBI in this, not ICE.
FBI is after the fact follow up.
Someone else may be responsible for his disappearance in the first place.
Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> by the government "disappearing" anyone (which they have objectively been doing lately) Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here. Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. This case is notable because no one seems to know where this man has gone. But yes, point taken: the extrajudicial…
>Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. How can you be confident in this? Is it possible that you are saying this because the only cases we know about are when they have happened to leave "a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow"?
Everyone that’s been looked for has been found in some jail in Louisiana before further transport
Of course there are people that nobody looks for
But everyone that has inquired so far has been able to figure out location
Given the ambiguous chronology here, it seems like this professor dipped out in advance and the FBI freaked out later. So he wouldn’t be in a system if that were the case
But of course it could be FISA court related