291–300 of 517 posts
if you look around, you can find, reconstruct a c.v. this guy is someone you dont want the badguy to get ahold of. AI research in an adversarial context is dual purpose tech, and could easily awaken ITAR
So if AI research is dual-use tech, would an AI research er be dual-use human, and get travel restricted because of weapons export controls. Dude is a weapon!
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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.
> 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…
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This isn’t immigration. He’s a tenured professor and already has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a US citizen. FBI is most likely dealing with an espionage angle. His research field of cryptography and using it to protect genomic data probably has something to do with it. The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal with several researchers having their career and livelihood d…
>He’s a tenured professor and already has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a US citizen. The current administration have proven they do not care about any of these things. Even natural born citizens are now under threat.
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>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"?
It's clearly not true that everyone is properly documented. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/lawyers-advocates-say-48...
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In fairness, there was no public evidence of the Nazi death camps up until they decided to turn the prison camps into that at the Wannsee Conference either. It was only in retrospect that we learned the true horror of the Holocaust. Given that period of history, and how it brought the world to the brink, any patterning closely similar to that (which we are seeing today) these things should be considered happening unt…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_the_Holocaust_in_... "Berlin Radio broadcast the mass-execution of Jews in Bialystok and the burning of synagogues in July 1941" > It was only in retrospect that we learned the true horror of the Holocaust. https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-world-discovered-the-n... The full scale wasn't known but there was enough evidence something was going on. I'm really not seeing mu…
Unemployment ~30%, inflation/stagflation, and German industry being co-opted by multinational corporations laying people off. > Then US Unemployment 1 in 4 out of work, co-opted by corporations, laying people off and price fixing basic goods and services.
Reichstag Fire Attack blamed on the Communists. > January 6th followed by Assassination Attempt at a Rally; blamed on the left/communist/marxist and calling out Harris as being Marxist in the debates.
Hitler extolling the virtues of Hitler Youth for hours publicly. > US State of the Union address covering the Honorary SS agent, DJ Daniel, doing the same.
Propaganda Ministry by Reich Press Chamber. > Trusted News Initiative. "The sharing of bias and false news has become all too common on social media...." [Sinclair/Deadspin, 200 channels verbatim]
People disappearing, detained, moved, or killed residents (SS) > Unidentified Agents detaining people with video coverage (Tufts Student), Prisoners being flown elsewhere (El Salvador), residents being killed by police, etc (George Floyd + too many others).
Channeling Popular Anxieties and stoking fear of a communist uprising to eradicate civil liberties, and democracy. > Same
These are just a few. Its quite concerning how it looks like a failed subversion/communist takeover leads to the dynamics allowing fascism. People can't seem to agree on a set objective measure of when have they crossed the line too far, when they cross the line continually.
Its greatly concerning.
I have an idea.
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A lot of stories with a political angle get flagged. I also don’t want the site to become all politics, but it feels weird to me that stories like this with overt overlap with tech and SV still often get flagged.
I don't think this story is overtly political.
This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now. Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do. Here's Xiaofeng Wang's bio on the Indiana University site.[1] Google Scholar.[2] Archived version of home page at Indiana University.[3] If anybody has a PACER account, please check there. [1] https://alliance.iu.edu/members/member/8580.html [2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?use…
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…
If it turns out that he was somehow repatriated to his home country under compulsion that would not be terribly surprising. Nor would it be surprising if he was a "spy" or even a double agent. The FBI raiding his home suggests that he was somehow implicated either as a foreign agent or as a compromised intelligence asset, and one side or the other wanted him back.
> Nor would it be surprising if he was a "spy" or even a double agent. It would be very surprising. How many spies and 'double agents' are there?
Talk to anyone who deals in sensitive matters and attends conferences and they will tell you the number of people trying to pry information is overwhelming.
So the answer to your question is lots. A tremendous number of people, especially in academia, feed information to foreign governments. Not only is it not rare, but it's obnoxiously common for those who have to deal with it.