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U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

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Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#91

Post by 317070 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #80
epistasis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many m…

We can go even further: One hallmark of fascist regimes is selective enforcement. They start with making laws and rules so opaque and convoluted that pretty much anyone will break them at one point. But they will be extremely selective on when they enforce them, and who they go after. EDIT: But, as someone will probably point out, convoluted laws / bureaucracy does obviously not automatically mean fascism or corrupti…

Not sure if it matters, but that is at least not true for nazi-style fascism. In there, they had a very strong rule of law for most people. But, there was a dual, a parallel system where there was no law at all, it operated outside of the legal system. You could win a trial and be exhonorated, only to be taken away by the gestapo at the door of the courtroom.

It was important for the nazis to keep businesses running, and have most people continue their lives without noticing major changes. Most people would not come into contact with the second system, and barely knew it existed. But if you entered the second system, you often would not come out alive.

This way, they could transit into an authoritarian system without hurting the economy. They knew this and planned it, and it turned out to be correct.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#92

Post by applfanboysbgon »

317070 wrote: post #91
TrackerFF wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can go even further: One hallmark of fascist regimes is selective enforcement. They start with making laws and rules so opaque and convoluted that pretty much anyone will break them at one point. But they will be extremely selective on when they enforce them, and who they go after. EDIT: But, as someone will probably point out, convoluted laws / bureaucracy does obviously not automatically mean fascism or corrupti…

Not sure if it matters, but that is at least not true for nazi-style fascism. In there, they had a very strong rule of law for most people. But, there was a dual, a parallel system where there was no law at all, it operated outside of the legal system. You could win a trial and be exhonorated, only to be taken away by the gestapo at the door of the courtroom. It was important for the nazis to keep businesses running,…

If you can be whisked off to a separate system where you don't have legal rights, you by definition don't have rule of law. Literally the singular, most core principle of the concept is that all persons are equal under the law, whether they are royalty or Jewish. "Strong rule of law for most people" is an inherently contradictory phrase.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#93

Post by pdonis »

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #79
pdonis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no magic solution to the "problem" of "how to dictate rules to a large society that will keep things smooth and productive". The problem is fundamentally intractable if you insist on looking at it that way. There is another option , which is to not dictate rules at all, unless you absolutely have to in order to have a civil society in the first place. For example, we have laws against things like murder and…

Giving up is not a strategy. Regulations are painful in that they obviously reduce economic productivity, but not having any at all is pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster. For example, allowing poisonous chemicals in your food supply or drinking water is insane. Unless you are OK with the free market sorting all that out (after your family dies horribly).

> Giving up is not a strategy.

Nor is it what I advocated.

> Regulations are painful in that they obviously reduce economic productivity

That's usually true, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is that the regulations don't actually regulate, in the sense they need to. All they do is entrench the incumbent corporations that paid good money for them, by making it harder for competitors to enter their markets.

> allowing poisonous chemicals in your food supply or drinking water is insane.

Sure. And humans somehow managed to obtain food and water that didn't have those things for thousands of years, even though there were no government regulations prohibiting them. How do you suppose that happened?

> Unless you are OK with the free market sorting all that out (after your family dies horribly).

You're assuming that food and water providers would be able to do such things in a "free market". But doing such things is obviously bad for business, so providers would have a strong incentive not to do it in a free market, since in a free market, doing things that are bad for business makes you go out of business.

In our current regulatory environment, however, large corporations can do many things that are bad for business, as long as they can get government regulators to agree to let them. For an example from a few years ago, a major aicraft manufacturer got the FAA to approve a change to one of its oldest aircraft types that ended up killing two airplanes full of people. How? Because the FAA didn't even look at the change: the "regulation" had evolved to the point where the FAA just took the manufacturer's word for it that everything was OK.

In a free market, such an aircraft manufacturer would be out of business. But of course in our current regulatory environment that can't happen, because regulation has forced aircraft manufacturers to amalgamate to the point that neither of the two biggest ones can ever be allowed to go out of business--too many long chains of dominoes, including much of the US's military capability (and not just in airplanes), depend on them.

Tell me again how regulations make things better?

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#94

Post by qsera »

epistasis wrote: post #18
BeetleB wrote: post #2

This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that: > Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned. They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.

This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many m…

>This is a very common thing for corrupt governments.

Seriously, is there any other kind?

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#95

Post by Frost1x »

daveguy wrote: post #68
conception wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is. You can read it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Dumpty's loyalty is with whoever will give him the most money and power as a person. Always has been.

Maybe money but clearly not power. The American voting population gave him more power than pretty much anyone in many senses of the word “power,” yet he’s clearly not loyal to the American voting population.

So I think money or wealth is the bigger weight here.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#96

Post by [deleted] »

BeetleB wrote: post #2

This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that: > Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned. They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#97

Post by nekzn »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #59

I can't help but think that there is a deliberate effort to remove the US from it's position in the global geopolitical arena. And not merely as a by-product of policy decisions but specifically to damage the American reputation.

[flagged]

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#98

Post by JCTheDenthog »

pocksuppet wrote: post #90
JCTheDenthog wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bureaucrats who must follow the rule of law is what you want. Under Chevron we had the opposite of that: bureaucrats who had ridiculously wide latitude to make their own rules. What we actually need is for congress to take back control instead of passing all power and authority to the executive branch.

Congress always had the power to remove delegated power from an institution if it didn't like how that institution was performing. It's also had the power to disband the executive branch regime at any point since January 20. Everything that is happening now is happening with the complete approval of Congress.

Correct, and congress hasn't been exercising that power for the better part of a century now. The War Powers Resolution was 1973, for example.

I don't know what the exact solution is, but something needs to change in the structure and incentives of congress to incentivize them to exercise power again. Eliminating the filibuster and drastically increasing the total number of representatives seem like the best ways to me, but I'm open yo other possibilities.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#99

Post by gwerbin »

epistasis wrote: post #89
whateverboat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But eventually, this always fails as history has shown over and over again. It might take 40-50 years, but it will fail with devastating effects.

Yes, and one reason the US has been so successful is because in the past 1) it was generally agreed that family dynasties should have limited ability to pass wealth generation to generation, and 2) that governance should be separated from wealth. That's all being abandoned.

I don't think either your assertions (1) and (2) have been particularly consistent throughout US history. Leave aside the difficulty of defining what "successful" means, or should mean.

Just look at the (first) Gilded Age. It's pretty much you claim we didn't have in the past: Family dynasties and government sympathetic to the interests of wealthy business stakeholders. It took the better part of a century of hard fighting (including literal combat in some cases) to bring that to an end, and then we had what, 40 years? before the accumulated momentum of conservatism brought on the Reagan era.

And it's not a matter of just unions fighting it out in the textile mills and coal mines and railcar assembly plants either. After the Civil War the US Army was engaged in a widespread program of what would today be categorized as genocide, in service of business interests that thought they could make more money if you didn't have a pre-existing civilization in the Great Plains.

Go back a few decades further and you have the Civil War itself. Slavery was first and foremost profitable for cash crop plantation owners; everything follows from that.

Re: U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators

#100

Post by groundzeros2015 »

yongjik wrote: post #82
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you "genuinely" want to understand, start considering the opposite - what is the easiest way to defend policy like this? "science with outside helps the other side" - done. Current administration sees US as losing its positions, so the main answer is to close the leaks that feed its opponents with US effort

I don't understand the argument. Imagine flipping positions. You're saying that if an American researcher goes to China, gets employed by a Chinese university, and do research funded by China which is then commercialized by Chinese companies, the researcher is actually aiding America in expense of China.

The missing piece is an ethnic and political identity which gives allegiance to the US in that “tables turned” analogy.
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