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

science.org

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

#271

Post by rayiner »

somenameforme wrote: post #54
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.

The article mentions, oddly enough at literally the very bottom, that one of the main laws being used is the 'Wolf Amendment' [1], passed in 2011. It's what prevented Chinese from working on the ISS and arguably is why China now has its own space station. It's an extremely dumb law that's been passed and reauthorized repeatedly by every single administration and Congress since Obama who it was passed under. Just quot…

You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach. A mayor in the LA area was just charged for acting as a Chinese agent: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5819933/china-trump-tri.... A Navy engineer and his wife (who was a teacher at my kids' school) were convicted a few years ago for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to foreign governments.

Scientists and engineers aren't any more moral than the rest of us, and interactions between them across national boundaries raises security risks.

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

#272

Post by tim333 »

g42gregory wrote: post #252

We were told by some very brilliant people (Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and to a lesser extent Demis Hassabis), that AI will shortly automate much of Research and we won't need that many researchers anymore. Therefore, these personnel restrictions shouldn't matter, right?

I think they are hoping for a speedup more than less researchers.

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

#273

Post by pdonis »

notahacker wrote: post #265
pdonis wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are willing to be drive drunk. This doesn't mean that taking into account the views of people who don't want to be killed by drunk people when determining who gets to use the roads is "overestimating the value we actually put on human life" You're assuming there is just one such value. There isn't. People who are willing to drive drunk put less value on human life than people who aren't. We deal with th…

> Straw man. In a free market where people knew they could not depend on the government to "regulate" (and, as I've pointed out, it didn't in this case), people would refuse to fly on airplanes whose safety records were not well-documented and attested public knowledge. To do otherwise would be obviously foolish. The only reason people don't seek out more such information now is that they believe the government has t…

> there's this not-that-little country called Indonesia whose airlines were banned from operating in the West for a long time because of an extremely well known lack of adequate safety standards, and an accompanying tendency to plunge passengers to a fiery death. It was one of the fastest growing air transport markets in the world.

So why is that? Because Indonesians don't value human life the way people in the US do? Maybe that's true. Maybe there's a much wider variation in the world as far as how humans value human life, than we Westerners assume. And if that's the case, then maybe Indonesia's unsafe airlines are fine for Indonesians. But that doesn't mean that the same sort of thing would happen in the US if people in the US understood that government regulation could not be relied on to protect them from unsafe airplanes.

Or do Indonesians want safer airplanes, but can't get them? Why not? And if they want safer airplanes but can't get them, why do they fly on the unsafe ones?

> it is because the libertarian fantasy of independent third parties seamlessly filling in the knowledge gaps is not a reality.

Why doesn't this happen in Indonesia? Because the Indonesian government keeps it from happening? Historically that's the reason: governments can't regulate, but also can't allow third parties to provide the information the government can't, because that would undermine their power.

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

#274

Post by ChoGGi »

rayiner wrote: post #271
somenameforme wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions, oddly enough at literally the very bottom, that one of the main laws being used is the 'Wolf Amendment' [1], passed in 2011. It's what prevented Chinese from working on the ISS and arguably is why China now has its own space station. It's an extremely dumb law that's been passed and reauthorized repeatedly by every single administration and Congress since Obama who it was passed under. Just quot…

You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach. A mayor in the LA area was just charged for acting as a Chinese agent: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5819933/china-trump-tri... . A Navy engineer and his wife (who was a teacher at my kids' school) were convicted a few years ago for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to foreign governments. Scientists and engineers aren't any more moral…

> You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach

Where does he say that?

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

#275

Post by UncleOxidant »

epistasis wrote: post #218
idiotsecant wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carter was basically the prototypical example of a politician whose good intentions eclipsed their ability to govern. You need to be a little bit of a high functioning sociopath to be an effective leader. The key is properly controlling those high functioning sociopaths by training them that doing good things is in their best interests.

Say what you will about Carter, he kept the Strait of Hormuz open through his strength. He governed well. It was inflation that did him in, not his governance. Trump maganed to hand the Stair of Hormuz over to Iran, and instigate massive inflation personally. The US is laughed at or ignored or treated as a problem on the world stage now, rather than being the leader. However, the more sociopathic in society see Trump…

> It was inflation that did him in, not his governance

And that was mostly hanging around from earlier oil shocks and the spending on Vietnam. He did the right thing by choosing Paul Volker to be Fed chair. In Carter's interview of Volker he asked what he would do to bring down inflation. Volker replied that he would significantly raise interest rates. Volker figured that he didn't get the job based on this honest response and was surprised when Carter picked him.

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

#276

Post by idiotsecant »

elzbardico wrote: post #228
idiotsecant wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that works for democracy. Autocracy is basically the default human state. All it takes to build it back up is a sufficiently powerful faction. Democracy is relatively fragile by comparison and requires more specific initial conditions - I would make the argument that democracies are the lower entropy condition.

Ask the Germans what happens when a democracy degenerates.

That's a good example. The west forced reconstruction of German democracy. If the Nazi state had been less aggressive it might have still been around today as a North Korea style autocratic state.

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

#277

Post by idiotsecant »

epistasis wrote: post #218
idiotsecant wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carter was basically the prototypical example of a politician whose good intentions eclipsed their ability to govern. You need to be a little bit of a high functioning sociopath to be an effective leader. The key is properly controlling those high functioning sociopaths by training them that doing good things is in their best interests.

Say what you will about Carter, he kept the Strait of Hormuz open through his strength. He governed well. It was inflation that did him in, not his governance. Trump maganed to hand the Stair of Hormuz over to Iran, and instigate massive inflation personally. The US is laughed at or ignored or treated as a problem on the world stage now, rather than being the leader. However, the more sociopathic in society see Trump…

I don't think the people who see trump as strong are sociopaths. They are people who desperately need the structure of heirarchy. They are as comfortable at the bottom as they would be at the top, so long as there is someone below them. The heirarchy is only valid so long as the people above them are good and strong and the people beneath them are contemptible and weak. The very highest member of the heirarchy being weak throws the whole thing into doubt, and must be avoided at all costs. The leader is strong and wise and we must ensure that everyone else thinks so.

The sociopaths (at least the high functioning ones) are simply doing what they can to climb the ladder.

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

#278

Post by exe34 »

nickff wrote: post #207
exe34 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress still has all the power granted to it by the constitution. They chose not to use those powers, because the republicans support the orange turd.

Congress has been delegating huge amounts of power to the administrative state (via the Executive Branch) for longer than Donald J Trump has been alive.

Any powers that congress delegates, they can pull back.

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

#279

Post by rayiner »

ChoGGi wrote: post #274
rayiner wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach. A mayor in the LA area was just charged for acting as a Chinese agent: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5819933/china-trump-tri... . A Navy engineer and his wife (who was a teacher at my kids' school) were convicted a few years ago for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to foreign governments. Scientists and engineers aren't any more moral…

> You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach Where does he say that?

It’s implicit in his reasoning. His statements imply that there’s not a legitimate concern these laws are trying to address.

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

#280

Post by cyberax »

vkou wrote: post #260
cyberax wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, another example of autonomy is the fact that Trump had to send ICE agents in the first place. He could not just order the local police to perform the raids, there's simply no chain of command for that. In Russia, it would have been one phone call from the Kremlin to the local chief of police.

You'll find that in most countries, town cops don't take orders from the federal government.

Not so. For example, in France all the police are overseen centrally, and the president can take direct control.

The US is actually unusual in that the President does not have _any_ local control over police. You'll see a similar pattern pretty much everywhere: schools, construction, licensing, urban policy, etc.

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