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Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

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Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#291

Post by alephnerd »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #290
alephnerd wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GC quotas - the backlog is 2 years now for Chinese nationals It's EO 10043 [0] that's the blocker. If you are a Chinese national who is in some way affiliated with tbe Chinese Civil-Military fusion, you cannot get a visa to the US. This EO is horribly written, as it essentially treats all Chinese universities or programs that get some kind of military funding (even a relatively minor grant) as part of the Civil-M…

I think that only affects Technology institutes that are run by the PLA? Like Beijing Institute of Technology or Harbin institute of technology, but they do not seem to be enforcing it for PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua. The crazy thing is that these are generally lower tier universities in China. What a strange law. I can imagine this making those universities much less popular in future admittances.

> PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua.

They have State Key Laboratories as affiliated with them as well

> only affects Technology institutes that are run by the PLA

Nope. Any kind of tangentially military funded research (aka almost all of STEM) because of how vague "Civil-Military Fusion" is defined (or not defined in this case)

> What a strange law

Executive Order, not a Law.

> making those universities much less popular in future admittances

Maybe, maybe not. There isn't as much of a pull factor anymore especially after the DoJ's Thousand Talents prosecution shitshow.

Trump really fucked up the China-to-US talent pipeline which was a net benefit for us.

> they do not seem to be enforcing it for PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua

F-1 and J1/2 applications have fallen dramatically since this EO was passed (though zero COVID and the shutting down of American consulates during that affected this as well)

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#292

Post by selimthegrim »

alephnerd wrote: post #239
selimthegrim wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have a single domestic TA in the department I’m matriculated in

Not surprising. The economics of doing graduate school as an American just don't make sense (outside of those closely affiliated with DoE labs). For a foreigner (Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Iranian) the incentive of getting a path to naturalization along with degree normalization is enough incentive (as you yourself probably know). No American employer is going to hire a LUMS or UET graduate directly, and if you don'…

I’m domestic (my mother was born in Pak), I did a stint as an instructor so I don’t TA anymore. But even when I did they could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#293

Post by blackoil »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #255
blackoil wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the stated policy of the Chinese government stated as in? Can you share some source.

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-chin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Law_of_t...

> All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.

That's as vague as it can be. Does any country not have similar laws?

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#294

Post by neom »

freedomben wrote: post #279
neom wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd care to opine, would you then there agree with delfinom that ITAR in AI could be a solution to this? From what you just described, it made me wonder if it would impose undo burden on, and so hamper, the emergence of the next generation of NN/ML tools ("AI").

There's considerable nuance involved in the question, which I haven't done due diligence on, but with that as a disclaimer... Thinking out loud, it does seem like it could help, although it does place a significant (at times) burden on people affected, and in the case that I worked with it made no practical difference whatsoever at preventing the use of the technology by US adversaries. So yes I think it might could…

I have such limited knowledge of this stuff it's all just gut, but I'd be aligned with you when pushed to comment. The best solution is probably no solution, it's going to happen and that's that.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#295

Post by maxglute »

alephnerd wrote: post #282
maxglute wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blatant is another way of saying successful. Not many countries have system in place to incentivize reverse brain drain, and even in PRC that was hard fought. It's difficult to compete with US tech wages propped up by cheap money. Big reason why PRC can get talent to come back, and with IP is because they pay accordingly and, most importantly, have system in place where that knowledge can be exploited. Another big re…

> Not many countries have system in place to incentivize reverse brain drain Most regional powers do. The Chinese program is based on Japan's METI, Taiwan's MEA, and Israel's MoE. These 3 countries devised the primary reverse brain drain programs that countries like China, South Korea, Turkey, India, etc began emulating in the 2000s-2010s.

I suppose more accurate to characterize not all are successful as preventing/reversing brain drain to maintain/grow competitiveness.

PRC emulating 2000s challenges JP/TW recognized is expected. Difference is in execution/available playbook, PRC has growing R&D budget and commercial opportunties to brain drain from likes of JP/TW now, and that's mostly side effect of scale and PRC dumping resources into relevant sectors to compete for top talent. Not as much as US, but enough to entice. It's also failure of others to retain, JP is starting to terminate 10 year academic positions from 2010s designed for job security and they're not being recycled into JP corporate, so they leave for greener pastures abroad, including to PRC. TW... just has tertiary over capacity and not enough domestic opportunities, they also go abroad also including to PRC. SKR... annecdotally it seems like many stay abroad because there's not much opportunities other than being chaebol wage slave. VS last few years, more and more PRC talent/students abroad either see writing on the wall for their future prospects in west due to geopolitics but also know there's _real_ money to be made in PRC strategic sectors. 1000 talent / China Initative crackdown may have accelerated process but it's also increasingly obvious there's a lot of money and prestige to be had, and I think latter undervalued for those who feel stuck due to corporate/geopolitical bamboo ceiling.

TBH PRC also has tertiary overproduction but there isn't capacity to meaningfully brain drain amount of talent PRC is producing abroad. And it looks like some don't even want PRC talent to risk that due to muh IP. Simulatenously, PRC has enough resources/opportunities at top to reverse brain drain some of the few (relative to population) high end talent that went abroad. 0.01% of PRC are overseas, vs 1% of JP vs 3% of TW & SKR. I think that's a a large power strategy, and specifically a large population power strategy, make so much talent that there's always ample talent, and invest more in absolute terms to retain and even drain from others who can't afford to. Regional powers don't get this playbook.

Last years report on brain drain from top 10/100/1000 indian institutions was staggering, but IMO they'll have the same advantages as PRC once domestic opportunities pickup. Israel's pretty successful for various reasons. Turkey I'm not too familiar with other than they're defense industry is growing.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#296

Post by seanmcdirmid »

alephnerd wrote: post #291
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that only affects Technology institutes that are run by the PLA? Like Beijing Institute of Technology or Harbin institute of technology, but they do not seem to be enforcing it for PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua. The crazy thing is that these are generally lower tier universities in China. What a strange law. I can imagine this making those universities much less popular in future admittances.

> PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua. They have State Key Laboratories as affiliated with them as well > only affects Technology institutes that are run by the PLA Nope. Any kind of tangentially military funded research (aka almost all of STEM) because of how vague "Civil-Military Fusion" is defined (or not defined in this case) > What a strange law Executive Order, not a Law. > making those universities much less p…

Sorry, I was going by the forbes article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/04/11/chine...

They are pretty arbitrary about it, I wouldn't be surprised if they were explicitly excluding tier 1s. Visas are back up:

https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-still-largest-group-of-for...

But we are still down from peak:

> The 2022-2023 school year, with 289,526 Chinese students, is the lowest number since the 2013-2014 academic year when 274,439 Chinese students attended U.S. colleges and universities. The highest enrollment number for Chinese students was 372,532 in 2019-2020.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#297

Post by snotrockets »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #245
snotrockets wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trade secrets aren’t national security.

They definitely can be. In the US there are many different ways in which they can overlap as a matter of law. There are myriad frameworks similar to ITAR that place a national security interest on trade secrets or block public disclosure e.g. patents (which effectively turns them into trade secrets). Your average web dev probably isn’t familiar but navigating this is a routine consideration in deep tech.

Real, and quasi-real national security projects require more stringent background checks than the ones unnecessarily used in most "average web dev" [sic] recruitment processes, and some come with citizenship requirements. I know, because that's one of the reasons I don't work on such projects.

ofc, like in any security-related field, many are LARPing instead of practicing, and that's a different issue.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#298

Post by theGnuMe »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #143
ithkuil wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps just perhaps the task is a bit harder than what you make it sound like Instances of people sharing the same name are far more common in china than elsewhere. For example there are more than 30 thousand people called "Wang Wei". The fact is complicated by the fact that the writing systems are different and transliteration errors are commonplace.

How many people named Wang Wei in any given year become the officers of companies? Google could even automate this with an email, opting into which would be a requirement for any senior employee handling the kind of information the US government cares about. "A person sharing your name has registered a company in China, as of 2024-03-07. To affirm that you are not related to this person, please click this link. If yo…

I think it is quite difficult to find out the officers of Chinese companies. There was the big wall street stock scandal a few years ago with respect to Chinese listings on US exchanges.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#299

Post by alephnerd »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #296
alephnerd wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PKU, Shanghai Jiaotong, or Tsinghua. They have State Key Laboratories as affiliated with them as well > only affects Technology institutes that are run by the PLA Nope. Any kind of tangentially military funded research (aka almost all of STEM) because of how vague "Civil-Military Fusion" is defined (or not defined in this case) > What a strange law Executive Order, not a Law. > making those universities much less p…

Sorry, I was going by the forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/04/11/chine... They are pretty arbitrary about it, I wouldn't be surprised if they were explicitly excluding tier 1s. Visas are back up: https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-still-largest-group-of-for... But we are still down from peak: > The 2022-2023 school year, with 289,526 Chinese students, is the lowest number since the 2013…

All good!

> Visas are back up

Yep!

Now that the US is processing Chinese visa applications again (and Zero Covid ended) people are applying again, but ime most Chinese nationals I've seen or interviewed at American programs tend to be those who are Chinese nationals but studied abroad (eg. In the UK or Canada).

I don't really see Tier 1 Chinese STEM graduates at lower tier American programs anymore compared to say 5-10 years ago.

If there was some dataset to parse, I'd love to test my hypothesis that most Chinese F-1 applications are now for Chinese who aren't graduates from Chinese STEM programs.

Re: Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing trade secrets

#300

Post by seanmcdirmid »

alephnerd wrote: post #299
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was going by the forbes article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2023/04/11/chine... They are pretty arbitrary about it, I wouldn't be surprised if they were explicitly excluding tier 1s. Visas are back up: https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-still-largest-group-of-for... But we are still down from peak: > The 2022-2023 school year, with 289,526 Chinese students, is the lowest number since the 2013…

All good! > Visas are back up Yep! Now that the US is processing Chinese visa applications again (and Zero Covid ended) people are applying again, but ime most Chinese nationals I've seen or interviewed at American programs tend to be those who are Chinese nationals but studied abroad (eg. In the UK or Canada). I don't really see Tier 1 Chinese STEM graduates at lower tier American programs anymore compared to say 5-…

The tier 1 graduates don't need to go to lower tier American programs anymore. They've already leveled up beyond that. They are going to tier 1 programs abroad, or just going to work at a FAANG or a Chinese-equivalent (when I worked for Microsoft Research in Beijing, we lost a lot of tier 1 undergraduate new graduates to Google in California, and that was 10 years ago)
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