U.S. researchers face new restrictions on publishing with foreign collaborators • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by salawat » Sun, May 24, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #264

vkou wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder is a capital crime regardless of who you work for. Those fucks were violating both federal and state law. 'Give it time' will only work if the GOP is removed from power. Otherwise, not a single thing will happen. Otherwise, you are demonstrating that states are in practice fully subservient to the federal government. Because the latter can, de facto, do whatever it wants in them.

> Murder is a capital crime regardless of who you work for. Not true btw, the military can do it.

Not as part of a domestic police action (Posse Comitatus), and under the constraint of at least directing it against enemy combatants & regulars (conventions of international warfare). Now, if either of those two are violated the calculus changes, and I leave it as an exercise to the student to decide which side one's sympathies should lay with. I damn well know where my lines are drawn.

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

#292

Post by salawat » Sun, May 24, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #93

MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 marke…

Regulation didn't cause mergers. Non-enforcement of anti-trust law did. M&A's simply should not have been approved over the last few decades the way they were. You're trying to say it was the regulations that were the problem, but it is unironically the size of the regulated compared to manpower of the regulator that was the problem, which becomes a non-issue when you don't keep allowing mergers and acquisitions. Many small redundant competitors is manageable and a veritable incubator for innovation. One massive Leviathan conglomerate is a vehicle for regulatory capture and public abuse. You complain about the FAA, when the true culprit was the FTC approving mergers time after time freeing up capital that'd otherwise have needed to be put to use gaining competitive advantage and innovating for use to muck with the political landscape. Get where you're coming from, but you're blind as to the cure. A regulation could 100% have avoided the MAX situation. That regulation had nothing to do with airplanes, but maintaining a healthy and competitive domestic civil air transport industry, rather than a massively conglomerated one. We know corporate hierarchies attract psychopaths. The aim is to have as many slots at the top so that enough of them can be filled with the non-psychopathic so that society isn't held hostage by a handful of TBTF's all governed by psychopaths. If it is in threat of being TBTF, it should unironically be priority 1 to split, subdivide, and duplicate until redundancy allows part of it to be able to safely fail. Only then can it safely managed.

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

#293

Post by somenameforme » Sun, May 24, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #279

ChoGGi wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No it's not. You're not stopping any bad behavior with this law, but you're imperiling a vast amount of cooperative and good behavior, or like I said - it's a 'I'm going to punch myself in the face because I don't like you' law. In your scenario, the person in question was a US citizen so this sort of law would not apply.

And that generalizes broadly. Obviously China is engaging in espionage and related activities in the US and, equally obviously, the US is doing so within China. This law does absolutely nothing to shift the ball there whatsoever, but it imposes major hurdles to collaboration that is not only wholly on the up-and-up but directly in the US' best interests to pursue.

Governments are increasingly often engaging in acts with lofty spoken ambitions behind them, but the acts not only fail to do absolutely anything whatsoever to realistically advance those ambitions, but even directly hurt the governments in question. It's absolutely bizarre and I think can only be explained by governments having leadership that surrounds itself with nothing but yes-men, or idiots. Though I suppose, what's the difference?

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

#294

Post by ranguna » Mon, May 25, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #173

ranguna wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's how it works, mate.

We fought a whole war over not sending our taxes to foreigners (Britain). A foreign nation being entitled to your tax money is what happens when that foreign nation has conquered you.

Nops, I still think your missing the mark here

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

#295

Post by pdonis » Wed, May 27, 2026, 1:32 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #288

pdonis wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people do not consent to be hit by drunk drivers True. > or poorly maintained aeroplanes But that's not something a person can affect by their choice of whether to fly on such an airplane, which is what we've been talking about, assuming the airplane is already in operation. That risk is being imposed by the airline that's skimping on the maintenance. People can affect this indirectly, by choosing not to fly on uns…

> But that's not something a person can affect by their choice of whether to fly on such an airplane, which is what we've been talking about No, that's something you are talking about as you avoid the actual argument that badly flown and maintained aircraft represent a threat to people that didn't make an informed choice to fly on them. One could also argue that drink driving regulation is unnecessary because in a fr…

> the actual argument that badly flown and maintained aircraft represent a threat to people that didn't make an informed choice to fly on them.

So our airline safety regulations have nothing to do with the safety of the, um, passengers?

As I said in another of our subthreads (and you agreed), evidently we don't have enough common ground to have a useful discussion. Have a nice day.

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

#296

Post by wyldberry » Wed, May 27, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

matthewdgreen wrote: post #157

wyldberry wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have great sources on hand, this is just coming from a career situated in or adjacent to protecting research and IP from espionage. As the national labs and prime defense contractors got exceptional at defending their networks, this pushed state actors into attempting espionage at the university level. It's a lot easier to get access to underpaid graduate students, fresh post-docs, etc who are doing the heavy…

Again, the output of most University research is published in journals and conferences, with raw data increasingly available as artifacts. Publication does not always give all the data! Some proprietary datasets and tools exist, but the implications here usually affect academic competitiveness, not national security. There are, of course, exceptions. Some Universities do classified or sensitive research where the res…

I'm not disputing that, what I was (poorly) trying to communicate is that the pervasiveness of academic espionage chain is incredibly widespread. It relies heavily on the underfunded, international graduate students.

Many things are open research and intentionally funded as so, until a dual-use is found. My example was meant to show something that was intentionally funded and released openly, but only because USSR didn't know what they had and it's implications.

My personal confidence in this administration to do anything here in a meaningful way is non-existent. However, the very real problem of academic research funded by American dollars, in American labs, being passed to Geo-political adversaries before publish is pervasive and difficult to solve.

In a purely academic sense: i agree research should be fully transparent, except when a specific reason exists. The point is that sometimes we do not know it shouldn't be and that can be a real critical mistake. A way, and not the only way, to de-risk that is to enforce more strict criterion on the researcher(s) themselves.

Also: thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm a big fan of your work and personal blog.

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

#297

Post by kahrl » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #117

Foreigners are not entitled to my tax dollars. They can find other ways to fund their work.

THEY DERKIN OUR DERBS!!!!!

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

#298

Post by kahrl » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #173

ranguna wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's how it works, mate.

We fought a whole war over not sending our taxes to foreigners (Britain). A foreign nation being entitled to your tax money is what happens when that foreign nation has conquered you.

DERKA DERKA

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

#299

Post by notahacker » Fri, May 29, 2026, 12:33 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #295

notahacker wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's not something a person can affect by their choice of whether to fly on such an airplane, which is what we've been talking about No, that's something you are talking about as you avoid the actual argument that badly flown and maintained aircraft represent a threat to people that didn't make an informed choice to fly on them. One could also argue that drink driving regulation is unnecessary because in a fr…

> the actual argument that badly flown and maintained aircraft represent a threat to people that didn't make an informed choice to fly on them. So our airline safety regulations have nothing to do with the safety of the, um, passengers? As I said in another of our subthreads (and you agreed), evidently we don't have enough common ground to have a useful discussion. Have a nice day.

There is indeed no common ground to be reached with somebody who is not only unable to grasp a concept as simple as regulations simultaneously protecting more than one group of people, but thinks repeatedly failing to understand something so basic is an actual gotcha...

I'd say it was like arguing with a toddler, but that's unfair because I'd expect many toddlers to understand "even if people want to fly really dangerous aeroplanes, that might not be fair on who they crash into".