IEEE forced to ban Huawei employees from peer-reviewing papers | Hacker News Reader

IEEE forced to ban Huawei employees from peer-reviewing papers

twitter.com

98 pointsxucheng70 comments

Standards bodies, industry associations and the like are multi-country organizations. No single country should be able to prevent others from participating in such organizations. IEEE today and a few days ago the SD card and WiFi alliance banning Huawei seem to ignore the views of the members from the multitude of other countries who are also members of those orgs. Egregious violations of some written or unwritten code of conduct needs to be handled by multi-lateral institutions. For lack of a better organization, some wing of the UN perhaps?

Just wanted to add that IEEE is much more than a standards body. Lot's of conferences are held by IEEE.

Oh yes. I am an IEEE member of reasonably long standing and this just complicates things for everyone, particularly for IEEE chapters in other countries where Huawei may have a presence and are active participants locally.

It gets more complicated when considering Huawei is also a major sponsor to a variety of research conferences, open source projects, etc.

I wonder what is ACM's stand on this?

This is just ridiculous. This goes way beyond what they originally intended with stopping suspected IP Theft or backdoors by Huawei. This is a black day for academic progress and research in general.

Google Scholar or Wikipedia websites has been banned in China for a decade, Do you think this is ridiculous?

Why is that a reason to ban academics?

These Chinese gov did't intend to ban academics, but political materials. But since they value their own benefits much higher than the benefits of academics to the Chinese people, they ban all the things, maybe because it's not technically easy to just ban individual pages given the huge amount of the materials. That's a very bad thing to ban the free Internet access.

Hi all, For those who are not familiar. Google is indeed banned because the CHN gov does not want us to see political adversary contents. However, google is available in the University I am working at for accessing research materials, especially scholars.google.com. I guess you were right, politics are banned, but academics aren't

No, that's not great either. That's the Chinese gov wanting to block knowledge from outside about political events, probably. This is something worse though in my opinion, since it actively halts innovation standardization which shouldn't have anything to do with politics.

With all due respect to academics, banning political opposition is far worse. Freedom is more important than new IEEE standards.

One is caused by an authoritarian government, the other one is applied to individual researchers and academic freedom as whole.

yes, it is. and it's perfectly reasonable for US gov to be stupid since Chinese had been :D

Actually, Chinese government don't want us to know more about the real history of the Cultural Revolution and something sensitive in politics.

...I have to say, we can log into Google Scholar and Wikipedia in China. I even donated once for Wikipedia.

I often use them in China. Lol

Actually, I have to say, lots of people are able to use Google and Wikipedia in China even though Chinese gov officially bans them, including me. There are dozens of methods to cross the "wall".

It is a mistake for China gov to ban wiki or google scholar. It is a mistake for US gov to ask IEEE to ban Chinese as well.However, you can not say that US gov is right in this way because China gov has done something wrong.

We need to kill Huawei first, with some collateral damages to others, so that Huawei cannot do bad things to us in the future, even though there is no evidence or court ruling that Huawei is hacking anyone at this moment.

Last time it was Iraq's WMD/washing powder.

Then you happy with surveillance by US gov everyday with Apple, Google, Amazon right? We feel happy when accuse others but never think about ourselves and the ‘ethical’ gov.

he's being sarcastic

If the US intends to rile up the the Chinese population for decades to come, well I guess they're on a good path. Unbelievable.

The Chinese government needs no help in portraying this, or any other propionate U.S. response to Chinese trade policy, as an “insult to the Chinese people” and an outrage. Seriously, they’ve done it with much smaller stuff. It’s basically Fox News all the time in mainland Chinese news media, with government scriptwriters.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Huawei got removed from the. blacklist as part of the ongoing U.S.-China trade negotiations, a la ZTE. Trump has already publicly mentioned this possibility. I hope this comes to pass, as reviewing IEEE papers seems like a fairly harmless activity.

IEEE is just for US, not for humanity. It should be shame of that VISION—"IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity."

I can not agree with you more!

That's a step too far. What's next, a ban on even talking to Huawei employees? I mean, if you want to be absolutely safe from serious legal troubles right...

Shame. And if you google "ieee Huawei", you can still find several news like "celebrating the release of new standard co-operated by Huawei and IEEE" on the first page. Now their version should be changed to "IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization(under the guide of U.S. gov) dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of the U.S." In the past, even physical war accelerates the development of tech(most for weapons tho some could be utilized to daily life), and now politics are forcing tech to go reverse. Wonderful.

It seems that Huawei is the US hostage in the China-US trade negotiations. I wonder who the US company will be that China will decides to screw over in retaliation?

It is. Although I strongly believe Trump was going to use Huawei card after the trade negotiation. By that time, US would have had a good deal, and Huawei is a step to gain a lot more. Luckily for China, he has been forced to show this card now.

Apple, most likely. They seem like the easiest target.

Actually it's Boeing.

By targeting Boeing, they really are targeting FAA power over other national or transnational agencies. Can this cause repercussion on other US agency power? I know that FDA ruling is mostly ignored in western countries, and this do not impact any other US-based agencies, so maybe it won't have any other consequences.

If this only impact Boeing the US should be glad. And Boeing deserve a slap anyway. Their decision killed more than 300 people and the people responsible won't really be impacted (as the marginal utility of the money decrease the more you already have).

I don't really believe Chinese gov will play the same card to obtain leverages for the trade war, or maybe the last card

I don't think my homeland can actually harm the US in the trade war. We only dare to verbally declare that we want to fight back.

I don't understand, how does a BIS list prevent communication ie IEEE reviews?

I am lucky that I have not joined the IEEE as a member. In the future, I will refuse to be a journal article reviewer. I will not do free work for such an organization anymore.

I am not even sure they wanted to do this It might be action out caution to avoid legal repercussions. I think it's extreme, but I am not IEEE's lawyers. So let's not jump to conclusions about motivations.

IEEE is registered in USA, so it has to follow the USA's law and rules, so I think it's not an issue of IEEE but an issue of BIS, please try to figure out that.

It is an issue of IEEE. It shouldn't be registered in USA. Switzerland is much better.

Unfortunately, the fact is that IEEE is a native USE organization, and the rule and law have always been there for long time. We cannot ban them just because it currently face a Chinese company, And then agin, to try to figure out why HW is listed in the BIS list.

Companies domiciled in the PRC also has to follow PRC's laws and regulations (whether they are compatible with our values is another question). Using the same ridiculous logic we've seen throughout this whole saga, we can also conclude that IEEE is "literally the US government".

Whatever literal game, law is law, and my suggestion is to try to figure out why HW is in the BIS list.

ieee should transfer its registration to Switzerland.

It's good idea.

(Originally posted on dupe; re-posting here)

With the ambient positive mood regarding the significant rise of sci-hub, open publishing commitments from academics and institutions and the correspondingly significant pressure on rent-seeking publishers, perhaps we will see parallel pressure extend to politically partisan or subjugated organizations until an open science free of such politicking emerges?

One solution would be anonymous scientific publication and review. Imagine that: let science stand on science, instead of appeals to authority. The bonus with such an approach is that it simultaneously solves for various "isms".

The best practice that proves academic reasearch can not be independent from governor.LOL

Source from IEEE. Read the attachments about the policy details.

http://www.ieee802.org/secmail/msg23427.html

I can't help but wonder, are educational institutions immune to this? Keep in mind that these are all corporations involved here.

I am sure there are academics who are employed by Huawei. Implementing 5G requires academics.

https://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2018/7/Huawei-Dr...

It’s so sad that academic world is polluted by the politics. Who benefits from this!

It's such a shame and you can't even find any news report in English.

Politics over academics. Such a dark day of human academic history!

Really shame

Wow. That is crazy.

That's insane

This is ugly

that is a shame

IronCurtain V2.0?

Or McCarthyism 2.0.

Funny thing - McCarthy was right, in a sense: KGB informants were all throughout U.S. government and industry [0]. Unfortunately, he accused and abused lots of innocent people, so this fact is often overlooked.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/685lp2/was_j...

Ridiculous and a laughable accusation. The page you referred to has nothing substantial. Both Rosenberg and Hiss are proved to be innocent quickly but lots of people became silent because of McCarthy. If you want to go back to the dark ages, go yourself. Do not put your insensible sense to all the knowledgable people here.

Are you challenging the fact that the U.S.S.R. had extensive espionage networks in the U.S. during the 1950s, including the Rosenbergs who were in fact guilty of spying for the Soviet Union?

McCarthysim per se was horrible, but the fact remains that the Red Scare was grounded in historical truth.

https://www.amazon.com/Venona-Decoding-Espionage-America-Com...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

If you hunt witches, there will always be witches to burn. If you try hard enough, any American can be a USSR spy.

What am I not stating clearly?

Witch hunts are bad, but yes, there was a large spy network. Perhaps it could have even been uprooted with measured counter-intelligence, instead of McCarthyism.

history will remember this day

Reply on news.ycombinator.com