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Comment by luckydata | Hacker News Reader

It's not like it's hard to see either, there's routinely news of Chinese scientists and engineers caught with some kind of industrial secret stolen from their employer trying to go back to China in a hurry. Every time it's mentioned people on HN react like some grand conspiracy theory was unveiled while it takes 15 seconds on google to find examples like:

https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-plea...

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-col...

it's pervasive and it's stupid to think it will stop on its own. China has been at war with us for quite a while, we just failed to recognize it because it is convenient for many not to do so, but we should behave accordingly.

Edit: since my comment was called "inflammatory and nationalistic" I'm going to add a link to a book that explains the war ongoing between China and the US, from an author that's very much not either of those things:

https://www.amazon.com/Cool-War-United-States-Competition/dp...

View on HN

This is inflammatory and snarky and exaggerated ("China has been at war with us") enough to count as nationalistic flamebait. As I said above, we don't want that here. Please make your substantive points without it.

First of all, let me offer a sincere, hearty and belated thanks for all the hard work you do to keep HN’s quality up.

That being said, I hope you don’t mind a bit of input here. The parent comment didn’t seem snarky at all, and while his language about “war” might not have been exactly literal, that doesn’t make it exaggerated. China has been extremely aggressive about acquiring Western technology and IP. Furthermore, Chinese students have been a significant avenue of this theft. These facts are not in dispute (except perhaps by Chinese’s government spokespeople). Not only has this been in the news repeatedly, but I have specific professional experiences to this effect.

All that being the case, it’s difficult to understand why you would have described the parent poster’s quite accurate description of the current state of affairs as “nationalistic flame bait.” To be honest, this is the one time I’ve witnessed where your contribution lowered the discourse instead of raising it.

I called it snarky because "people on HN react like some grand conspiracy theory was unveiled while it takes 15 seconds on google" is typical internet snark, complete with supercilious posturing over the rest of the community. I called it inflammatory because "China has been at war with us for quite a while" is a gross rhetorical escalation. Even your comment does a bit of that: being "extremely aggressive about acquiring Western technology and IP" is, however true, not being at war. (Actually, your comment is otherwise so reasonable that I doubt you'd have put it that way if you weren't specifically defending the GP's phrasing.) Do these gradations matter? Yes they do. War is not a place from which people find it easy to climb down, find common ground, or do anything but destroy each other. That's true in internet threads too. And I called it nationalistic because the comment depicted the situation only as a conflict between nations in which one is the aggrieved and the other the aggriever.

Of course those are merely my interpretations. Maybe I'm wrong, though seeing the commenter post later that every Chinese person should be seen as an enemy makes me pretty sure I wasn't wrong. Either way though, this call wasn't particularly different than the others we make, and I didn't make it because I secretly favor the opposite side of the argument, however much it may feel that way to passionate readers. And I'm certainly not denying your or anyone else's professional experience.

"people on HN react like some grand conspiracy theory was unveiled while it takes 15 seconds on google" is garden-variety internet snark

Such a factual situation is often the subject of such snark. In this age of search bubbles and personalized (read algorithm distorted) views of information the observation is often true. Such reactions are exhibited by one group even to factual information. This results in frustration on both sides of the statement, creating the state of "War," which, "is not a place from which people find it easy to climb down." This is particularly bad because such information is particularly valuable. It's precisely such mental model breaking information which is the most valuable.

It's very easy to see how a group like, the Flat Earthers, or Anti-vaxxers have such model-breaking information blindness. Throughout history, we've seen that it's particularly hard for privileged knowledge workers -- who have been validated by society through high pay and social status -- to see the model-breaking information. (Witness the struggle to get germ theory recognized by gentleman doctors.) In short, we tech folks need to acknowledge that there are factors acting to make us the most blind.

In 2019, we all have it. We've always all had it. The question is how do we communicate this without being in the mental state of "war."

It descends logically from my position: if we are at war with China, Chinese nationals are the enemy.

Not every war is fought with guns, not all the time. We are in a period that's equivalent to an asymmetric version of the Cold War.

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

Would you refute that the United States has been at war for decades with the Soviet Union?

You seem to have an issue with my ideas, not with my language. I welcome the debate about those ideas, but it doesn't seem appropriate to throw the weight of your status as moderator to win an argument against ideas you don't like. Isn't that exactly the opposite of what the spirit of HN is?

Dang is trying to cool your jets.

I think America is an idea where most countries are based on genetics and history. I get where you are on this, but it should be realized illiberal people will take advantage of liberal people. It's a price worth paying if you stick with it to the end.

That's not flamebait, it's the crux of the matter.

It comes across as a dry description of reality to me. Apparently some people can't read it without thinking it's some kind of knock against China.

It can easily be both. In such a case the flamebait is the higher-order bit.

Preserving the container here matters more than rightness or wrongness. Indeed, nothing will burn this place down faster than flaming rightness.

I added more to my comment while you replied. The comment in question isn't flaming rightness at all.

I'm of the same mind, that the statement is factual. It's even more valuable, because it's information which has the potential to alter mental models.

I think dang's point in this thread should be interpreted as: "Such mental model breaking information around delicate subjects needs to be treated with the most care, precisely because it's the most valuable while it's the most likely to be lost to emotional jamming of the discourse."

Yeah. In particular the comment isn't denigrative of China at all. In fact, making opposite statements would arguably be more denigrative.

You make these sorts pro-China comments a lot. Why?

I haven't made any pro-China comments, only pro-HN comments. If they seemed pro-China, that's a reflection of your views, not mine.

Any criticism of China is marked as flame bait.

That's far from true.

Your recent comments to HN have nearly all been using the site for ideological battle. We don't allow that, regardless of which ideology you're fighting for or against, because it destroys the intellectual curiosity HN exists for. Would you please stop now?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Guess I’ll resign myself to free speech jail...

I took another look at your account history and got quite a jolt. You've been breaking the site guidelines flagrantly and frequently, including with nasty personal attacks.

Since it's clear you don't want to use HN as intended, we've banned the account. If that changes at some point, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Nasty personal attacks? Give me a break!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20321085

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20316869

Containers have little value as ends in and of themselves. Containers' purpose is to contain something of value.

Of what value is wrongness?

Thanks, Dan. It's nice to have a concise statement on record to the effect that HN would rather be wrong than be right and risk offending anyone. Truth is not a goal here.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's your opinion, you're free to have it but calling mine "inflammatory and nationalistic" doesn't make your better.

I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their hands on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a military advantage. That's what a war is, and it's a very well substantiated position.

Also pretty funny you call me a nationalist, I wasn't even born in the US.

There's a bit of confusion here. The opinion I'm expressing isn't about China, or you; it's only about your HN comment.

Assuming you were right, there'd still a big flaw in your logic: trying to gain a military advantage does not make you at war. With that kind of logic, you could argue that the US, with its massive military budget, is at war with every country in the world (it's obviously not).

It's not what a war is, but I don't expect most people living in first world industrialized countries to understand what a war is, it's been completely outsourced to third world countries. This isn't even about nationalism, you're just wrong. If we were at war with China you'd know, because every major population center in both countries would have been leveled before you even knew it was happening.

That's preposterous, you know full well that not every war is fought with weapons of mass destruction, not all the time at least.

The Cold War is a perfect example, and very similar to the situation we are in now with China. Are you suggesting the Cold War wasn't a war either?

The Cold War was far from cold. The Korean war, Bay of Pigs and then the various proxy wars that each side supported whilst pretending not being part of. Like the Soviet-Afghan war where the US funded, trained and supplied $billions of munitions to the Taliban. Or the rush to get influence of every revolutionary or post-independence third world nation (hence the coining of third world). Sustained hostile military stand off to keep that containment. Constant cat and mouse in the air and at sea. Every frigate, "research vessel" or "fishing" trawler, backfire or bear bomber got a scrambled escort, every exercise a response. Any one of which could have turned it hot. It got close often enough. However much it seemed like a game watching it on the news twice a week throughout my teens and beyond.

None of which are really comparable with today.

Today? A minor trade war, and some considerable industrial espionage, proven or not. There's barely even minor mention let alone posturing over Taiwan, Hong Kong or the airfields being built on China Sea islands. There's no stand off, aside from the N/S Korea border that's remnant of the Korean war stalemate. It's going to take a huge escalation to go hot (or cold war).

You really see them as comparable? I don't, not even slightly close, except only for the few shades of McCarthyism in the feature article.

I think we're in the opening chapter of something that will, over time, become comparable. I think you're downplaying the situation, the scuffles, China testing airspace and maritime laws, heavy investment in Africa, that's all from the soviet's playbook. I would be shocked if China didn't play a part in the Russian (successful) attempt to influence our elections and get poor leadership installed in the oval office.

You've consistently ignored our moderation requests. If you keep doing that, we will ban you. Please stop and don't do this on HN again.

We probably should have banned you with the every-Chinese-person-is-an-enemy slur, but I like to give people multiple chances.

> I happen to believe (and most of our intelligence does too) that China has been studiously and purposefully stolen everything they could get their hands on for the last 20 years or so with the clear objective of gaining a military advantage

The US (NSA) has been stealing secrets from a significant percentage of the world population for years. Snowden showed us that. China stealing from a few corporations makes them angels in comparison. Further, the US slaughters hundreds of thousands in ACTUAL wars in the middle east over the past 20yrs to gain a military and economic advantage over the rest of the world.

Stop making it seem like China is some big bogeyman when the US has been the bogeyman all along.

As I explained at the top, please do not cross into nationalistic flamebait here, nor post in the flamewar style to HN generally.

(Also, while I have you: can you please not use allcaps for emphasis? The guidelines include that, and explain what to do instead. I know it sounds trivial, but doing that is the online equivalent of yelling.)

My apologies. And thanks for the reminder about the allcaps.

From a US perspective, US misdeeds don't make China any less of a threat. Is the US supposed to react as "Oh they're waging a bit of a trade war on us, but we've sinned as well, so lets let them keep it up"?

It would be nice if we’re going to claim the moral high ground, that we actually were capable of inhabiting it. As it is, both the US and China appear to be on a muddy slope, flinging whatever comes to hand.

No, of course not. I'm not talking about how the US govt should react. I'm saying that armchair critics on the sidelines (referring to the grandparent) painting China as evil for some corporate espionage is pretty naive given that the US is guilty of far worse.

China is "evil" for a whole series of different reasons, its blatant disregard for human rights and life on a massive scale is a good start.

I have my gripes with US policies (may I remind you I'm not even a citizen by birth?) and we're definitely seeing a slide towards an even more overt fascism than ever before, but it's still an avoidable risk compared to the very present danger a stronger China poses to all democracies.

To be blunt, I don't want to live in a world where China has any more power than it has right now, because we're MUCH better off in any version of what we have in the west than anything China has to offer.

I like my civil liberties, I like to be able to express dissent and to protest without being ground into a pulp by a tank, and I like to express politically antagonistic opinions without having my organs harvested after a summary execution.

You've pinned a comment at the top arguing against "nationalistic flamewar" type comments. Fair enough, however your own moderating choices seem to paint you as biased in this regard. Why is there an implied double standard for those who post vs. those who moderate/admin?

Moderator bias is the perception the mind leaps to when running into moderation one dislikes. But people's views of moderator bias are as varied as their feelings on the underlying topic. Actually, they're identical to their feelings on the underlying topic—simple introspection will reveal that to anyone. If it helps at all, I can tell you that when we see flamebait going the other way we try to moderate it just as much.

Moderation work has a weird side-effect that is elusive to describe but is relevant to this question. When you routinely have to moderate angry arguments, where neither side will concede so much as a grain of sand or a drop of water to the other, you often end up in an intense position where one or both sides turn their frustration onto you instead and decide that you are the problem. Sometimes it seems as if that's the one thing they agree on! The side-effect is that over time, this seems to gradually change how your brain functions. You start to think less in terms of agree/disagree and more in terms of the container as a whole.

People often make claims about our personal biases and views, but from my perspective they're always curiously off, because they miss this weirdness of how moderation changes a person over time. I've compared it to having one's brain sandblasted (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16361266). Dwelling in the crossfire has altered how I see many of these high-energy topics. My views have become more friable—smaller in scope and less welded to the infrastructure of the major positions. For example—speaking personally now, not as a moderator—it seems obvious to me that there's no factual dispute in the current thread. That is, there's no contradiction between state infiltration of corporate and academic environments being a thing, and misguided persecution of honest researchers also being a thing: not only could both of those be true, it's actually hard to see how they wouldn't go together. Yet people each pick one of those two and use them as spears to joust with.

What's happening is that our loyalties keep us from widening the frame enough to incorporate all available information. Instead we try to exclude any information that 'helps' the other side and block it when they try to bring it up. Most heated arguments now appear to me to be of this nature. At root, we can't and won't hear each other's stories. In this way the gruntwork of moderation has turned out to be a protracted exercise in forcible frame-widening—something that is painful in its little steps but also has an expanding effect that may (or may not) be worth it.

Are there any meta discussion threads of moderation on HN?

From my perspective there have been zillions.

And it's going to stop by doing what exactly?

The West has had a head start in science and tech. But China and soon India will catch up. It's a simple numbers game. They both have a billion MORE people each than the entire American population. You can't fight that and remain king of the hill forever. Archimedes, Pythagoras and Euclid weren't born in the US. Maybe the Greeks should have thought like you declared Geometry a national security matter and hidden it away from the rest of the world.

Most people understand why Greeks don't rule the world today and most people understand the more interconnected everything gets the less one country is going to dominate anything. The best strategy is to actively push for more and more multinational collab till it gets harder and harder for anyone country to dominate anything.

But ofcourse that requires balls and imagination.

I was going to post a similar response but I chose not to after a little research. I think there is a clear difference between engineers at private industries and academics at a public university. Not sure if this is the best comparison. It seems the Trump administration was targeting academics at public universities.... which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

They are all part of the same plan. You can't let your enemy infiltrate your academia, it's just bad strategy.

If China in the future decides to behave like any normal country I don't see an issue with having cordial relationships again.

I don't get why an academic researcher in the United States who has contributed to our body of medical research is the enemy.

So every Chinese person in a US university is the enemy?

That seems more than a little sweeping, not to mention inaccurate.

At the moment, it should be assumed that's the case. That's an unfortunate side effect of conflicts.

Unfortunate side effect?

Do you realize some of those Chinese are naturalized US citizens like you? Do you realize that you're advocating treating a portion of your fellow citizens as enemy or second-class citizens?

I hope your country of origin will never be at odds with US.

(Expletive deleted)

Literally racism

It is literally not. Here is a definition of racism:

prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

I don't believe Chinese nationals are inferior in any way to me.

I do believe they are (currently) the enemy of western democracies and more specifically to the country where I currently reside.

Intellectualizing racism for the sake of obfuscation is very common in Western history, I hope we aren't falling into the same habits again.

Note that you're just saying a generality, without addressing the comment you're replying to at all.

Sweeping atrocities under the rug is also very common, then trying to project one's own failure to speak out against them as some kind of moral failing of those who do.

> Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault. In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness, however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the origins of recorded history.

-- Noam Chomsky

Just the fact that this discussion was barely penalized, is bursting with accusations of "hysteria" (that also has tradition) and "racism" and "flamebait", while these for example were very harshly penalized, speaks volumes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20318279

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20315905

I think grotesque is a good word for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsoImQfVsO4&t=33m27s

> One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

-- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"

This is exactly the tactic, and the pattern in hundreds of HN discussions: make accusations one doesn't need to prove, and the accused cannot disprove. "You just say this because you hate X", or "you don't say this because you think it's true, and despite it possibly offending someone, no... this is flamebait, my inability to address your argument on its merits is actually your intention". But of course it's verboten to be offended by any of that.

"dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners".

> He watched on. Now that he had changed sides to the SS, he admired the strength of Fritz and the police man even more. He finally had left the camp of those who were wretched enough to let themselves be bludgeoned like that. He was glad to have made his choice. He did no longer have to fear the suspicion of the masters. He was on the side of good. The beatings the men received hardened his consciousness to embody good. One cannot receive beatings and be right, one cannot be dirty, eat garbage and be right.

and

> They know what they are doing, they know what is done to us.

-- Robert Antelme, "The human race"

This is far off topic and well into the generic ideological bucket that we don't want on HN. Would you please stop posting like this?

Well, it's a comment on the notion that action, be that votes, sophistry, lies, censorship, violence -- which all are in a bucket separate from discussion -- can bolster an argument. But sure, I will. Not pointing out the dual use of votes and flags because it's not allowed is something I can live with.

None of those links work. Do you mind reposting ones that do below?

It seems that you copy pasted the links from a different comment, but since HN will automatically shorten long links when presenting them, the links you copied end up cut off.

fixed.

Thanks!

https://www.biospace.com/article/-jc1n-second-scientist-plea...

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/ex-coca-col...

there's routinely news of Chinese scientists and engineers caught with some kind of industrial secret stolen from their employer trying to go back to China in a hurry.

tl;dr - State actors make getting away with it much easier.

State actors providing cover is one of the serious issues with corporate security today. I was discussing this with coworkers over a decade ago when I was consulting inside a petroleum multinational. We could all see how we could exfiltrate valuable trading data. That would have been trivial. What was anything but trivial was the notion of getting away with it afterwards. None of us would seriously consider touching that with a ten foot pole. Even back then, however, we were talking about someone with the cover of a foreign state. That lowers the bar for "getting away with it" by a large margin, primarily by reducing the time for evading detection and capture from the rest of your life to a few weeks or months.

Disclosure: I'm Asian and my wife was born in China and has multiple degrees, including one PhD. She was once a foreign born Chinese academic.

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