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Comment by cycomanic | Hacker News Reader

I highly suspect that China (and almost every other country) are not the issue. Chinese and the whole international scientific community will profit immensely from the data coming from James Webb, so I don't think the Chinese have any interest in sabotaging the project. More dangerous would be some average joe, somewhere who would try to mess with it for the lulz.

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Embarrassing the US is high value.

If somebody like China is caught sabotaging JWST the fallout could be immense. They would be accused of trying to hold back human progress, and I could easily imagine high profile Chinese scientists leaving the country and science institutions boycotting China. It's not worth the risk.

I also don’t think they would want to do this, but I think you’re overestimating the risk. Genocide, stealing the entire South China Sea, and threatening the sovereignty of other nations haven’t inspired such boycotts.

They actually understated the risk by incorrectly assessing where it would come from.

The primary risk would be that the US would hit back and attempt to sabotage something important to China (and with China's sprawling global interests now, there are a vast number of soft, highly exposed targets). The US Government can be quite vindictive depending on the context, it will hit you back if it can. The responsible agency wouldn't seek publicity for any successful sabotage, but China would know who did it and what it was for.

Schemes like that would involve not taking credit for it - just another example of US failure, not a success by China.

Or terrorist organizations with tech skills

Or frame the average Joe for the lulz for political points.

(sorry, I'm just now reading into the drama with the fbi and gov. whitmer..)

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