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Comment by andi999 | Hacker News Reader

"The dismissal is a setback to the China Initiative, an effort started in 2018 to crack down on economic and scientific espionage by China."

No, it is not. Why would it be a setback if somebody who is innocent has their case dismissed. I mean who writes such lines? Doesnt this line imply that this dismissal was a bad thing (since nobody endorses espionage).

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The purpose of the China Initiative was ostensibly to root out industrial espionage. Instead they ended up investigating and prosecuting a bunch of Chinese scientists for legally trying to advance their work and careers, and haven’t yet discovered much if any industrial espionage. The worst they’ve found so far, from what I can tell, is a few undisclosed grants and minor visa violations.

Having incompetent, overzealous investigators and prosecutors ruin a bunch of innocent people’s lives for the sake of some questionable agenda they aren’t otherwise successfully advancing makes the whole endeavor seem like a farcical waste of public resources and undermines the reputation of the DOJ.

"The collateral damage from this error is a setback for the China Initiative, as it undermines public support for the program and discourages legitimate researchers from applying for government funding, hurting US scientific progress."

Was that so hard?

Is your comment meant to be an improvement?

Yes.

One assumes that the goal of the China Initiative is to charge people who are actually guilty of espionage. Highly public failings at that goal would seem to be setbacks, right?

Well, some publishers are careful to note the distinction between `allegations` and `accusations` while others do not. Then there's the word `indictment` which I always assumed meant something after the fact but is instead actually defined as a "formal (lega) charge of an accusation".

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