Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

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I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS).

I've been on the defensive end of attacks by employees (all Chinese citizens, living in China) in our Chinese organization attempting to breach data and infrastructure firewalls.

Once upon a time my work touched some sensitive, classified areas. I was more or less constantly harassed by rather hilarious and obvious attempts by Chinese individuals to gain access to the classified bits for a time.

We don't live in a world where scientific and technological advances are all to the good for humanity. There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are.

"I've personally witnessed Chinese national students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require (this is physics, here, not CS)."

Well, I've personally witnessed american students attempting to acquire access to sensitive lab equipment and documentation their research wouldn't require, too. That included me! Thank goodness the attitude of my leaders was "smart people should have access to more tools than their job requires". that included chinese nationals who were in my program.

Certainly, my goal was the capture the hearts and minds of chinese people who were in my PhD program, so that they would move here, become US citizens, and contibute to our economy. It never even occurred to me that people could have a "dual scientific citizenship" and sort of hold positions in china and the us at the same time, and exploit that.

My goodness you read far too much into my comment: acting as though I thought every piece of sensitive information should be closely guarded to the death is...less than charitable.

> There are politically powerful people who would see these things used to ends that hurt others for their own gain. It happens all the time, and likely will as long as humans are what we are.

Don't you think this group of politically powerful people might include the ones you research for?

Of course it would: but I'm struggling to understand the relevance, here. We do this stuff. They do this stuff. We each want to stop the other from doing it. There's nothing contradictory about it, as I'm not making an absolutist statements regarding ethics or morality.

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