China Focuses Espionage on U.S. Colleges and Universities | Hacker News Reader

China Focuses Espionage on U.S. Colleges and Universities

thecipherbrief.com

28 pointsaborsy9 comments

I personally think that academic ideas should be shared freely even if it means that our adversaries might get ahold of them. If everything was published for all to see and expand upon, there would be no need for them to infiltrate our universities. Hopefully the same open culture can be introduced in China/across all nations.

Wasn't that the argument for opening up trade with China? If we trade with them surely they will become a liberal democracy.

The reason trade was open with china was lower labor costs.

> they will become a liberal democracy.

is just what they told the commoners. (ie you and i)

Exactly. But I'd also add that China surely performed a fair amount of 'lobbying' (cash in envelopes, disinterested campaign contributions, girls in hotel rooms) to facilitate understanding the benefits of Chinese manufacturing. I'm not anti China, but realistic. You use whatever arms at your disposal.

What does introducing the same culture look like? It seems given that if we just hand everything over they'd have no reason to spy but it's less clear what would incentivize them to do the same or why combatting espionage is to cumbersome to continue.

Most scientific research is published openly, for everyone in the world to see. This is also true of scientific research conducted in China. Chinese institutions are now among the largest generators of scientific papers in the world (including in top journals, which is an indication that there is a large amount of high-quality research coming out of China these days).

Stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. You don't understand R&D costs tons of money that us taxpayers are paying. Why should be give that info to our enemies? Or even our friends? We shouldn't, it stupid thinking. They would never share with us even if we did with them.

That's now how the real world works, just in your imaginary "love and peace" world you made up in your head.

R&D is exactly why some countries are more successful and why some aren't. Why some sell things like technology and some are poor as shit.

If china ends up importing DEI/ESG due to this, we might have a chance to beat them after all.

This article relies heavily on the claims of the FBI. It is important to know that in recent years (beginning with the Trump administration's "China Initiative"), the FBI has made a large number of false accusations against ethnically Chinese researchers in the United States. A few of the most egregious examples:

* Chen Gang, head of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. The FBI went after him extremely viciously, raiding his home early in the morning with guns drawn, as if he were a terrorist. In the end, it turned out that he had done absolutely nothing wrong, and that the FBI had no case against him. There's a New York Times article about Chen Gang's ordeal here.[0]

* Anming Hu, an engineering professor at the University of Tennessee (and a Canadian citizen), who had his life turned upside down for two years by the FBI. The FBI first pressured him to spy against China, and when he refused, the FBI pursued both him and his family, going so far as to spy on his son. It eventually turned out that the FBI had knowingly used false evidence against him, and Anming Hu was acquitted. Still, he was publicly smeared as a spy and fired from his job (the FBI lied to his employer to get him fired - just one of the many awful things they did to him). There's an article in the journal Nature about Anming Hu's ordeal.[1]

There are a lot of cases like this. The FBI has consistently shown that it doesn't understand how academic research works (treating normal, open academic exchange as if it were espionage), and has a pattern of maliciously targeting ethnically Chinese academics on the flimsiest of evidence. In Anming Hu's case, an FBI agent decided very early on that Hu must be a spy, and then spent two years trying to prove his completely baseless suspicions.

0. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/science/gang-chen-mit-chi...

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00528-2

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