The Drug Industry Is Having Its Own DeepSeek Moment | Hacker News Reader

The Drug Industry Is Having Its Own DeepSeek Moment

wsj.com

35 pointsbirriel34 comments

> For one, many top scientists trained in the U.S. have returned to China over the past decade, fueling the emergence of biotech hubs around Shanghai.

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

It's depressing that we were never able to stop China's parasitizing of our tech industry and expertise.

If someone studies in the US, spends years working there, and then decides that "actually, I'd have better opportunities in China" and moves back, then that's a failure of the US rather than China being a parasite.

That's not too say that China doesn't do industrial espionage. But brain drain, people voluntarily leaving because they don't like where the US is heading, ain't that.

> If someone studies in the US, spends years working there, and then decides that "actually, I'd have better opportunities in China" and moves back,

What actually happens is that recruited scientists illegally use grants from the host country to fund research that is then sent back to China, and when they're caught, they also flee back to China.

https://www.thelantern.com/2020/11/former-ohio-state-researc...

https://www.science.org/content/article/moffitt-cancer-cente...

From your links, there's precisely 1 people who has done industrial espionage, and 6 more people whom it seems broke their contracts "motivated by simple greed and a disregard for both institutional and federal rules". Which, the latter, doesn't imply any involvement from China at all.

> It describes how McLeod and Wei appear to have been running what NIH has called "shadow labs," using existing federal grants from U.S. agencies to help carry out research in China.

> Wei, the only ethnic Chinese person among the six fired researchers, was instrumental in establishing and maintaining his colleagues' connections with TMUCIH, according to the report.

> Dr. Wei maintained contact regarding Talents program applications with TMUCIH personnel, as well as other apparent Chinese contacts. Determining specifically with whom Dr. Wei communicated over this time period is difficult because communications were often to various web-based email addresses not directly traceable to individuals or entities and were in Mandarin Chinese.

So the Chinese person had better contacts in China?

Also, apparently it's impossible to know what they communicated because they used some weird technology called web based emails written in some impossible to decrypt code known as Mandarin Chinese.

Look, if you're determined to see China as the enemy, and can't see that at least some share of the failings falls on the US too, that's up to you.

Looking at this from outside both of those countries, I can say that if I was a wealthy, well educated, and well connected Chinese person living in the US any time in the last ten years or so, I'd be thinking strongly about going home too, and drawing on whatever contacts I had to make that happen.

You shared an example of a couple of people who did so illegally, but a far larger number of people are doing so using plain old fashioned and totally legal business networking.

If a recruiter calls from back home and says "hey, we're starting up an exciting new company in Shanghai and we want your expertise", there has to be good reasons to make a person say no. At the moment, the US is burning up all of those good reasons for almost all foreign workers.

Using IP theft to improve a nation's economic and scientific standing is pretty common. The US did it too [0][1]. This is not whataboutery, but a simple fact that industrial espionage was the ladder that today's developed nations used, only to then kick away the ladder when the rest of the world tried to catch up.

0: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-industrial-esp... 1: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/09/spy-vs-spy-3

Should be fixed soon! We decided at 6pm on Friday to reduce biomedical research centers' budgets by billions of dollars ($4B in Massachusetts alone), effective Monday. So in the future China will have to train its own scientists.

Sadly, no "/s"

So when US companies try to beat each others products, it is called competition.

But if a foreign company of US-trained people manages to beat the competition, it is parasitising?

That program is mostly a failure btw.

maybe some basic math here: - How many stayed in the US and are still contributing? - How many went back to China? - How many actually stole anything? I'll leave it to you to dig up the data. It should be a good exercise.

Seems like it might be been a bad move to train outside people at our top schools (mainly for that sweet out of state tuition money) and then fail to keep them here. Sort of a self-imposed brain drain, but hey, we did manage to keep the scary foreigners out.

China is doing the same thing the US did in the 1800s, prioritizing economic development, and the US would do exactly the same thing if in their shoes right now. Arguably this will eventually happen, and the roles will reverse, as the US guts higher education for political reasons, then is forced to play catch-up.

France and the UK need to do this...

In the past people were pushed out once their student visas ran out.

Now people leave in panic because they are afraid of the current government.

well, I totally agree with you, and I strongly support:

1. All top American universities must stop accepting Chinese students and researchers.

2. Intelligence agencies should conduct thorough investigations on all chinese scientists in the US

(I'm not being sarcastic)

A reason for that is the more and more hostile attitude towards Chinese working in the US and contributing to the US economy. The unfavorable birth place cap for EB1/EB2 green cards means even for the most elite Chinese students in the US need to deal with this toxic attitude for up to 7 years before they can finally wash out the suspection (or they can't?). Leaving US is the only option if they can't tolerate this.

https://www.science.org/content/article/united-states-drops-...

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo6697

the drug industry’s job is to save lives. anything that accelerates that work is a good thing.

I guess luring educated immigrants from other countries might look like parasitizing to some. Makes you think, right? (I hope)

I would say to stop anthropomorphizing states and objectifying people as inanimate property. People have agency and states don't have rights.

The same applies to the almost identical rhetoric of companies and "poaching" of course.

It's just fair.

Plenty of brain drain happens to the USA too.

Nonetheless China is winning the numbers game anyway. There gdp will be higher than USA by 2035.

And they have a lot more stable policies

You really can’t win with these types…

If Chinese phd students stay and work, they’ll complain about them “stealing American tech jobs”. If they leave, then they’re “parasitizing” the tech industry.

Though I think their real solution is to probably ban all Chinese students / tech workers. And fortunately for them, that likelihood is at its highest under the current administration.

Who are “these types”? Has parent poster made these claims?

Or are you attacking some imaginary villain?

> Who are “these types

Jingoistic types

> Has parent poster made these claims?

Please read the post again. He said that Chinese people who worked/studied here and then returned to China are “parasitic”.

> imaginary villain

These sentiments are real and frequently expressed here on HN. Again, they should write to their representative to ban Chinese people from our schools or tech firms if he feels that is in the best interest of the U.S. But it is wrong to refer to these people as parasites for simply taking advantage of the opportunities available to them, provided by willing U.S employers. They presumably contribute to their companies and pay taxes, so they are not parasites.

When the braindrain you inflict on other countries backfires.

Good on China.

What do they think they gained by destroying so many Chinese lives? Do they think they were striking a blow against capitalism every time they tortured some poor Chinaman? Sounds like they've turned another rather sad corner.

The very, very large Chinese diaspora are voting with their feet and going back to China. Good. Good for everyone. Assuming they're not reassigned as farmers in Xinjiang.

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