Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The article mentions, oddly enough at literally the very bottom, that one of the main laws being used is the 'Wolf Amendment' [1], passed in 2011. It's what prevented Chinese from working on the ISS and arguably is why China now has its own space station. It's an extremely dumb law that's been passed and reauthorized repeatedly by every single administration and Congress since Obama who it was passed under.

Just quoting Wiki since it's quite succinct and accurate on this: "[The Wolf Amendment] prohibits the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from using government funds to engage in direct, bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government and China-affiliated organizations from its activities without explicit authorization from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Congress."

For another consequence of this law, when China relatively recently carried out a sample return from the Moon, they sought to share the resultant rocks/material with countries worldwide, much like NASA did in the 60s. Except Americans couldn't accept them, at least not without jumping through a million hoops first, due to this law. It's one of the ever more frequent 'I'm going to punch myself in the face because I don't like you' acts by governments.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach. A mayor in the LA area was just charged for acting as a Chinese agent: https://www.npr.org/2026/05/14/nx-s1-5819933/china-trump-tri.... A Navy engineer and his wife (who was a teacher at my kids' school) were convicted a few years ago for trying to sell nuclear submarine secrets to foreign governments.

Scientists and engineers aren't any more moral than the rest of us, and interactions between them across national boundaries raises security risks.

> You act like these scientists and engineers are all above reproach

Where does he say that?

It’s implicit in his reasoning. His statements imply that there’s not a legitimate concern these laws are trying to address.

No it's not. You're not stopping any bad behavior with this law, but you're imperiling a vast amount of cooperative and good behavior, or like I said - it's a 'I'm going to punch myself in the face because I don't like you' law. In your scenario, the person in question was a US citizen so this sort of law would not apply.

And that generalizes broadly. Obviously China is engaging in espionage and related activities in the US and, equally obviously, the US is doing so within China. This law does absolutely nothing to shift the ball there whatsoever, but it imposes major hurdles to collaboration that is not only wholly on the up-and-up but directly in the US' best interests to pursue.

Governments are increasingly often engaging in acts with lofty spoken ambitions behind them, but the acts not only fail to do absolutely anything whatsoever to realistically advance those ambitions, but even directly hurt the governments in question. It's absolutely bizarre and I think can only be explained by governments having leadership that surrounds itself with nothing but yes-men, or idiots. Though I suppose, what's the difference?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com