US scientists boycott Nasa conference over China ban | Hacker News Reader

US scientists boycott Nasa conference over China ban

theguardian.com

71 pointsgrey-area32 comments

Good for these researchers. This ban is, as far as I've been able to tell, racism arising from political expediency. If it were about national security, we wouldn't be collaborating with Russia on the ISS (or allowing ourselves to be completely dependent upon Soyuz for access to the station for the indeterminate future). It's not about human rights, either - NASA collaborates with Saudi Arabia, enough said.

But Russia has Soyouz and the Saudis have oil and power. What could the US gain from China? Where there is nothing to gain, there will be no cooperation...

That's a very interesting question given that 90% of US manufacturing happens in China and probably even more of the eletronics.

The most amusing part of the ban in this instance is that the meeting doesn't concern anything with a possible connection to rivalries between nations. One of the scientists wrote:

"In good conscience, I cannot attend a meeting that discriminates in this way. The meeting is about planets located trillions of miles away, with no national security implications,"

> The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals' access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.

Wow, I am totally shocked that a Republican congressman would sponsor jingoistic, borderline-racist laws such as this.

To quote a generic reddit visitor:

"Wow, I did nazi that coming"

As a European I am not shocked that a Republican congressman would sponsor such a law. I am shocked that a law like this could be passed without an enormous public backlash. I know it's an awful thing to compare current events to pre-WW2 circumstances, but the U.S. is making things very difficult.

It is mind boggling to think that many journalists and opposition politicians read this law and thought "yeah well, but we're in competition with China so it makes sense" and proceeded to not make a fuss about it. This is indoctrination at its finest. The minds of the U.S. citizens is being polluted by ideas of international competition. This is an age in which international cooperation is of critical importance.

>Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency's Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building.

Seems like this is a fight to be held with Congress, not NASA administration.

Although, like mentioned elsewhere, they could hold it in another building

From the story, it seems NASA has no choice but to implement this despicable law. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I hope I am not.

I hope this kind of politics does not creep into other areas of American life.

Well NASA is run by the government, and the government passed this law. I'm in your boat, but I think you're right. However if they violated it it would be interesting to see who'd be thrown under the bus.

That said this is just another law designed to further tension IMO. If you created a rule that designated the information conferences were bilateral, and that the nations all share in their fields, then that would be fair, however creating a rule that bans a foreigner, will only increase tensions, possibly creating a ban against Americans in similar conferences held in China.

Maybe China bans US nationals from a conference on Architecture? Then US opinion gets increasingly anti-China, forgetting the pretext that caused said most recent bad decision. I guess what I'm trying to say is that bad policy builds up technical-debt, especially in foreign affairs.

I don't understand the "national security" reasoning behind it. China is one of the most peaceful countries on Earth. I cannot think of it committing a single aggressive military act in the last 20 years.

European countries and the US are amongst the most aggressive countries in the world when it comes to military action.

Pretend that you are not Western and think about it for a second. How crazy is this?

> the US are amongst the most aggressive countries in the world

You have the answer right there.

Eh, it is about the supposed threat of industrial espionage, of course. China is an economic threat to the USA, not a direct military one.

Economic threats are not national security issues - if they were the current Government shutdown would not be tolerated.

honestly, I think some parts of the government are just too stupid to see how much the shutdown affects the business lobby.

It seems just about anything can be justified as a "national security issue" these days...

> China is an economic threat to the USA

I hope you don't really believe that, and are only talking about it from the politician's point of view. China owns the US. [1]

[1] http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/moneymatters/ss/How-Much-US-De...

Very true. Whites in particular have historically been the most violent in human history when looking at War counts and Death tolls. However, things can change very quickly.

This issue however, is NOT about China's military threat (they're peaceful and mind their own business which I respect a lot). China has a tendency to rip off / steal other people's IP, call it "Chinese Innovation" and turn around to sell it as their own on the international market. They've done this with High Speed Rail technology, beginning to do it with Maglev technology, and most recently..... Drones. They've reverse engineered drones to bypass decades of research (which they openly admit to) and are selling them. Which is probably why the US wants to keep them out of anything related to Aerospace.

Even Elon Musk knows this which is why he's avoiding patents. The Chinese will just work around them, repatent and call it "Chinese Innovation".

http://www.benzinga.com/news/13/03/3451756/is-elon-musks-spa...

"if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book." - Elon Musk

Their copy-cat culture is starting to cost them.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. However, I still cannot see why this a national security problem. The ban on researchers attending conferences is for "national security" reasons.

That's war talk.

The (US) government is run by the top 1%. Everything is about money.

The US does that all the time. "National Security" is code word for "we don't want to get into the reasons".

"it seems NASA has no choice but to implement this despicable law"

They had the choice of taking a principled stand and deciding not to go ahead with the conference. Either the event is open to all nationalities or to none.

If they had cancelled the conference, not only would it have generated lots of publicity, it would also have put this discriminatory law under the spotlight and brought it to the attention of the wider public.

Furthering this issue, why does the U.S "ban" China from the ISS? NASA collaborate with Russia on the ISS pretty closely. So I'm unsure why China is anymore worse if we are talking about espionage...unless that's not what we're talking about.

The US needs Soyuz, but have nothing to gain from China.

I don't know if this is accurate, but this is the other side of the story: http://wolf.house.gov/press-releases/wolf-letter-to-nasas-bo...

> I believe what Mr. Messersmith may have been referring to was a temporary restriction on Chinese nationals that you put in place earlier this year after serious security protocol flaws were brought to your attention by some in Congress, including me, specifically regarding violations at Ames and Langley Research Center. You indicated at the time that security policies for foreign nationals for particular countries of concern would be reevaluated and new accreditations would not be approved until the security process was vetted. However, any restriction against Chinese nationals on NASA centers is entirely an agency policy and not covered under the statutory restriction. Furthermore, it was my understanding that NASA’s temporary restrictions had been lifted after a review of security protocols for foreign nationals at all NASA centers.

As you know, NASA’s inspector general recently produced a report documenting the serious failures in the security process that led to violations involving a Chinese national at NASA’s Langley Research Center. I hope a copy of this report will soon be made public. For these reasons, I supported NASA’s policies that were put in place earlier this year to ensure that these security flaws had been dealt with. I continue to support every effort you deem appropriate to ensure that NASA centers are fully compliant with laws and regulations governing security.

Can anyone provide further context about this law? Why on Earth would Chinese nationals be banned from NASA? And from the ISS for that matter? From the outside it seems like a very aggressive move - are relations between the US and China really so bad?

I wish China wouldn't be banned from cooperation on International Space Station. It's a warmongering decision, nothing else.

I was under the impression the US invited China to participate, but China decided not to, opting instead to launch their own space station when they're ready. Am I mistaken?

It sounds like the ban applies because the conference is held in Nasa facilities. Anyone know why they can't move it to a nearby hotel, conference facility or university?

That's really not a solution to the original problem, just a short-term solution for this one conference. From the mail by Mark Messersmith it looks like the ban applies to all conferences held at a NASA building, so if the NASA ever wants to have chinese participants at one of them they'd have to hold it outside of their own buildings.

The irony is that the movie Gravity opened this weekend. It somewhat indirectly celebrates collaboration among different countries.

While I understand where the Republican comments are coming from, it should be useful to realize that this law was passed in a bi-partisan legislative assembly, and since it appears there was no objection from Democrats (or the public) at the time the law was passed, it's safe to assume Democrats were cool with it too.

The environment in the US is so jingoistic that it is political suicide to vote against certain national-security measures, even ones that you disagree with. This is particularly true for Democrats -- they must vote hawkishly if they want to get reelected.

This is why "Only Nixon could go to China." Only someone who built his career on anti-Communism could stretch out a hand in friendship, because that made him immune to political attacks.

The only person who is currently allowed to get away with this sort of stuff is Rand Paul -- and his father before him. You used to routinely see 420-1 votes in Congress for things that are objectively nonsensical -- and Ron Paul would be the 1.

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