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.
I hope this kind of politics does not creep into other areas of American life.
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?
You have the answer right there.
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...
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.
That's war talk.
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.
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.