Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

I would not forget that he was co-founder of China's missile program too. And given how many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to China, it's pretty disingenuous to go 'oh, he only worked for them because the US mistreated him!' He would be far from the first person whose loyalties turned out to lie where you would expect them to lie.

    Let them go home? This issue has come up before. The Feds locked up H. S. Tsien [Qian Xuesen] back in the 50s because they thought he was pro-Chinese and would aid the Chinese rocket program. When they finally let him go, that’s exactly what he did.

    There have been many cases in which key individuals have been allowed to go home and fight with their homies, due to chivalry or some other form of stupidity. in 1861, the Feds let many officers go home and fight for the Confederacy. Radomir Putnik, chief of the Serbian general staff, was taking the waters in Austria when the First World War broke out. They let him go home – were they ever sorry! Gernot Zippe, an Austrian POW in a Siberian camp, built a workable centrifuge for separating isotopes. Yet, to my lasting surprise, the Soviets let him go in 1956. He became the Johnny Appleseed of nuclear proliferation [along with Eisenhower - Atoms for Peace].

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/

View on HN

It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that?

Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not. If there are not, then it's absolutely reasonable to say that he went to China because he was mistreated. If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason.

> It's disingenuous to say that he abandoned ship because he was mistreated because other people of the same ethnicity were spies? What kind of insane reasoning is that?

It's non-naive reasoning based on the knowledge that yes, people do care about their own race and ethnicity and may have multiple loyalties, and the world doesn't work based on a simple 'you are 100% loyal to the country you are in' bit of reasoning.

Try engaging in less abuse and more probabilistic reasoning.

> Either there are good reasons to believe he was a spy, or there are not.

Either this is a false dichotomy, or it is not.

> If there are, then let's hear what they are, but "other Chinese people were spies" is not remotely a good reason.

Yes, it is. If other Chinese people were spies at above base-rates, then one will be more accurate in finding traitors by taking this into account.

Given that it seems he was quite loyal until he was persecuted by his country, how do you think that reasoning turned out in the end?

> Given that it seems he was quite loyal

Well, it does! The only points to the contrary that I've seen presented so far are that 1) he left the country after being persecuted and prevented from working for years and 2) he was Chinese. Neither are even remotely convincing.

Qian was a co-founder and very first Director of the JPL, recognised by his peers as being a genius. He didn't need to be a spy, he had everything in his head. His wife even says that he wanted to become a naturalized US citizen.

"Sent to Germany to interrogate Nazi scientists, Qian interviewed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. As the trade magazine Aviation Week put it in 2007, upon naming Qian its person of the year, "No one then knew that the father of the future U.S. space program was being quizzed by the father of the future Chinese space program."

No evidence was presented, he was never tried or convicted of being a spy. Imagine being at the height of your powers and than being wrongly accused of a crime, and for five years not being able to work with your peers. Science was the loser here.

Today's media reports on the moon landing refer to China's "military backed" space program. Duh. Instead of celebrating science, it's sad to see people rolling out little slurs and digs which are intended to discredit China and its achievements. I won't say it's racist but it sure looks like it.

> No evidence was presented, he was never tried or convicted of being a spy. Imagine being at the height of your powers and than being wrongly accused of a crime, and for five years not being able to work with your peers. Science was the loser here.

Security is not a judicial procedure. Did we need to have a formal court trial with a smoking gun before we decided Dual_EC_DRBG was untrustworthy? Did we say 'yes, it's the NSA which is associated with treachery against cryptography and no, we can't prove it was backdoored, but let's assume good faith and keep using it'? No, of course not, because in security, that is an insane mindset.

Security is a judicial procedure, which is why we try and convict spies of espionage using evidence gathered by investigations rather than disappearing and executing people suspected of being traitors.

> Did we need to have a formal court trial with a smoking gun before we decided Dual_EC_DRBG was untrustworthy?

No, because you can't try algorithms in a court of law. Algorithms don't have moral agency and can't act of their own accord. This analogy is unhelpful.

> Did we say 'yes, it's the NSA'...

The implication being that the NSA, an untrustworthy actor, created the PRNG and hence the PRNG is suspicious. That's reasonable. What's the analogy in the case of Qian? That he had been strongly linked or associated with activity or actors that were engaged in espionage? Fair enough. If you are claiming that his ancestry alone justifies as much suspicion in him as the provenance of Dual_EC_DRBG justifies suspicion in that PRNG...then we may have to agree to disagree.

> Security is a judicial procedure, which is why we try and convict spies of espionage using evidence gathered by investigations rather than disappearing and executing people suspected of being traitors.

No, it can escalate into judicial procedures if security agencies decide to make an example of someone, but it is not inherently judicial. When someone is denied clearance, it is not because they were put on trial by a jury of their peers and found guilty by majority vote after an extended trial with all the safeguards afforded citizens by the constitution.

> Algorithms don't have moral agency and can't act of their own accord. This analogy is unhelpful.

The analogy is apt. Both people and software are part of systems (have we learned nothing from social engineering?) and are attack surfaces.

> That he had been strongly linked or associated with activity or actors that were engaged in espionage? Fair enough. If you are claiming that his ancestry alone

Yes, that his loyalties may be divided because he came from China and not some obscure country like New Zealand. And let's not forget, it's not just his 'ancestry' - he wasn't born in Peoria Iowa. He was born and raised in China and came to the USA for higher education. That's much closer ties to China than 'ancestry'.

I won't say it's racist but it sure looks like it.

But you did say it, and its ridiculous. How exactly is this supposed to be "racist"?

You don't think if Qian was Russian, and this was the 1950's that the government wouldn't have done something similar? The government can (and does) make decisions out of fear, and that's probably what was going on in this case.

> You don't think if Qian was Russian, and this was the 1950's that the government wouldn't have done something similar?

yeah, more or less.

Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), technical director of Nazi Germany's missile program, became the United States' lead rocket engineer during the 1950s and 1960s

this guy was a former nazi, AND his home country of germany was a soviet satellite state, he seemed to escape suspicion. so this guy was a nazi and a communist, but he was all good. no problems here! gee. i wonder why.

there were also many soviet defectors that were never chased out of the country.

this is because he was chinese, plain and simple. doesn't look like us = not one of us. that was the thinking back in the day.

i wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that his accusors simply didn't think a chinese person could be smart enough to be a rocket scientist, either. people actually thought this way back in the 50s.

A few of Qian's colleagues at JPL were also from countries under Communist control and they were never under suspicion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n

So yeah, pretty much. From commie country + not white = commie.

That doesn't explain all of the "white" people that were investigated (and black listed) during the "Second Red Scare" of the 1950's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

> this guy was a former nazi, AND his home country of germany was a soviet satellite state, he seemed to escape suspicion. so this guy was a nazi and a communist, but he was all good. no problems here! gee. i wonder why.

Maybe you should reread your comment. He was 'a nazi and a communist'? That's quite a trick.

(von Braun and the other Nazis were trusted precisely because they were so virulently anti-Communist and there was, after all, western Germany, which I see you omit when you describe his 'home country' as being 'a soviet satellite state'...)

yes. a skilled prosecutor or persecutor could easily persuade an audience of either one, possibly both, at different points in time.

MANY nazis went on to become communists in east germany once the soviets moved in. they were, in fact, BOTH NAZIS AND COMMUNISTS.

i take it you've never really sat down and thought through some of your assumptions of the history of ww2 / europe / asia / america. i urge you to do so one day. it can be quite stimulating.

for example, did you know china was an ally in world war 2, while japan was an enemy?

crazy, i know.

> i take it you've never really sat down and thought through some of your assumptions of the history of ww2 / europe / asia / america. i urge you to do so one day. it can be quite stimulating.

I enjoy your condescension. It reminds me of why on Lesswrong, we say 'politics is the mindkiller'. Here we have a simple situation in which people with foreign ties often become spies and this justifies extra investigation, and people are going berserk and engaged in all sort of motivated reasoning.

> for example, did you know china was an ally in world war 2, while japan was an enemy?

Yes. I have more shocking information for you: Soviet Russia was an ally in WWII too.

ah of course. lesswrong, the largest circle jerk on the internet.

It still seems to be the thinking today.

Success by Asians is smeared as being the result of industrial espionage, cheating or pure luck.

This drip feed of soft propaganda and sterotyping can't be good for society, when clearly many challenges remain:

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-lorde-asian-...

You seem to be denying that Chinese industrial espionage occurs...

Do newspapers make similar accusations of 'friendly' countries proven to conduct espionage?

You can find plenty of coverage of Israelis spying on the US for Israel. A 'friendly' country long since proven to conduct espionage.

Oh yes, as a Chinese let me remind you that from news we have learned that there isn't just Chinese American accused to betray the US government, but other ethnic groups too. So, maybe all of us are guilty then.

What kind of stupid idiot you are, by your stupid accusation.

Because of your stupid reasoning, let me construct some ideas:

By your reasoning, we should stop hiring Chinese and Russians because they are known to be hacker-active states. I should be thankful that I received a security internship back in summer and my employer should be glad I had a great chance of being a Chinese spy, injecting backdoor, because I care about my origin and I read Chinese newspaper in addition to New York Time because I happen to like NYT.

And so when certain ethnic groups celebrating their ethnic holiday (Mexican, African Americans), we should be careful because they have a spiritual attachment to their origin (or their parents' origin) that they are also likely to be spy or going to be working for their mother country.

Sure we can't assume they won't. I mean I see American born kids turn into terrorists and there are people who just decide they have enough of US government and run to another country (right, you know, those run to North Korean).

We should also note that UK immigrants might have a tendency to take back US as UK's colonies, and Canadian should be careful of US immigrants because there is some people who believe US should own Canada too.

Right?

> Oh yes, as a Chinese let me remind you that from news we have learned that there isn't just Chinese American accused to betray the US government, but other ethnic groups too. So, maybe all of us are guilty then.

No. Different groups have different risks. That is the point. Someone ethnically Chinese born and raised in China has a different risk of being a spy for China than a white Mormon who has never set foot outside North America.

> What kind of stupid idiot you are, by your stupid accusation. Because of your stupid reasoning, let me construct some ideas:...Right?

No. Please read what I have read, and not what you think I have read. Your absolutist reasoning, without any probabilities but with tons of exaggeration, is not applicable to what I have said.

Better not hire any Jewish people either because, you know, Jonathan Pollard. Thus all American Jews are suspect.

Look, I disagree with gwern here, but after reading your third sentence I immediately downvoted you. Don't call people stupid idiots.

I'm certain that there surely are damning cases where Chinese-Americans were convicted of treasonous high crimes.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/leung/

http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1990/Report-Stolen-Secrets-May-...

But then there are also cases like that of Wen Ho Lee where there was significant prosecutorial overreach.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee

Four Chinese Espionage Investigations

Details of four investigations into suspected Chinese espionage over the past 20 years -- only one of which was prosecuted successfully -- revealing the complexities of such cases.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/spy/spies/four...

Edit: Corrected URL

Iris Chang's biography of Tsien argues that the government backed him into a corner, then left him in bureaucratic limbo for several years. This would be a lot for a proud, brilliant man to take sitting down. I find it easier to believe that he was deeply insulted by the accusations made against him, and after enduring several years of uncertainty, chose the pit over the pendulum.

You can choose what you find easier to believe. But let's not pretend that Tsien was obviously innocent and it must have been the government's fault. I'm sure Chang is sympathetic to her subject and would like to argue that it's all the government's fault.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldrich_Ames

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

white guys with european ancestry are the 2 worst spies in the history of the US.

did their loyalties lie where you "expected" them to lie?

Yes. Please consider that like 99% of the intelligence community is white. We should expect to see 99 Ames or Hanssens for every Xuesen.

I know statistics is hard, but seriously, this should be an obvious point. The relevant agencies are almost completely white especially in the era we're talking about; doesn't this imply that any spies are almost certainly going to be white and that more than 2 or 3 Chinese spies indicate that loyalties may be... divided? Look at the WP list, it's well beyond 2.

> We should expect to see 99 Ames or Hanssens for every Xuesen.

So you're saying the US government should make white guys the subject of their prime suspicion? What kind of idiots concentrate on 1% while the other 99% of vulnerability gets free pass?

If I were a Chinese intelligence officer I'll first hire a bunch of white guys to do the dirty work. Apparently some people think they can trust you if you have a pale skin.

> So you're saying the US government should make white guys the subject of their prime suspicion?

And they do devote the majority of their efforts to examining the overwhelming majority of their (white/black/hispanic) employees. But nevertheless, when they happen to be doing their checks of an immigrant from a hostile power, they should devote more effort than usual because it is more likely than the base rate...

> If I were a Chinese intelligence officer I'll first hire a bunch of white guys to do the dirty work.

Good luck.

LOL

"we're the majority so you should expect to see more of us do X, the fact that isn't true proves that minority is bad."

this tired old argument and the convenient self-fulfilling prophecies it spawns can be used to justify anything. especially a persecution of any minority population for any activity whatsoever.

prime example: war on drugs.

let's not forget that investigations are run by people, with focused efforts on specific targets, for specific reasons. oftentimes investigators will go for the politically expedient target, the 'easy' target, or simply the targets that stick out when compared.

when you look at the ranks of falsely accused spies, what do you see?

just because more people are caught doing something does NOT mean that they are doing more of it in real life.

> this tired old argument and the convenient self-fulfilling prophecies it spawns can be used to justify anything. especially a persecution of any minority population for any activity whatsoever.

No, it can't. It is a precise argument based on fractions of the relevant population. One could refute my argument by simply presenting an estimate of the populations of white potential spies, white spies, Chinese potential spies, and showing the white spy % > Chinese spy %.

Instead, I get shit like your comment.

You probably get shit like this comment because you evade the burden of proof (you started this whole crap, where are your numbers?) while making painfully racist claims.

> you started this whole crap, where are your numbers?

That's not my point. My point is that everyone here is enjoying their self-righteous anachronistic indignation & kibbitzing & moral superiority without even reaching the basic level of discussion of asking 'are Chinese immigrants more likely to be spying for China than regular scientists and so additional scrutiny warranted?' It's not that anyone has presented numbers or evidence - they don't even realize that they need to.

It's like if everyone was going around accusing me of racism and being an idiot and a Nazi and a Stormfront user (oh wait!); yes, maybe I have not presented a hard census of how many Chinese immigrants were working in sensitive programs and became suspected of being spies, but frankly, this discussion has much bigger problems than that.

You're assuming a greater incidence of spying among Chinese than among others, something you have not supported. You're further assuming that this greater incidence warrants massive scrutiny, something you also have not supported.

So first, support your claim that Chinese spy more. Is it really that hard?

Second, even if that is true, the second part is not necessarily true. For example, white people are far more likely to be members of the KKK than any other race. Does that mean that white people deserve additional scrutiny because of it? No, because even though the relatively probability is much higher, the absolute probability is still negligible.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Chinese people spy at four times the average rate. If the average rate was 20% and the Chinese rate was 80%, yeah, clearly you should be checking into that pretty hard. On the other hand, if the average rate was 0.001% and the Chinese rate was 0.004%, you're just wasting resources if you think that justifies scrutiny of all Chinese.

what you don't understand is the fractional percentage of a population tells you nothing about an actual person. do you think the founders of youtube, yahoo, and JPL were spies? what are the likelihood of them being spies, compared to your average white guy?

is this something that your autistic world-filter can assign a number to? or do you just sit smugly at home with the knowledge that "yeah, those chinese people are probably spies. how come nobody sees it?"

it's the same old shit, dude. go back to stormfront.

> do you think the founders of youtube, yahoo

Are not relevant to a discussion of national security...? Why don't you try looking at the right populations here?

> is this something that your autistic world-filter can assign a number to? ...it's the same old shit, dude. go back to stormfront.

I'm afraid I am not a member of Stormfront and so would not enjoy going back there.

Looking at it through your lens: if he stays he's a spy, if he leaves he's a spy.

Any third option?

False dichotomy. He had many options: he could've fought the deportation, he could've gone elsewhere than China, he could've gone to China and not worked in their ICBMs, etc.

The article does mention that he did fight deportation. On the other hand not going to China or working on Chinese rocket projects would have been ludicrous considering his ethnicity and field of expertise. You expect a human to simply drop their life's opus because of accusations of being a communist. Frankly it doesn't matter if he was or wasn't a communist. It doesn't matter in the larger scope of things because being a communist doesn't mean betraying your country. The question is why was he charged with communism (which is not a crime) without proof. Any charge without prior proof is over reach. And him ending in China is the best option he had after being stalled in the USA.

> The article does mention that he did fight deportation.

And that he dropped it: "He later changed course, however, and sought to return to China."

> On the other hand not going to China or working on Chinese rocket projects would have been ludicrous considering his ethnicity and field of expertise.

Why couldn't he go to Europe or any of the other countries in the world which are not China? And when he went to China, why did he work on what he did? It's possible to work in NASA rather than NSA.

> The question is why was he charged with communism (which is not a crime) without proof. Any charge without prior proof is over reach.

He apparently was not an American citizen (eg "Qian was born in the eastern city of Hangzhou, and in 1934 graduated from Jiaotong University in Shanghai, where he studied mechanical engineering."). You are applying the incorrect standards.

Why not quote the complete paragraph, it is very relevant to have the whole context: "For years, Qian was in a sort of limbo, being watched closely by the U.S. government and living under partial house arrest. Eventually he quit fighting his expulsion and actively worked to return to China."

Do I read your last paragraph correctly? Are you saying that it's fine to make unfounded accusations against people as long as those people are not American citizens?

yeah. the third option is be born white.

So exactly how many Chinese-Americans (as distinguished from Chinese citizens who are in America) turn out to be passing secrets to China?

Looking at the Wikipedia page for spy cases involving China:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_intelligence_operations...

There only seems to be one confirmed Chinese-American case in recent years - Chi Mak (and he was a naturalized citizen).

> There only seems to be one confirmed Chinese-American case in recent years

'recent years'? Why did you add this qualifier? That lists 8 different cases, and this is only what has gone public; by the nature of these things, you're only seeing the surface of the iceberg. (Does anyone seriously think that the US is not the top target of Chinese espionage and where it most wants agents?) Now, consider what fraction of the populace is Chinese-American, and what that implies...

You should read the list instead of just counting the entries - many of those cases turned out to be false.

And yes, this is only what has gone public. You explicitly said "turn out". Do you have information that the general public does not?

I said 'recent years', because does anyone consider espionage from the 80's to be relevant? I sure don't.

I don't know if you realize this, but most Chinese-Americans (at least from what I've seen) were either born in the US, from Taiwan, or fled the PRC (as in, they did not want to live in a country run by the PRC). Does anyone seriously think these people are going to be spies for the Chinese government?

> You should read the list instead of just counting the entries - many of those cases turned out to be false.

No, they couldn't prove them to judicial satisfaction. That they were not shown to be guilty does not prove they were innocent.

> I said 'recent years', because does anyone consider espionage from the 80's to be relevant? I sure don't.

When you're considering rare events, yes, the 1980s are still relevant. Why would you exclude them? Did the Singularity happen in 1989 or are we on Mars or something?

> Does anyone seriously think these people are going to be spies for the Chinese government?

Does anyone seriously think that Chinese-Americans are all 100% loyal and are not a good recruiting ground for Chinese intelligence?

> No, they couldn't prove them to judicial satisfaction. That they were not shown to be guilty does not prove they were innocent.

True, but you still can't count them as people who "turn out" to be passing secrets to the PRC.

> When you're considering rare events, yes, the 1980s are still relevant. Why would you exclude them? Did the Singularity happen in 1989 or are we on Mars or something?

If, as you contend, so many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to the PRC, surely you can come up with more than 1 confirmed case within the past 30 years?

> Does anyone seriously think that Chinese-Americans are all 100% loyal and are not a good recruiting ground for Chinese intelligence?

Does anyone seriously think all Americans (even excluding Chinese-Americans) are all 100% loyal? I don't know why we would hold Chinese-Americans to a higher standard than the rest of the citizenry. I don't think Chinese-Americans are more likely to be spies in a statistically significant way.

And I actually don't think Chinese-Americans are a good recruiting ground for the PRC. As I mentioned, most Chinese-Americans I know (and I know a lot) were either born here, from Taiwan, or who worked hard to flee the PRC. They are generally apathetic or harbor resentment towards the PRC.

I think the PRC is far more likely to be trying to send people here than trying to recruit people that are already here.

> True, but you still can't count them as people who "turn out" to be passing secrets to the PRC.

Why not? These are people who were found to be extremely suspicious by the people in charge of finding spies. What is that, chopped liver?

> If, as you contend, so many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to the PRC, surely you can come up with more than 1 confirmed case within the past 30 years?

How many Chinese-Americans are there working in these vulnerable positions? Is 1 confirmed case (with who knows how many scores of undetected or unconfirmable real cases) above or below the base rate for spying? Do you know? Shouldn't you know, before you pass judgement?

> I don't think Chinese-Americans are more likely to be spies in a statistically significant way.

You are, of course, as confident in this as it is possible to be in the absence of all evidence.

> I think the PRC is far more likely to be trying to send people here than trying to recruit people that are already here.

And your basis for this is...? Given the existence of common classifications like NOFORN, this would be self-defeating behavior.

> Why not? These are people who were found to be extremely suspicious by the people in charge of finding spies. What is that, chopped liver?

Why can't you count people who have not been confirmed as being spies as people who have turned out to be spies? Isn't the answer to that self-evident?

Another way of looking at is this: every year, there are plenty of people who are acquitted of crimes they were prosecuted for. Can you say all those people turned out to have committed the crimes they were accused of, simply because the people in charge of finding criminals found them to be extremely suspicious?

> How many Chinese-Americans are there working in these vulnerable positions? Is 1 confirmed case (with who knows how many scores of undetected or unconfirmable real cases) above or below the base rate for spying? Do you know? Shouldn't you know, before you pass judgement?

For the purposes of this conversation, undetected and unconfirmed cases are irrelevant. I am solely responding to what you wrote:

"given how many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to China"

If you want to claim that by "how many", you meant "1" (and even that is questionable depending on if you count naturalized citizens or not), I think you are just being reluctant to admit you were wrong. But putting that aside, the null hypothesis is that there is no statistically significant relationship between being Chinese-American and likelihood of being a spy - the burden is on you, not me.

> Another way of looking at is this: every year, there are plenty of people who are acquitted of crimes they were prosecuted for. Can you say all those people turned out to have committed the crimes they were accused of, simply because the people in charge of finding criminals found them to be extremely suspicious?

Given that criminals tend to have long histories of crimes and that only a fraction of crimes are caught, then yes: knowing someone faced charges ought to massively raise your estimate that they have committed past crimes which they were not caught for. Of course there are many innocent people who have been charged, but crank your Bayes theorem here...

The reason we have a very high bar like 'innocent until proven guilty' is not because this is any sort of information-theoretic or statistically-optimal criteria which balances some chosen ratios of innocent:guilty convicted, but as a check-and-balance on the power of government and a mechanism against tyranny and abuse of the laws.

> But putting that aside, the null hypothesis is that there is no statistically significant relationship between being Chinese-American and likelihood of being a spy - the burden is on you, not me.

The burden here is on any kibbitzer who wants to engage in hindsight and accuse anyone of racism for suggesting that maybe Chinese scientists are not precisely as trustworthy as natives with regard to national security.

> surely you can come up with more than 1 confirmed case within the past 30 years?

See, that's an interesting claim. "Surely, if there were clandestine activities, we'd know about them and have solid proof about them."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com