Lee Bollinger: No, I won’t start spying on my foreign-born students
washingtonpost.com
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I have a relative who works at a big research institution which was hacked by the Chinese a few years ago. After this was discovered, the FBI interviewed people and forced the place to switch to 2FA.
Is it racism when everything bad is attributed to Russians?
Not everything is about intersectionality.
Yes.
> Not everything is about intersectionality.
Turns out everything involving oppressed groups is, by definition.
"Racism is the belief in the superiority of one race over another. It may also include prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity, or the belief that members of different races or ethnicities should be treated differently"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment
When you're selectively denied doing what you want (i.e. to "volunteer to come here") BECAUSE of the group you belong to then you are oppressed. It's not about what happenes to arbitrary specific individuals, it's about what happens to members of a group due to their membership in that group.
The best reason to be nice to foreign students is that being nice is good, and sinophobia is bad. Or, to help a university president interpret his own facts:
> The incompatibility of university culture with systematic scrutiny may explain why even law enforcement officials who have visited our campus have offered little prescriptive guidance, instead offering that we should be vigilant.
Because the government is primarily motivated by sinophobia.
To be sure, government-funded academic research in such national security realms as cybersecurity and bioterrorism is justifiably sensitive. Likewise, academic research conducted in collaboration with U.S. companies — a principal target of most unlawful technology transfers — leads to commercial innovations that warrant protections. Universities have an obligation to comply with existing security protocols, identify sensible ways to bolster them, and cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities and corporate research partners if clear acts of espionage are suspected. To the extent we are falling short in any of these areas — and yes, there have been isolated incidents of academics sharing sensitive intellectual property with foreign governments — we can and must do better.
Those behaviors that are common might be due to sinophobia. Those that are not common must be due to something else.
Tell that to Elsevier.
A parallel system for economically sensitive applied research funded by the government needs to be established. For this type of research, nationals of all other countries should be similarly screened and vetted, since many countries which are political and military allies are economic competitors.
Whatever Americans want or not, they have the face the fact that most countries don't play "fair" and if they have the chance they will wipe the US as soon as possible.
The author made many good points about why spying on foreign born students is a bad idea. One of which is that the vast majority of scientific research is published for all to see, including our "enemies".
This twitter thread from law professor Sarah Burnstien is related - https://twitter.com/design_law/status/1166326853952557059
Claiming continued ownership over something that is in somebody else's head after they have left your legal sphere is somewhat problematic.
Also, it is rather cheeky, as the US research community has relied massively on brain drain from poor or wartorn countries for quite a while now.
i think we could be nudging up against a born secret mentality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret
I would be concerned about this concept being widened beyond nuclear energy research.
as an example computer ubiquity and internet connectivity allow 4th/5th gen warfar to exist. If encryption or miniturization, or transmission media were considered subject to born secret doctrine that could make things very difficult and somewhat partisan.
I feel also, that you can't really go around telling people that they are banned from emigrating due to what they know, unless you also have a labyrinth containing a minotaur, fed with captured foreign citizens.
Although, I have to say, it would not greatly surprise me by this point to learn that this was in fact the case.
But honestly the vast majority of the knowledge transfer is happening through more legitimate means. Even the famous Stanford machine learning professor Andrew Ng got poached by Baidu.
when a western scientist goes to work in China, the nutters are angry because of "loss"
if an easter scientist comes to work in US, the nutters are angry because of "loss"
it's just in-group out-group identity politics bullshit...
just like how in times of slavery interracial marriages were a big no-no because it blurs the agreed-upon line of class separation ("which class does the mixed child belong in?" the biological expression of a mixed child [that we are fundamentally the same] contradicts the ideological expression [that we are fundamentally different]) so today any form of mingling is viewed as a threat to warmongers (who want to maintain a simple thus virally contagious worldview)...
There is SO MUCH more of what is not published: techniques, materials, who is who, suppliers, etc. Well, some countries spacial programs were made with IP stolen from the US. Can you image loss of revenue and power that comes with that?
Maybe you are in a such detach position that you Can't see how much wealth is created by American IP. And how much it goes in the US economy.
You may hate Disney, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. But they bring jobs, revenues, and wealth with their IP.
Let's invert the situation.
American students will work on Iran nuclear research. And we will "forbid" any spy from Iran govt how does it play? Will Iran govt play "nice" care about good points?
It surprises me when the US has to be 100% correct and 200% caring about emotions when everyone else doesn't give a crap and steal from the US.
Now lets rain downvotes.
Just to be clear, is the argument here, "we should be more like Iran?" We're not playing 'nice', we're talking about what strategies are actually in the US's best interests.
The author makes the point that very little of this research is actually private, and that society as a whole benefits from open sharing anyway. A lot of our research happens via cooperation with other countries -- and if you throw that away because you're worried about some bad actors, eventually you're just going to be cutting off your own nose to spite your face.
Private research moves slower than collaborative research.
The author goes on to make the point that a much more effective way of keeping talent in the US is to keep talent in the US. Make it easier for entrepreneurs and researchers who immigrate to the US to stay here permanently and join our economy. If you really want to be competitive with China, think of it this way: every talented scientist or engineer that immigrates to the US from China, is one less talented researcher at the disposal of China's economy.
Whoever heard of a competitive business that decided not to hire the best workers indiscriminately, and not to make it attractive and easy for them to stay in the company for long periods of time? Yet the current US immigration strategy is to bring in effectively "interns", build a hostile work environment where they are distrusted, and then offer them no alternative except to go back to their original countries with the knowledge they've gained. Any business owner can tell you that's a recipe for disaster.
> You may hate Disney, Microsoft, Cisco, etc. But they bring jobs, revenues, and wealth with their IP.
Disney, Microsoft, and Cisco are all independent companies. If they wanted to give their secrets to the Chinese government, the US government would have no way to stop them.
They don't have any special, contractual allegiance to the US beyond written law -- and there is no written law that would compel them to spy on foreign-born employees. I expect the majority of these companies already conduct some research in other countries with the cooperation of other governments.
I suspect that Werner von Braun would find this hilarious.
Also, I'm flitting on the verge of calling Poe's law here.
Whatever <US enemies> want or not, they have the face the fact that the US don't play "fair" and if they have the chance they will wipe the <US enemies> as soon as possible.
I would imagine a more militarily-powerful Iran would be differently shaped as well.
I'm not saying that the US are the only ones that do this, of course, but I feel like Iran might be more friendly if the US hadn't meddled in middle-eastern affairs for so much of the previous century.
Maybe a more correct thing to say would be that America's enemies hate what America stands for and don't want their country to become more like America. But that work is usually done by independent natives who simply see the benefit of the American way of life, not necessarily from the US directly sticking their fingers in the affairs of other states. Look at the white revolution in Iran, which was instituted solely by the Shah without any "persuasion" from the Americans. This helped foment the Islamic revolution far more than any American/Anglo actions from the 1950s, and was what Khomeni hated so much. What did it do? :
> It consisted of several elements, including land reform, sale of some state-owned factories to finance this land reform, construction of an expanded road, rail, and air network, a number of dam and irrigation projects, the eradication of diseases such as malaria, the encouragement and support of industrial growth, enfranchisement of women, nationalization of forests and pastures, formation of literacy and health corps for rural isolated areas, and institution of profit sharing schemes for workers in industry. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Shah sought to develop a more independent foreign policy and established working relationships with the Soviet Union and eastern European nations. In subsequent decades, per capita income for Iranians skyrocketed, and oil revenue-fueled an enormous increase in state funding for industrial development projects
So ? That's just realpolitik. Why this hypocrisy to urgently flag & kill the privilege of the GP. He has a point.
Zoom out a bit.
Levandowski walking out of Alphabet into Uber is the same story as Aleynikov walking out of Goldman Sachs into Teza is the same story as Stanford hiring Nobel economists from UChicago is the same story as Chinese students studying nuclear engineering at US universities is the same story as Bangaldeshi students studying atomic engg in Indian universities as whatever story take your pick that fits this trope.
People move & they carry stuff with them. Ain't fair but that's life. Can't prosecute every single person, so you try to make an example out of the big fish. But for every big fish out there, there's a whole school of little fish swimming covertly doing the same exact thing. Its just a matter of scale.
This needless persuasion to delve deeply into every nook & corner of a cogent argument as though it is some programmatic API & you've discovered some edge case where the unit test barfs...this bloodthirsty impulse isn't going to hold you in good stead. Nuance is awesome, but big picture clarifies as well. Everything isn't about programming.
As for granting foreigners visa status after graduation it depresses the wages of Americans (although helps US companies at least in the short run because of lowered wages).
The risk is that these foreigners can pack up and leave the US at any time and unless their exit is prevented they can theoretically take their know how and mental blueprints with them (for example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Li ). Non-competes are rarely ever enforced internationally (and illegal even in California). The father of the American Industrial Revolution Samuel Slater evaded the British emigration ban and was called “Slater the Traitor”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
Policy makers will have to decide whether to ban foreigners (or the undesired foreigners of the day) or accept the real or perceived risk. Simple cost benefit analysis for policy makers.
The reality is that these measures either way will only change things at the margins when looked at from a very long term perspective in terms of the rise and fall of nations and empires.
The only way to prevent it is to have nothing worth stealing.
For the right amount of money almost everybody steals. Even the so highly coveted white Christian or Jewish Americans.
See the recent Uber/Google case