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Comment by TeeMassive | Hacker News Reader

Why did they lie then?

The FBI lied in order to try to get convictions [1].

[1] https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2021/06/14/federal...

> “The argument we’ll make is … he was involved with this Chinese university for years, and it was obvious he would have to disclose that,” McKenzie said.

They did this entire witch-hunt, and that’s the only charge they think will stick? None of the fraud or spying allegations - just a lack of disclosure in a single form? We can’t even get Congress to disclose insider trading…

I look forward to the day we have a true rule of law, and more accountability from law enforcers.

TFA has one example where the university he worked at told him he shouldn't disclose. Another, Gang Chen was initially charged of failing to disclose, but it was later found that he was not required to disclose on the grant in question.

> Hu submitted a letter to the university in 2016 disclosing his collaboration with a researcher [...] in Hefei, China.

> A university employee requested that Hu remove the letter from the application because it would violate an assurance document the university was submitting stating that the proposal had no restricted ties to China, the court documents say. A 2011 US law prohibits NASA from funding collaborations with China or Chinese businesses.

So (allegedly) the "university employee" told Hu to cover up potential illegal behavior by the university, or to protect the university from its belief that the government would mis-apply the law about "restricted ties".

Considering the dropped cases apparently they didn’t all lie.

But to answer your question, bringing in funding is both one of the most important and difficult jobs for a professor or researcher. So I assume some lied to unethically get a career boost, thinking they could just casually omit disclosing a role in China to get a chance at more funding.

The vast majority of scientists just want to do their job (research), but they have to play the funding game which gets deeply entangled with political bullshit. China offers the carrot (thousand talents) while USA offers the stick (China Initiative)

Not sure who "they" are, but in this case and the MIT cases, the researchers were accused of lying, but in fact did not lie.

They may have hoped that by casting the net wide, they may catch at least some spies.

The idea of criminal justice is really devolving into witchhunts at this point.

I'm surprised there isn't more pushback since there is an (unintended? intended?) chilling effect in what is otherwise branded as a free & open society.

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