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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   33492 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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I agree wholeheartedly with your overall point. Bringing top-tier scientists to the US, keeping them here and convincing them to buy into our system should be a national priority. That being said, depending on precisely what you mean, I disagree with:

The immediate cause is probably the misguided and arguably racist "China initiative" which essentially led to a witch-hunt against ethnic Chinese people.

Chinese intelligence services are clearly targeting Chinese-born nationals who have joined firms doing cutting-edge work not only in defense but any economically valuable industry:

Although China publicly denies engaging in economic espionage, Chinese officials will indirectly acknowledge behind closed doors that the theft of intellectual property from overseas is state policy. James Lewis, a former diplomat now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, recalls participating in a meeting in 2014 or so at which Chinese and American government representatives, including an officer from the People’s Liberation Army, discussed the subject. “An assistant secretary from the U.S. Department of Defense was explaining: Look, spying is OK — we spy, you spy, everybody spies, but it’s for political and military purposes,” Lewis recounted for me. “It’s for national security. What we object to is your economic espionage. And a senior P.L.A. colonel said: Well, wait. We don’t draw the line between national security and economic espionage the way you do. Anything that builds our economy is good for our national security.” The U.S. government’s response increasingly appears to be a mirror image of the Chinese perspective: In the view of U.S. officials, the threat posed to America’s economic interests by Chinese espionage is a threat to American national security.

In the life sciences, it's relatively easy (or was relatively easy, once upon a time) to win investment from Chinese VCs but you might notice a Chinese firm doing the exact same thing as you materialize soon afterwards. Unfortunately, it's difficult for me to find quantitative data on the subject to convince you that it isn't a witch-hunt, but it certainly seems quokka-ish to imagine that the Chinese want to play fair in this one single economic arena - particularly given that their stated goals say otherwise.

I suppose the argument is that one shouldn't treat all ethnic Chinese as a giant blog of Borg working in perfect co-ordination. While the Chinese government and some of their VC firms do act like you describe, many ordinary Chinese people have nothing to do with it but were unfairly targeted in a broad campaign that often was remarkably crass in its target-selection - as even former administrators of the program now admit.

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