
National Science Foundation reveals details on foreign-influence investigations - MindGods
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02051-8
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MR4D
FTA:

 _" In June, the NIH said that 189 researchers may have violated grant or
institutional rules regarding research integrity, with 93% having support from
China."_

Wow.

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bigpumpkin
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Plan)

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beambot
Article talks a lot about policy violations, but very little about the policy
itself. Anyone know: what is the policy?

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mxcrossr
They mention the case of Charles Leiber [1] which might be informative.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Lieber#Federal_arre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Lieber#Federal_arrest)

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klipt
> Lieber stated that "he was never asked to participate in the Thousand
> Talents Program", adding that "he 'wasn't sure' how China categorized him."
> The DOJ believes that Lieber's statement was false, because an intercepted
> email dated June 27, 2012, from Wuhan University of Technology ("WUT")
> included a contract for Lieber to sign.

I wonder what other evidence they have here, eg him actually receiving funds
from them ... if a Chinese university sends you a recruiting email and it goes
to your spam folder, and then you say you have no affiliation with them, can
you be indicted for that based on an "intercepted email"? One would hope not!

~~~
ideophobia
According to the DOJ press release from January, "under the terms of Lieber’s
three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber $50,000 USD per month,
living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at
the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab
at WUT." [1]

I suspect they had evidence to indicate he was paid, but couldn't produce
specific financial records to prove it without a doubt. In cases like this,
the FBI typically goes for the jugular by pursuing espionage charges. This can
be difficult because it often requires concrete evidence of financial gain
from the foreign entity explicitly for the information provided or actions
taken. The mere appearance of financial gain is not enough, they'd want to see
the literal check stubs and account statements.

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-
professor-...](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/harvard-university-professor-
and-two-chinese-nationals-charged-three-separate-china-related)

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LatteLazy
The NSF funds about 10,000 grants per year. 16-20 (which is it!?) of those
might have done something wrong.

I'm all for action on China, but this is Reds Under The Bed for the 2020s
IMHO.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation)

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jvanderbot
They would prosecute these cases regardless of people's opinions on China.
They are releasing data on those prosecutions, which is hard to criticize as
scare tactics.

They are mostly asking for more money because the reporting has increased (See
end of article).

Also: "In June, the NIH said that 189 researchers may have violated grant or
institutional rules regarding research integrity, with 93% having support from
China."

~~~
LatteLazy
It just doesn't make sense to me otherwise, what am I missing?

99.9% of scientists didn't make a mistake. The remaining 12 might have made
honest mistakes. That's the smallest problem we've ever had isn't it? Do 99.9%
of people file their taxes perfectly or 99% of government employees get their
expenses exactly correct? I doubt it. But somehow the FBI, the Inspector
General, the NSF and Nature are all investigating and reporting publically.
Why bother?

I'm cynical, maybe that's why the only reason I can think of is that it plays
into a "China steals our tech" narrative.

I'd love some comparison figures for the 93% figure. What percentage of NSF
grant holders got funding from China? What percentage of international funding
for science comes from China (I bet that's a big number)?

What's the actual driver here? I very much doubt its fraud or espionage
prevention because there doesn't seem to be any to prevent...

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ethanbond
> There doesn't seem to be any to prevent

I think that's the critical difference between your perspective and the
perspective of people who are worried about it. China _does_ engage in
espionage, as does every other state. Every state also has tries to defend
themselves from espionage, and they especially don't want to _fund_ espionage
by what is quickly becoming a near-peer adversary.

They're bothering because they think it's a problem. You don't, but you're
probably also not the US intelligence apparatus whose job it is to think about
this.

I'm sure if these are legitimate paperwork errors, people aren't going to be
getting into serious trouble. However, security lapses and intrusions often
manifest and are most detectable as, you guessed it, paperwork errors.

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DarthGhandi
Do you think nation-state espionage is healthy for a global ever-more-
connected world?

Especially when it's not anything in the slightest to do with protecting lives
and purely economic?

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ethanbond
I’m not sure that dichotomy is as clear as you’re portraying it to be.

The US has been able to, for example, rebuild Europe and Japan as liberal
democracies because of its economic and industrial dominance post-WW2. To
think that Chinese economic dominance would not have meaningful effects for
e.g. ethnic or religious minorities throughout the world is, in my view,
ignoring the most fundamental forms of interconnectedness.

