It makes no sense. Foreign scientists usually can't work on classified projects because they require clearance that is very difficult if not impossible for non citizens to obtain. Restricting foreign scientists from US labs is in my opinion a stupid move. What am I missing?
That nationalism is the new state doctrin? Foreigners are inferior by definition, so they cannot really help with research anyway, all they want to do is steal secrets. If you think like that, then it makes sense.
They do! I'm in academia and they hvae really attractive programs to get foreign academics in, they have special programmes just for this purpose. I don't think a lot of people still want to move to China, due to concerns about language, culture, quality of life, authoritarianism etc. but the government is most certainly promoting it.
I think the point is “it’s fair to Americans that’s what counts” is a nationalistic statement. Maybe it’s the way to go. But it’s not refuting the parent who’s saying the missing piece is nationalism.
I mean what is the point of a government of its people if not to serve those who elected it? It seems bizarre that one would elect a government to benefit others whose governments could give a rats ass about us.
Again that’s a nationalistic point of view. For someone unused to thinking about the world as “us” vs “them” where the designations of “us” and “them” are defined by national borders it can be surprising and seem like there’s missing information. There’s not missing information there’s a values/worldview mismatch.
But me as someone who dislikes all kinds of nationalism, I obviously would do both. Develope smart domestic scientists in collaboration with smart international students/scientists. Networking, collaboration, strengthening ties, connecting cultures despite of differences, you know all those humanistic ideals you actually find a lot in real science. Focus on the common goal, progress for all of humanity through new knowledge.
> I think the world got used to us being patsies where we spend our money on R&D paying foreigners
I can tell you're not in the business of training / employing people.
The best ROI is getting someone who is already trained (read you didn't pay for their K-12, their parents' teaching/maternity/healthcare) and just deriving value from their labor.
Quite the opposite. The US got the best of other countries, those countries paid for their education but the US got the benefits. The braun drain was to the US
(later notable entry: Andy Grove, Intel CEO, was born Andreas Grov:
"By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them")
I think there is a difference between bringing in key proven talent at the apex that’s already proven itself and talent that needs to be developed. Both the US and USSR picked up proven talent from the Nazis, they weren’t siphoning up green talent on the hopes they’d develop into good scientists. We have our own population we often overlook and misdirect into Hollywood entertainment rather than achievement.
Speaking of unutilized talents, other than Hollywood, I'd also add a whole bunch of folks in tech who could be useful for defending their own homeland (hence, their own & their kids' future) but are busy doing the generic commercial stuff.
That word makes a lot of people uncomfortable and many will shut their brains off when they see it. It's a perfect word to describe what's happening, but sometimes describing the characteristics of it is better for engagement.
There are a lot of reactionaries in today's political landscape.
Look up "On Fascism" by Umberto Eco, it's not that long and was written long enough ago that you can't say it was influenced by any of our current leaders.
Sure, I see ultranationalism. And if I squint, I can see that a huge chunk of the US population is pro-Trump, but that's not culty overall.
You can still speak against him, as far as I can tell. Compare this to, say, Mao Zedong. If you spoke against him, your life was forfeit, and even that's not fascism.
If this is one of those fuzzy definitions, it definitely isn't on the strong side. Where is the rampant militarism, the worship of death, and of the military?
The problem: Your side has used the word too broadly since 2016. Anything that is not the dismantlement of the West is fascism. So an entire generation has grown deaf to this accusation.
A real restart of relations together would be some concessions, any, from your side. Remember: No concessions is what qualifies extremism.
You'll notice that The same dude was in charge in 2016 as 2026. The people warning about fascism were the ones who know what happens to the rhetoric and policies of 2016 when not countered.
Your usage of "Your side" is telling. It seems like this is a team sport for you and you've picked a side. Unfortunately you might have sided with fascists.
Yeah the other side doesn’t over use socialism or communism or terrorist. And conservatives haven’t been refusing to make concessions in Congress and the Senate for decades.
If you forewarn about a developing Fascist movement, you're simply taking away the meaning from the word until it's too late and the Fascists take power.
You cannot call anything Fascist, for there may be something more Fascist that may need the power of the word.
But ah! We couldn't call out their fledgling movement full of dog whistles and double speak so no one was aware enough to stop them as a fledgling movement!
It's not fascism, that's where big corporations control the government for their benefit like Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Government interference in people's lives is socialism. If you throw nationalism into the mix it becomes something we could call... national socialism.
The irony is that almost every single one of the countries these foreigners come from would do exactly the same thing were the shoe on the other foot. If running government-funded research to maximize the opportunities for native born people is “fascism,” then every country in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East is “fascist.” Borderless universalism is a niche idea even in the west, and virtually non-existent outside it.
Every time I see something specific like this I wonder if there was something very similarly and specific happening in Berlin ~90-93 years ago.
I've tried reviewing online archives of German books/newspapers but it's obviously very time consuming. The large LLM:s don't seem to index this area sufficiently.
So that foreign nationals think it's a smart idea to move to the US and do research for us. So that when they complete their PhD they want to stay permanently and continue doing research that benefits the US. So that despite country humanity gets the smartest people together doing work that might benefit the entire world?
A full scholarship to somebody that decides to move back to their country because of racism and xenophobia still directly benefits the US if that research was done here. The smartest students in the world passing on the US does not help the US. With more policies like this the smartest students in the US might move to other countries so they can work with a larger pool.
How many promising American-born researchers are we missing out on because we give away valuable training and research opportunities to foreigners?
Don’t forget that America’s technological heyday—when Silicon Valley was built in the first place—came during and shortly after the Johnson Reed era of immigration restriction. Companies like Apple, Intel, etc., were founded between 1960-1980 (the decade on each side of when the foreign born population hit the historical low in 1970).
Yeah, let's look at it through the national lense. For every researcher who defects to the US to make their PhD there and most likely stay, taxpayers of the country they came from have paid for the education of hundreds of students. Because they don't come from America where graduating essentially means a life of indentured servancy for all but the dynastcally wealthy.
It's called brain drain, and doing the rest of the world the favor of putting on the brakes is something that would be quite far out on the spectrum you'd call "woke" if it was done for the reasons one would arrive at when really thinking it through (which clearly has not happened)
These are not PhD students; they're already credentialed (either postdocs or full-time staff). We pay them to do research that aligns with our strategic goals so that we get the science.
Used to be that America was great because the smartest researchers in the world wanted to come here, often escaping oppressive regimes to do so, and become American citizens (e.g., Albert Einstein)
So now all the world’s best and brightest scientists will move to China where they’ll be welcomed in open arms, enjoy living in a modern society with affordable electric cars, the world’s premier high speed train network, glimmering new subway systems, and ample affordable housing.
They’ll work on cutting-edge research projects that receive ample funding and support while American scientists wrestle with a federal government torn apart by anti-intellectual strongmen.
Are we tired of winning yet? It sounds like we are beyond tired of winning, we’d rather lose from here on out.
Seems like Russia and the USA are hell-bent on destroying themselves fighting forever wars to allow China and the EU to take the reins as the beacons of global stability and strength.
The one that couldn't afford a decent education? The ones that will be in debt for life (bribery risk)? The ones that paid money to be handed a degree, and wouldn't do an honest days work if their life depended on it?
Yeah, before this restriction was imposed, the USA was the worst country in the world in terms of scientific research and advancement.
Now that they have these restrictions in place, the USA will go from worst to best with the help of highschool-dropout equivalents who fudge their way through the interview and then complain about more than 2-3 hours of hard work per day (and demand 2-3 times the pay for the privilege). #winning !!!
By the way, would you mind linking to some of your research scientist job postings, so such folks can apply to work for you? I'm sure you can't wait to hire them, just like everyone else, right?
> AI might not be good, but it’s at least as good as 90% of them and it works 24x7
Sure. It's cheaper - now. Might not continue being that cheap. What prevents Anthropic from jacking up prices once the field is consolidated.
Plus, you're forgetting that anyone on an H1B visa still has to buy their food in the USA. While in the US, they contribute for good and for bad to the economy.
No offense but born-in-the-US citizens are... not great at the most demanding knowledge work. The ones that are have all been hired. Our education system is trash and normalizes getting Bs/Cs.
I see so many people complaining about H1Bs at tech jobs. At least the H1Bs pass the interviews!
> Scientists from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria are considered “high risk.”
I think this makes sense from a national security perspective (although I doubt there is any scientist coming from these countries who are working on sensitive projects, maybe except China). Since there is too much trouble to figure out who is a spy, might as well ban all of them for the moment.
I do feel a strong nostalgia about the globalization era between the 90s and the 2010s, when I spent most of my life. But I understand it comes to an end, and I'm going to spend my second half of life in a much more splintered world.
This list of high risk countries is not new (with the exception of maybe Venezuela being recently added, I’m not sure). Researchers with these citizenships have faced extra security review before joining NIST for years, and last year the lab increased the level of security review for everyone (not just this list)
I can understand a clearly communicated need for additional security requirements. But NIST operates almost totally in open science mode, with the main exceptions of being industry cooperative agreements. I don’t think this move to shed international researchers by reneging on commitments from the lab has been at all justified from a security standpoint.
That was indeed the logic then. Keep in mind though that the internment was based on 'race' and 'ethnicity'. This action is based on citizenship and it's a job limitation not a forcible relocation into an open air prison.
I think the same method might be used again in a future conflict with China, when the question of life and death becomes serious. Not saying that I LIKE it, but I think it is at least plausible, and with a non-insignificant (note the double negation) possibility.
Man, if there were only something more reasonable... something in-between letting them spy at will and concentration camps. Hmmm, maybe we will think of something eventually.
Ok, then let them spy continuously I guess and then carry the know how home. Even countries openly hostile to you.
I mean it is unfair for sure but it's not your given right. If for example Chinese are literally breaking their law when they refuse to spy what else can you do?
> NIST researchers do not carry out classified research. As a result, Gallagher says, “It’s very difficult to see the security benefit this might have.”
Probably the most direct way to kick out the people they're actually worried about without invoking legal process for each one specifically, not least because if they did it on a case by case basis there would likely be an undeniable ethnic/national signal that right now is getting hidden in the noise. In other words, instead of targetting researchers for being Chinese nationals, and then subsequently having to defend ethnic discrimination in court, they're just going to throw the baby out with the bath water.
It’s the trump admin. They don’t care about the decorum you’ve described. They would have no qualms about looking racist. Have you not seen what ICE has been doing? Racism is a badge of honor, and so is flipping off the courts and public opinion. No I believe this is simply paranoia and racism driven by Miller and his cronies.
It's not about "looking racist"; or at least, it's not about public opinion. A racially targeted measure would violate specific laws and would be challenged in court, likely successfully.
This is a naive take. Are there specific instances involving individuals of many nationalities/ethnicities? Yes. Is ICE then ignoring race during its operations? Absolutely not. ICE agents are arresting people based solely on their physical appearance and accents. It is band faced racism.
It would be rather nonsensical to completely ignore ethnicity in your operations when the wide majority of illegal immigrants are going to be of that ethnicity. Obviously that would not justify widespread harassment of that group, but nothing like that seems to be happening. Mostly people seem to be trying to stop them from deporting people genuinely in the country illegally, which is divisive - independent of partisanship.
If the DNC has chosen this hill to die on, I don't think they're going to do anywhere as near good as they should do in November given Trump is engaging in some extremely unpopular and foolish behavior that people, again going beyond partisan lines, could easily rally together against.
Are ethnic Chinese from Taiwan still allowed? If so it's probably just about the US' geopolitical rivals not being allowed perceived competitive advantages.
> kick out the people they're actually worried about without invoking legal process for each one specifically
Why are we assuming either/both good faith and competence here? Is there anything about the policymaking of this administration that lends credence to that hypothesis? Are there pre-existing policy proposals you're imagining that have weighed pros and cons about this? Existing abuses you're imagining that this curtails?
No, let's be real here: this is yet another impulsive idea that some crank sold the president/cabinet on.
> Why are we assuming either/both good faith and competence here
There is obviously a breakdown in either communication or understanding here. I have assumed neither good faith nor competence. On the contrary, the strategy I supposed above would be in bad faith and a symptom of incompetence.
Deporting researchers from every country to make it look like they aren't ethnically targetting people is in bad faith, and resorting to such measures instead of simply identifying and deporting the problematic individuals demonstrates their incompetence.
The problem with China anyway is that during the many decades when China was badly lagging, they already stole every secret they could. But now China has a very serious education system, motivated and intelligent people, lots of universities and researchers and China isn't lagging behind anymore.
So even if the goal was to prevent chinese from spying on US companies, it's too little, decades too late, because China is now at the very top too.
Comes in stages. Used to be ambitious Chinese people wouldn’t go to Chinese universities for grad school (undergrad Chinese university to overseas grad school was a usual route). Now they definitely do. Next there might be foreign grad students in Chinese universities, then foreign undergrad students. Though you would have to learn Chinese I imagine, so that barrier is there.
In geopolitics you are forced to make deals with the devil. We armed and supplied the USSR to defeat Germany in WWII. In the 90s we gave an out of work China a wold franchise so we could make a few extra bucks with cheap labor and one billion consumers. Our blu collar workers would put down their dangerous and heavy machinery on the dank shop floor so they could take snazzy white collar jobs that were healthier and paid better because they use their American education to skill up their brains.
People were sold on that and many bought it. And now here we are living in the aftermath of us propping up systems incongruous to our own and living it down. It comes down to jockeying politicians like J Kerry and company who pretend they work for the people but in all honesty only work for themselves (remember Kerry never threw out his own war medals but rather reproductions he bought in the PX). Jane Fonda, her vanity sunk the nuclear energy industry for fifty years.
> Sources at NIST contacted by ScienceInsider say they have yet to see any written versions of the proposed rules, which have been conveyed in meetings. Patrick Gallagher, a former NIST director now at the University of Pittsburgh, says the lack of clear communication and the short notice being given to foreign scientists is creating a sense of chaos. “I’m as disappointed as to how this is unfolding as to what is unfolding,” Gallagher says. “At the very least NIST owes an explanation to the country. If there is a good reason for what they are doing, they should flat out say what it is.”
This is the sort of "high agency", not waiting for permission mentality that works great for a startup thats making tinder for cats, but is really bad for foundational institutions that provide a critical service to not just the nation but humanity in general. I feel like musk and his DOGE initiative infected the government with this move fast and break things bullshit. Or they were at least correlational with it
not only that but they leveraged the 'compliance' mindset that comes with government institutions to do so.
This was first reported at least a week or two ago and only now are they getting aroun dto thinking about making it an actual rule (which takes time and process). The rules that aren't really rules for plausible deniability serve several purposes including normalizing compliance in advance.
I'll set aside opinions of the rule because people can really feel differently about the long and short term balance of security and soft power...but not rule rules is an approach to government I really struggle to see both sides of.
Great news. Even if the research isn't classified, who's to say that these foreign scientists aren't engaging in some kind of sabotage? Get them out of NIST, they don't belong there. They're a liability.
Nothing that NIST produces can be trusted. In modern times, NIST is effectively an arm of the NSA. The job of NIST is to add vulnerabilities to everything for NSA to exploit. It's no wonder that they don't want foreign workers. Industry would be better off completely ignoring them.
Some years ago I came to the conclusion that the US would ultimately consider it a security risk to employ mainland Chinese born people (or even just people who had family in mainland China still) in any classified or sensitive industry.
I think I've now reached the point where it doesn't matter. Capitalism itself has made maintaining any kind of technological or scientific edge impossible. You don't need to break into some lab or plant sleeper agents or even coerce someone who has family back in the home country. No, it's far simpler than that.
When the US developed the atomic bomb some in American policy and military circles thought the Soviets would never get the bomb or it would take 20 years. It took 4. The Soviet hydrogen bomb was detonated th eyear after the US detonated ours.
In that case, the Soviets did run a sophisticated operations but also a bunch of people just gave them stuff for ideological reasons.
Let's compare that to EUV. The US restricted both the export of EUV lithography machines from ASML to China as well as the most advanced chips. The second was a mistake (IMHO) because it created a captive market for Chinese alternatives and it became clear to China that it was in their national security interest not to be dependent upon the US for chipmaking or chipsd.
Now China doesn't need to do anything sophisticated. It just needs to throw a bunch of money at some key reserarchers and engineers from ASML and elsewhere and say "hey, come work for us". What are you going to do?
Also, the US likes to paint this picture that China engaged in industrial espionage. And maybe they did. But they did so with the full knowledge and cooperation of US businesses who outsourced to China knowing this was going to happen but hey, it increased short-term profits, so who cares?
At the same time as the US cuts science funding so Jeff Bezos can be slightly wealthier, Chinese universities are surging in global rankings for research [1].
There's no getting this genie back in the bottle. It's too late.
>Also, the US likes to paint this picture that China engaged in industrial espionage. And maybe they did. But they did so with the full knowledge and cooperation of US businesses who outsourced to China knowing this was going to happen but hey, it increased short-term profits, so who cares?
At the same time as the US cuts science funding so Jeff Bezos can be slightly wealthier, Chinese universities are surging in global rankings for research [1].
This is the crux of the issue.
We've allowed extremely short term capitalistic interests of the wealthiest of the wealthiest to dictate our national policy in a great many areas, including taxation, academics, immigration, etc.
I liken the situation to a game of chess - on one hand, you have a team of Grandmasters and a supercomputer taking the time to evaluate each move and understand the positives and negatives of any possible move. On the other hand, you have a pigeon, who is there because someone who has already been the beneficiary of tremendous luck has convinced their side that putting a pigeon on the board is good for everyone involved.
Citizenship laws in the West are hardly very robust. The delta between a foreigner and a full legal citizen is fairly minimal these days.
China is already paying women in the US to carry Chinese children via surrogacy so they are legally US citizens as per the constitution. Then you have anchor babies, where again there are numerous reports of China sending people to cross the US border under Biden.
Similar stuff happens here in the UK where we routinely grant British citizenship to terrorists from various countries, to the point where now Israel is concerned about sharing intel with us.
I think there are of course valid security concerns and this could be logical solution free of way more problematic issues of dealing on case by case basis.
On the other hand this will play more to people choosing some other country to advance their science aspiration and slowly but surely erode pool of talent for the US to help it stay dominant.
Practically the US have used people like Wernher von Braun on good scale and very sensitive areas and it worked just fine for the country. Qian Xuesen might of course have couple of words on the subject of course
That nationalism is the new state doctrin? Foreigners are inferior by definition, so they cannot really help with research anyway, all they want to do is steal secrets. If you think like that, then it makes sense.
Well, let's talk in some years how this worked out for you. If you don't want to anymore, we in europe are mostly happy to welcome smart talents.
How about to serve the people it represents and governs over, rather than a small, loud, fascist minority?
But me as someone who dislikes all kinds of nationalism, I obviously would do both. Develope smart domestic scientists in collaboration with smart international students/scientists. Networking, collaboration, strengthening ties, connecting cultures despite of differences, you know all those humanistic ideals you actually find a lot in real science. Focus on the common goal, progress for all of humanity through new knowledge.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03657-6
But there are people who get nervous if their people stay too long in China
I can tell you're not in the business of training / employing people.
The best ROI is getting someone who is already trained (read you didn't pay for their K-12, their parents' teaching/maternity/healthcare) and just deriving value from their labor.
(later notable entry: Andy Grove, Intel CEO, was born Andreas Grov:
"By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis' "Final Solution," the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint... [where] many young people were killed; countless others were interned. Some two hundred thousand Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them")
Speaking of unutilized talents, other than Hollywood, I'd also add a whole bunch of folks in tech who could be useful for defending their own homeland (hence, their own & their kids' future) but are busy doing the generic commercial stuff.
There are a lot of reactionaries in today's political landscape.
I don't think it really fits, but the US is sliding towards illiberal democracy.
EDIT: Illiberalism is a tenet of fascism as well.
So yes, the US has enough of the hallmarks to be considered a fascist state. It doesn't need to tick every single box for that title.
You can still speak against him, as far as I can tell. Compare this to, say, Mao Zedong. If you spoke against him, your life was forfeit, and even that's not fascism.
If this is one of those fuzzy definitions, it definitely isn't on the strong side. Where is the rampant militarism, the worship of death, and of the military?
ICE
A real restart of relations together would be some concessions, any, from your side. Remember: No concessions is what qualifies extremism.
If you forewarn about a developing Fascist movement, you're simply taking away the meaning from the word until it's too late and the Fascists take power.
You cannot call anything Fascist, for there may be something more Fascist that may need the power of the word.
But ah! We couldn't call out their fledgling movement full of dog whistles and double speak so no one was aware enough to stop them as a fledgling movement!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45349597
No, that's called 'governance'. Literally the whole job of government is interfering in people's lives.
I've tried reviewing online archives of German books/newspapers but it's obviously very time consuming. The large LLM:s don't seem to index this area sufficiently.
I don't think that's entirely valid. Nonetheless, there is enough overlap that the question keeps getting raised.
So... perhaps that's what you're missing?
It mades all the sense in the world. It is terrible, but it makes sense.
They have brought incalculable shame and future suffering on the US.
There isn’t much rationality since then.
A full scholarship to somebody that decides to move back to their country because of racism and xenophobia still directly benefits the US if that research was done here. The smartest students in the world passing on the US does not help the US. With more policies like this the smartest students in the US might move to other countries so they can work with a larger pool.
Don’t forget that America’s technological heyday—when Silicon Valley was built in the first place—came during and shortly after the Johnson Reed era of immigration restriction. Companies like Apple, Intel, etc., were founded between 1960-1980 (the decade on each side of when the foreign born population hit the historical low in 1970).
Your comments often lack evidence of these poor neglected Americans.
It's called brain drain, and doing the rest of the world the favor of putting on the brakes is something that would be quite far out on the spectrum you'd call "woke" if it was done for the reasons one would arrive at when really thinking it through (which clearly has not happened)
So now all the world’s best and brightest scientists will move to China where they’ll be welcomed in open arms, enjoy living in a modern society with affordable electric cars, the world’s premier high speed train network, glimmering new subway systems, and ample affordable housing.
They’ll work on cutting-edge research projects that receive ample funding and support while American scientists wrestle with a federal government torn apart by anti-intellectual strongmen.
You ever see a Tesla robot demo like this? https://youtu.be/mUmlv814aJo
Are we tired of winning yet? It sounds like we are beyond tired of winning, we’d rather lose from here on out.
Seems like Russia and the USA are hell-bent on destroying themselves fighting forever wars to allow China and the EU to take the reins as the beacons of global stability and strength.
Now that they have these restrictions in place, the USA will go from worst to best with the help of highschool-dropout equivalents who fudge their way through the interview and then complain about more than 2-3 hours of hard work per day (and demand 2-3 times the pay for the privilege). #winning !!!
By the way, would you mind linking to some of your research scientist job postings, so such folks can apply to work for you? I'm sure you can't wait to hire them, just like everyone else, right?
Sure. It's cheaper - now. Might not continue being that cheap. What prevents Anthropic from jacking up prices once the field is consolidated.
Plus, you're forgetting that anyone on an H1B visa still has to buy their food in the USA. While in the US, they contribute for good and for bad to the economy.
I see so many people complaining about H1Bs at tech jobs. At least the H1Bs pass the interviews!
Disclaimer: born and raised in the US myself.
Whole worlds culture except US?
I think this makes sense from a national security perspective (although I doubt there is any scientist coming from these countries who are working on sensitive projects, maybe except China). Since there is too much trouble to figure out who is a spy, might as well ban all of them for the moment.
I do feel a strong nostalgia about the globalization era between the 90s and the 2010s, when I spent most of my life. But I understand it comes to an end, and I'm going to spend my second half of life in a much more splintered world.
I can understand a clearly communicated need for additional security requirements. But NIST operates almost totally in open science mode, with the main exceptions of being industry cooperative agreements. I don’t think this move to shed international researchers by reneging on commitments from the lab has been at all justified from a security standpoint.
As a side note (tangentailly related) I wonder if the US would have gained nuclear capabilities if it wasn't for foreign scientists.
Does it? AFAIK NIST doesn't work on national security relevant research.
> Keep in mind though that the internment was based on 'race' and 'ethnicity'. This action is based on citizenship a
You say this like it's a meaningful distinction?
I mean it is unfair for sure but it's not your given right. If for example Chinese are literally breaking their law when they refuse to spy what else can you do?
That's my guess anyway.
And as a bonus upreme court practically ruled president can be lawless as he pleases.
SCOTUS: Nothing Trump does is illegal.
Trump: "does illegal things"
Courts: You can't do this, it is illegal.
Trump: "ignores courts"
Courts: "shocked pikachu face"
If the DNC has chosen this hill to die on, I don't think they're going to do anywhere as near good as they should do in November given Trump is engaging in some extremely unpopular and foolish behavior that people, again going beyond partisan lines, could easily rally together against.
Exactly that is happening in places ICE focuses on. Kawanaugh stops with, like, beating or multi day/week/months imprisonment are a thing.
With legal immigrants, strategy seems to be to hold them in as bad conditions as possible until they sign off own deportation.
Why are we assuming either/both good faith and competence here? Is there anything about the policymaking of this administration that lends credence to that hypothesis? Are there pre-existing policy proposals you're imagining that have weighed pros and cons about this? Existing abuses you're imagining that this curtails?
No, let's be real here: this is yet another impulsive idea that some crank sold the president/cabinet on.
There is obviously a breakdown in either communication or understanding here. I have assumed neither good faith nor competence. On the contrary, the strategy I supposed above would be in bad faith and a symptom of incompetence.
Deporting researchers from every country to make it look like they aren't ethnically targetting people is in bad faith, and resorting to such measures instead of simply identifying and deporting the problematic individuals demonstrates their incompetence.
So even if the goal was to prevent chinese from spying on US companies, it's too little, decades too late, because China is now at the very top too.
I know a handful of folks who worked at them, and then found a more permanent position in the US.
If you mean internationally, there are some, mostly from Africa.
People were sold on that and many bought it. And now here we are living in the aftermath of us propping up systems incongruous to our own and living it down. It comes down to jockeying politicians like J Kerry and company who pretend they work for the people but in all honesty only work for themselves (remember Kerry never threw out his own war medals but rather reproductions he bought in the PX). Jane Fonda, her vanity sunk the nuclear energy industry for fifty years.
This is the sort of "high agency", not waiting for permission mentality that works great for a startup thats making tinder for cats, but is really bad for foundational institutions that provide a critical service to not just the nation but humanity in general. I feel like musk and his DOGE initiative infected the government with this move fast and break things bullshit. Or they were at least correlational with it
This was first reported at least a week or two ago and only now are they getting aroun dto thinking about making it an actual rule (which takes time and process). The rules that aren't really rules for plausible deniability serve several purposes including normalizing compliance in advance.
I'll set aside opinions of the rule because people can really feel differently about the long and short term balance of security and soft power...but not rule rules is an approach to government I really struggle to see both sides of.
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks
To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks
https://youtu.be/pG6taS9R1KM?si=QqquYHFG2S7o7-73
I think I've now reached the point where it doesn't matter. Capitalism itself has made maintaining any kind of technological or scientific edge impossible. You don't need to break into some lab or plant sleeper agents or even coerce someone who has family back in the home country. No, it's far simpler than that.
When the US developed the atomic bomb some in American policy and military circles thought the Soviets would never get the bomb or it would take 20 years. It took 4. The Soviet hydrogen bomb was detonated th eyear after the US detonated ours.
In that case, the Soviets did run a sophisticated operations but also a bunch of people just gave them stuff for ideological reasons.
Let's compare that to EUV. The US restricted both the export of EUV lithography machines from ASML to China as well as the most advanced chips. The second was a mistake (IMHO) because it created a captive market for Chinese alternatives and it became clear to China that it was in their national security interest not to be dependent upon the US for chipmaking or chipsd.
Now China doesn't need to do anything sophisticated. It just needs to throw a bunch of money at some key reserarchers and engineers from ASML and elsewhere and say "hey, come work for us". What are you going to do?
Also, the US likes to paint this picture that China engaged in industrial espionage. And maybe they did. But they did so with the full knowledge and cooperation of US businesses who outsourced to China knowing this was going to happen but hey, it increased short-term profits, so who cares?
At the same time as the US cuts science funding so Jeff Bezos can be slightly wealthier, Chinese universities are surging in global rankings for research [1].
There's no getting this genie back in the bottle. It's too late.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...
At the same time as the US cuts science funding so Jeff Bezos can be slightly wealthier, Chinese universities are surging in global rankings for research [1].
This is the crux of the issue.
We've allowed extremely short term capitalistic interests of the wealthiest of the wealthiest to dictate our national policy in a great many areas, including taxation, academics, immigration, etc.
I liken the situation to a game of chess - on one hand, you have a team of Grandmasters and a supercomputer taking the time to evaluate each move and understand the positives and negatives of any possible move. On the other hand, you have a pigeon, who is there because someone who has already been the beneficiary of tremendous luck has convinced their side that putting a pigeon on the board is good for everyone involved.
Citizenship laws in the West are hardly very robust. The delta between a foreigner and a full legal citizen is fairly minimal these days.
China is already paying women in the US to carry Chinese children via surrogacy so they are legally US citizens as per the constitution. Then you have anchor babies, where again there are numerous reports of China sending people to cross the US border under Biden.
Similar stuff happens here in the UK where we routinely grant British citizenship to terrorists from various countries, to the point where now Israel is concerned about sharing intel with us.
Guess you don't pay much attention. The administration has been stripping citizenship from naturalized citizens left and right.
They simply don't give a fuck.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/chinese-billionaires-surrogacy-p...
We really need to wake up. China, India, etc. are walking all over us and we're still acting like it's the 1950s.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-03-01/pdf/2024-0...
I know the administration was already doing that and largely xenophobic, it just also makes sense now that the same administration went to war
I think there are of course valid security concerns and this could be logical solution free of way more problematic issues of dealing on case by case basis.
On the other hand this will play more to people choosing some other country to advance their science aspiration and slowly but surely erode pool of talent for the US to help it stay dominant.
Practically the US have used people like Wernher von Braun on good scale and very sensitive areas and it worked just fine for the country. Qian Xuesen might of course have couple of words on the subject of course