alt Hacker NewsU.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs
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> 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.
> 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.”
Here in Canada when the new CPC took power its leader PM Harper muzzled scientists from speaking about most things but most of all anything about climate change. It also destroyed climate data claiming the ledgers were old fashioned, but they were the only copies.
The CPC political are the old centre-right PC party that combined with more right secessionist and (evangelical) Christian political parties.
Harper is still lurking in the shadows and pulling strings decade after being ousted as Prime Minister.
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.
That's my guess anyway.
> 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
History rhymes. The same happened in the 30s to Albert Einstein, Max Born, Lise Meitner, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, etc.
I'm aware of the political landscape in the US right now. But I must ask. What exactly are the policy makers thinking? Do they hold some sort of delusions about the intellectual superiority of their race? Or do they believe that they don't need scientific talent, research and knowledge to be a great nation and civilization? Or do they believe that these deficiencies can be resolved with money alone?
I'm puzzled by autocrats beyond a certain limit. Their actions don't really seem to fit any logic, if their intention is to be become unchallengeable and unassailable. This seems like ceding the advantage to any future rivals.
This is part of a plan to bring back inches, pounds, and the quarter-twenty.
Every day the US looks a little more more 1933 Nazi Germany when all the xenophobic polices started. What even is a foreigner in a country where virtually everyone is descended from foreigners and immigrants?
Reminds me of this one :D https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/attachments/usteam-jpg.114...
That’s not what the headline says. Changing headline is a violation of hackers news rules
I am noting two extremes in the comments which miss essential truths.
The first extreme begins with a true premise, but arrives at a false conclusion. The premise: as with manufacturing, the US should be minting more of its own scientists.
This is true. The US should have a more robust manufacturing base of its own. It should be educating more scientists.
However, the conclusion does not follow, namely, that the US should ban collaboration with, invitation, or employment of foreign scientists.
You don't build such things by going cold turkey. You cannot rebuild American manufacturing overnight, and you can't increase the number of home-grown scientists overnight either. This takes time and requires deeper shifts in the culture.
The second extreme is one that denies the premise above, or at least seems to deny its importance.
Collaboration with foreign scientists is good. That is unquestionable. There's also nothing wrong with attracting scientists. The problem is not collaboration or attracting talent, but rather a kind of parasitism that tries to make up for a country's own deficiencies in this manner as a permanent policy.
Misleading headline. They are moving specifically to restrict high risk countries like China, Syria, North Korea, etc. Not all foreign countries, as the headline threatens.
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.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/us/harvard-global-ranking...
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President Biden’s Executive Order 14117 is related
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-03-01/pdf/2024-0...
its real war time now, so makes sense
I know the administration was already doing that and largely xenophobic, it just also makes sense now that the same administration went to war
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.
Not administration sympathizer but:
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
Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
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
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?