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U.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs

U.S. science agency moves to restrict foreign scientists from its labs

JeanKage

Comments (73)

  • collabs
    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?
  • hnthrowaway0315
    > 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.
  • ggm
    > 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.”
  • stogot
    That’s not what the headline says. Changing headline is a violation of hackers news rules
  • anon
    undefined
  • mikkupikku
    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.
  • samrus
    > 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
  • bronlund
  • TomMasz
    Isn't this the same sort of thing that the Nazi's did?
  • RobotToaster
    Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch SocietyHere to save our country from a communistic plotJoin the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranksTo get this movement started we need lots of tools and crankshttps://youtu.be/pG6taS9R1KM?si=QqquYHFG2S7o7-73
  • OutOfHere
    Nothing that NIST produces can be trusted anyway. They're effectively an arm of the NSA. The modern 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.
  • bdangubic
    President Biden’s Executive Order 14117 is relatedhttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-03-01/pdf/2024-0...
  • jmyeet
    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...
  • kypro
    How is this even going to work in practise?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.
  • mono442
    [flagged]
  • yieldcrv
    its real war time now, so makes senseI know the administration was already doing that and largely xenophobic, it just also makes sense now that the same administration went to war
  • rmm78
    way overdue, US labs are wide open for China spies
  • FpUser
    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