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W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for

W3C is jointly hosted by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the United States, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France, Keio University in Japan and Beihang University in China. Beihang University spends roughly 60% of its research budget on defense research (https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities-tracker https://www.aspi.org.au/report/china-defence-universities-tr...). The People's Republic of China has done everything it can to shut down the open Web (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/chinas-global-reach-surveillance-and-censorship-beyond-great-firewall https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/chinas-global-reach-su...) while turning digital platforms, communications networks, and other technologies into tools of mass control and surveillance. Why is Beihang involved in hosting the W3C?

Iv 4y ago
More than the military budget, the reluctance to let the population access an unfiltered internet is problematic. The CCP is trying to create a separate network from the global one, this raises many questions.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Probably because it's a representative from a country with 18% of the total people on the planet. Hard to call oneself a standards community if you're missing representation from nearly a fifth of all users.
- ilamont 4y ago
  Then why isn't one of the IITs on the list? Or a university in South America, Africa, or the Middle East?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Excellent questions.
    - melony 4y ago
      Too poor, their alumni don't give back to their alma mater
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- Iv 4y ago
  18% of the world population, but what is relevant is the % of web users. This country denies its citizen the benefits of an open web and treats the ability to route around censorship like a bug to fix. Why give someone a seat at a committee steering something they openly want to sabotage?
4oh9do 4y ago
> Why is Beihang involved in hosting the W3C? Why is MIT? Do you not have an issue with them also getting funding from the American defense department? Or if you're concerned with the open web, do you not remember when they persecuted Aaron Swartz for the heinous crime of downloading knowledge?
- s3r3nity 4y ago
  - 4oh9do 4y ago
    - s3r3nity 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - 4oh9do 4y ago
        [flagged]
        s3r3nity 4y ago
        [flagged]
        4oh9do 4y ago
        > You're going really hard in the paint to defend Chinese genocide of Muslim Turkic people. Where did I do so? Please either provide a quote of me doing so, or retract your statement as it otherwise amounts to libel. To clarify if somehow you managed to misinterpret my comments: I am in no way defending any $bad_shit that China does/has done, I am pointing out that the other nations involved have likewise done so, and therefore focusing on just one nation is disingenous because it gives all the others a pass. The war on the free and open web has been waged just as much, if not more so, by Western powers as it has by Eastern ones.
jrochkind1 4y ago
For comparison, can we look at what portion of MIT's research grants are Defense related? MIT being the US host. I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar, but I haven't found it lazily googling. Most academic CS and IT research in the US is defense-funded, has been all along. Most other countries too. So any reasonable academic home of a web-related entity is likely to have it's research budget be mostly defense funded.
- adventured 4y ago
  > For comparison, can we look at what portion of MIT's research grants are Defense related? MIT being the US host. I think we should absolutely do that. MIT's figure is going to be nowhere close to 60%. https://web.mit.edu/fnl/vol/155/numbers_research_total.htm https://web.mit.edu/fnl/vol/155/numbers_research_total.htm > Most academic CS and IT research in the US is defense-funded, has been all along. That also is false. It's nowhere close to "most" across all US CS and IT research.
  - lelandfe 4y ago
    https://ir.mit.edu/research-expenditures#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1535476448046_10034 https://ir.mit.edu/research-expenditures#block-yui_3_17_2_1_... 2020 numbers. DOD is 17%
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    Thanks for the details. Department of Defence is listed at 18% MIT-wide, which is not close to 60%, true. It is the #1 source of research funds. Curious what the Department of Energy grants are about, and what overlap it ends up having with defense purposes if it's nuclear. That's the second biggest source of research funding at 15%. 18+15==33%, still not 60%. > That also is false. It's nowhere close to "most" across all US CS and IT research. I'd be curious to see numbers for that too, for MIT CS department(s) specifically, and in general in the US. I have definitely known a lot of CS professors and projects with DARPA and other DoD funding, it is quite common.

Iv 4y ago

More than the military budget, the reluctance to let the population access an unfiltered internet is problematic. The CCP is trying to create a separate network from the global one, this raises many questions.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Probably because it's a representative from a country with 18% of the total people on the planet. Hard to call oneself a standards community if you're missing representation from nearly a fifth of all users.

ilamont 4y ago
Then why isn't one of the IITs on the list? Or a university in South America, Africa, or the Middle East?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Excellent questions.
  - melony 4y ago
    Too poor, their alumni don't give back to their alma mater
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
Iv 4y ago
18% of the world population, but what is relevant is the % of web users. This country denies its citizen the benefits of an open web and treats the ability to route around censorship like a bug to fix. Why give someone a seat at a committee steering something they openly want to sabotage?

4oh9do 4y ago

> Why is Beihang involved in hosting the W3C? Why is MIT? Do you not have an issue with them also getting funding from the American defense department? Or if you're concerned with the open web, do you not remember when they persecuted Aaron Swartz for the heinous crime of downloading knowledge?

s3r3nity 4y ago
- 4oh9do 4y ago
  - s3r3nity 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - 4oh9do 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - s3r3nity 4y ago
        [flagged]
        4oh9do 4y ago
        > You're going really hard in the paint to defend Chinese genocide of Muslim Turkic people. Where did I do so? Please either provide a quote of me doing so, or retract your statement as it otherwise amounts to libel. To clarify if somehow you managed to misinterpret my comments: I am in no way defending any $bad_shit that China does/has done, I am pointing out that the other nations involved have likewise done so, and therefore focusing on just one nation is disingenous because it gives all the others a pass. The war on the free and open web has been waged just as much, if not more so, by Western powers as it has by Eastern ones.

jrochkind1 4y ago

For comparison, can we look at what portion of MIT's research grants are Defense related? MIT being the US host. I wouldn't be surprised if it's similar, but I haven't found it lazily googling. Most academic CS and IT research in the US is defense-funded, has been all along. Most other countries too. So any reasonable academic home of a web-related entity is likely to have it's research budget be mostly defense funded.

adventured 4y ago
> For comparison, can we look at what portion of MIT's research grants are Defense related? MIT being the US host. I think we should absolutely do that. MIT's figure is going to be nowhere close to 60%. https://web.mit.edu/fnl/vol/155/numbers_research_total.htm https://web.mit.edu/fnl/vol/155/numbers_research_total.htm > Most academic CS and IT research in the US is defense-funded, has been all along. That also is false. It's nowhere close to "most" across all US CS and IT research.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  https://ir.mit.edu/research-expenditures#block-yui_3_17_2_1_1535476448046_10034 https://ir.mit.edu/research-expenditures#block-yui_3_17_2_1_... 2020 numbers. DOD is 17%
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  Thanks for the details. Department of Defence is listed at 18% MIT-wide, which is not close to 60%, true. It is the #1 source of research funds. Curious what the Department of Energy grants are about, and what overlap it ends up having with defense purposes if it's nuclear. That's the second biggest source of research funding at 15%. 18+15==33%, still not 60%. > That also is false. It's nowhere close to "most" across all US CS and IT research. I'd be curious to see numbers for that too, for MIT CS department(s) specifically, and in general in the US. I have definitely known a lot of CS professors and projects with DARPA and other DoD funding, it is quite common.