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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
by collabs 7mo ago
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?
- lukan 7mo ago"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.
- drops 7mo ago[flagged]
- mc32 7mo ago[flagged]
- drops 7mo agoNazi scientists were brought in _after_ WWII, not during it.
- mc32 7mo agoI 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.
- drops 7mo agoYou're actually right, I misread the first post. 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.
- pjc50 7mo agoA significant portion of the WW2 scientists were refugees from _before_ the US joined the war but after persecution had started. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/scientist-refugees-and-manhattan-project/ https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/scientist-refugees-and-manhatt... (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")
- lukan 7mo ago"It’s fair to Americans and that’s what counts." 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.
- mc32 7mo agoIf not developing domestic scientists but instead importing and developing foreign scientists is the way, why isn’t China doing it?
- roxolotl 7mo agoI 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.
- mc32 7mo agoI 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.
- roxolotl 7mo agoAgain 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.
- pama 7mo agoWho benefited from all the years Elon Musk studied in the US and built his early companies? Certainly not south Africa.
- 7mo ago
- croes 7mo agoQuite 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
- UncleSlacky 7mo ago> The braun drain was to the US I see what you did there...
- croes 7mo agoFreudian slip
- bonsai_spool 7mo ago> 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.
- mc32 7mo agoLeading a nation is not a business. In order to have a successful and self sustaining population we need to develop our own human capital. You want to take shortcuts —those are fine when you’re playing catch up, not when you’re in the lead. Also, it’s a governments responsibility to support and cultivate its own population and not dispose them for another population.
- bonsai_spool 7mo agoAbsolutely true about creating talent. That does not mean you shouldn't take advantage of the easy talent available to you. Please don't pretend like hiring scientists for a national lab has any effect on the colossal waste of human talent our nation is perpetrating—the problems begin so much earlier, and holding out for another American scientist at a national lab is doing nothing to address the ridiculous state of our human capital development.
- zombot 7mo agoTrump hates science anyway, so why not fire all scientists? Problem solved. /s
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- AlecSchueler 7mo agoIsn't what they're basically doing with the massive funding cuts and cover-ups?
- joering2 7mo agoI don't think its about hate, its more like he doesn't believe in taking away something he cannot see with his own eye. Here his idea is that research and development will still continue happening even if overwhelming majority of people responsible for it in the past, will be gone. Take COVID for example. We were fine with minor breakouts prior to Trump administration. They came in and Trump saw we are spending $3.7 million on safety measures in Wuhan Lab, fund designated by Obama (here comes first red flag right?) By his standard you could not SEE the protection so he wanted to look like Champion and save tax payers 3.7 million by removing that protection. We all know what came next and boy was damage more financially painful than mere 3.7 mil? Its like a person who doesn't wear a seat belt because they never been in a car accident so they don't see the point. If given power they would remove mandates to wear seatbelts and have insurance companies deal with the outcome.
- exceptione 7mo agoTrump is an actor, he isn't the scenario writer, and as such you never should focus on Trump. This isn't a surprise when religious conservatism enters a traditional marriage with oligarchic conservatism¹. This is more a classical case of "you keep them stupid, while we keep them poor". If even the Enlightenment is a heresy (Burke e.a), you will have to spin the clock back. But you can't have your cake and eat it too, so the US will become closer to an Afghanistan, led by increasingly unruly lunatics and warlords. Women's rights, scientific progress, educated people with agency; it's all a threat. The conservative rage becomes violent because what it wants and believes conflicts with reality, so they have to smash that all down, including the progress. Yes, they rather burn society down than to lose control. That is hard to grasp for decent people, so you see an endless stream of opinions trying and failing to come up with a constructive rationale, but when you can understand that there is a class of people with a non-constructive default mode like the rest of us, things will be much easier to understand. The book banning has been going on for several years, and now we are in the escalation phase. The resent about women's rights, persecution² of transgenders, harassment of universities and scientists, in short: the Gleichschaltung³, should not be a surprise and has little to do with show- and stuntman Trump. It is unruly conservatism coming to its ultimate conclusion, confronted with shrinking religious control, with results of zero sum economics, with a shrinking voter base, with all gerry-mandering options exploited, and ultimately with having thrown away democracy. The clock is being turned back. __ 1. This is the original definition of conservatism, to "conserve" the status quo of a very small class of owners versus large masses of poor people. 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47170928 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
- lysace 7mo agoEvery time I see something specific like this I wonder if there was something very similar 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.
- chazftw 7mo ago[flagged]
- RealityVoid 7mo agoYes? I don't know why these can't all be true and can't all be a bad thing. Anyways, the US used to not be like this. So it's noteworthy.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- johanvts 7mo agoNext up, “American science”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
- lysace 7mo agoI think that's quite far away. At least 12 months.
- mturmon 7mo agoCan’t tell if missing /s, but the analogy is: Jewish/socialist physicists:atomic weapons::”foreign“ AI scientists:automated targeting I’m not looking forward to the loss of innocence of computer science that is parallel to that of physics from 1945 onward, but here we are.
- dboreham 7mo agoThere's a one-word shortcut for all that: fascism.
- hypeatei 7mo agoThat 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.
- Ygg2 7mo ago> It's a perfect word to describe what's happening I don't think it really fits, but the US is sliding towards illiberal democracy.
- hypeatei 7mo agoUltra nationalist, cult of personality, using violence to suppress opposition... you don't see any parallels, really? EDIT: Illiberalism is a tenet of fascism as well.
- gadflyinyoureye 7mo agoYou forgot to couple with that the oligarchy. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 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. Edit from Wikipedia: Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe.[1][2][3] Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4] Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,[5][6] fascism is at the far-right of the traditional left–right spectrum.[1][6][7] What constitutes a precise definition of fascism has been a longrunning and complex debate among scholars.
- piokoch 7mo ago"Foreigners are inferior by definition" - but USA approach says exactly the opposite. Foreigners are capable, so it is better not to share secrets and technology with them.
- junofan 7mo agoExactly, why were these guys wandering around on nights and weekends?
- lukan 7mo agoBecause they likely have no family there and on nights and weekends there is less trouble and noise, so better conditions to get into an uninterrupted flow state to get things done? Is that really something in need of explaining on a hacker site? (Or were you ironic? I cannot tell anymore)
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo ago[flagged]
- InitialLastName 7mo agoThe followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy. [0] [0] Umberto Eco, *Ur-Fascism* https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
- gherkinnn 7mo agoAh, Schrödingers Immigrant. Stealing all the jobs while leeching off the hard working nationals.
- butterbomb 7mo agoGod, maybe I could buy if it it came with significant work to repair US education and investment in a domestic science workforce, but unfortunately in the US, these nationalist waves have to also come with a strong air of anti-intellectualism.
- terminalshort 7mo ago[flagged]
- epgui 7mo agoThat's a completely non-sensical take.
- 5upplied_demand 7mo agoIsn't this the type of attitude that is giving cover to the types of actions the OP mentions, i.e. throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
- terminalshort 7mo ago[flagged]
- 5upplied_demand 7mo ago> we are importing foreigners to paper over the fact that we have ruined our own education system. Are you familiar with any of these scientists we "imported" during the 1930s? Was that also a sign of a failed education system? - Albert Einstein - Enrico Fermi - Leo Szilard - Hans Bethe - Edward Teller - John von Neumann - Eugene Wigner - Felix Bloch
- bilbo0s 7mo agoYeah, that's the thing, we've always imported scientists. So I'm unsure why HN User terminalshort is trying to connect this tendency to bad education? From literally the very beginning of the US we have engaged in this practice. I think Priestley himself came here somewhere around 1793?
- phs318u 7mo agoTo paraphrase the past, it’s “Amerikaner Physik”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
- mandeepj 7mo ago> Foreigners are inferior by definition Trump's first and current wife are foreign-born. VP's wife was born to immigrants. So, WTF? Republicans never make any sense.
- black_knight 7mo agoWell, I would venture that they consider women more as property than people. Which is of course a disgusting way to relate to fellow humans, but dehumanization is all the rage with these people.
- snthpy 7mo agoCrazy times. Getting strong vibes of the purge of "Jewish Science" in Germany in the 1930s from this. Until that point Germany was a world leader in the field and then they handed it to the US and never recovered the same status. Looks like the US is desperate to hand over the baton now.
- croes 7mo agoDid you miss who was elected president? There isn’t much rationality since then.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jfengel 7mo agoIt is often asked what an actual foreign agent would do differently if he were trying to destroy the country. 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?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- sigwinch 7mo agoOr, as the Canadian press wonders, right now, today and continuously, how can we tell if he’s lost his mind?
- daveguy 7mo agoWhen he forgets to tell us how smart he is, and how many very difficult dementia tests he's passed. That's when he'll be fully scrambled.
- thrance 7mo agoIt's easy to pin this all on a foreign enemy, but this "theory" is completely invalidated by noticing that Trump receives support from all the most powerful person of the country: Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Ellison, Bezos... America doesn't need foreign adversaries to destroy itself.
- tokai 7mo agoTwo of the big names in your list there are not even americans.
- thrance 7mo agoThey are, by any relevant metric...
- epistasis 7mo agoHow many of these people have talked to Putin or other similarly-skilled Russian intelligence agents that convinced them that Russian style oligarchy would give them more power than liberal democracy? I would guess most if not all. Bezos is the only one who I imagine might not have had detailed discussions. Musk was completely in the grasp of Putin, though that seems to have changed in the past month with the sudden change of heart and disablement of Russian military starlink inside Ukraine. Apparently it was implemented in a single day, and SpaceX staff was confused by the sudden change in heart. That is still consistent with Putin playing Musk like a puppet earlier when they had direct conversations. I think there are a confluence of reasons for this behavior, and I while I think that foreign influence can't explain it all, it would explain a huge chunk.
- cue_the_strings 7mo agoYou're missing the preparation for WW3.
- est 7mo agolike how WWII started after excluding Jewish scientists?
- throwaway5752 7mo agoIt did in Germany.
- rayiner 7mo ago[flagged]
- zuppy 7mo agobecause you get to keep most of them with a really small investment. isn't that obvious?
- Larrikin 7mo agoSo 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.
- rayiner 7mo agoHow 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).
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 7mo agoI’m sorry I’m smart enough to separate the two distinct concepts of “what US government policy should be” and “what personally benefits foreigners like me.” Responses like yours really make me think that the bottom line for many people is doing whatever benefits foreigners.
- chazftw 7mo ago[flagged]
- kgwxd 7mo agoThe 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?
- chazftw 7mo ago[flagged]
- Ygg2 7mo ago> 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.
- ImPostingOnHN 7mo agoYeah, 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?
- xvector 7mo agoNo 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! Disclaimer: born and raised in the US myself.
- davidw 7mo agoTheir goal is to destroy science in the US because it comes up with results that are inconvenient for them.
- throwaway5752 7mo agoThe administration has done nothing but be loudly and proudly racist and ant-science. 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.
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoDon't forget about the murders, illegal wars and covering up for rich pedophiles/rapists.
- epolanski 7mo ago> What am I missing? The age of counter productive selfishness which escalates to national and international politics.
- gigatexal 7mo agoYou’re missing nothing. This is just another boneheaded footgun by this admin. What a time to be live and be an American. I’m ashamed to be one and living internationally. Everyone is either pitying me or laughing at me because my government is so corrupt, stupid and incompetent. More problematic than my own ridicule is what this will portend for US science and the US for leading science research. We must fight to keep the US a destination for cutting edge science and research and one way to do that is to attract the best and brightest from all parts of the globe.
- piokoch 7mo agoUSA does not want to train scientists from other countries, who come home and can use that knowledge against interest of US companies, as a competition, or security. There are vast areas of science that are "double use". Will it help to keep stuff out of range of unwanted foreign actors? Hard to tell. Does it hurt USA soft power, sure. So the net result is to be seen.
- htx80nerd 7mo ago>What am I missing? I will answer this question honestly. I used to be friends with a group of PhD students work worked in labs. Every week I heard their complaints. One relayed a story in which a Chinese lab mate / co-worker was refusing to following their boss (PI) directions or request, and shared secret results with another Chinese student in a competing lab. - Their boss (the PI) had asked the Chinese student to train other labmates on some specific testing methods, they refused. - The Chinese PhD student would simply ignore the PI emails. - Then magically their study results end up leaked to another Chinese PhD candidate. Chinese PhD types can 'buy' their way into labs. They have so much money no one wants to turn them away. Only the government can force it. Most people have no idea what day-to-day life is actually like in PhD life / labs. It's a lot less "science" and way more "human drama" than you could imagine.
- DiogenesKynikos 7mo agoAre we supposed to generalize your third-hand anecdote about one Chinese PhD student to all Chinese PhD students? > Chinese PhD types can 'buy' their way into labs. They have so much money no one wants to turn them away. The way it works in the US is that labs pay the PhD students, not the other way around. I have never heard of a student paying the lab, ever.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- htx80nerd 7mo ago[flagged]
- Rakshith 7mo ago[dead]
- pempem 7mo agoThe goal is the grift + outrage. If you can get both, great. If you can get just one, a very solid win. Each time something is thrown into full chaos there stands a private actor or dozens to make 7-8 figures.
- beej71 7mo agoIt makes no sense to people who want to live in a globally-competitive democracy. But other people don't share that goal, and the moves make perfect sense in their context.
- epistasis 7mo agoI think this is an important point. Think about the mindset it takes to understand this proposal as a "great" thing for America. What would you have to believe? What values would you have to change in order for a foreign scientist ban to be "great". Be sure to try to limit you understanding of science to wha you might receive from watching the most popular cable news channel as your definitive source of information. This is not the mindset of all MAGA but it's a difficult exercise for most thoughtful engineers to try to live in that mind space for a while. It's a very different world, and I can only do it because I have many conversations with family members to draw on.
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo agofor comparison's sake, how many foreigners work in Chinese labs?
- JohnTHaller 7mo ago> What am I missing? Racism and Christian Nationalism
- lofaszvanitt 7mo agoIt feels like they are banking on their AI moment. Thinking that AI will do everything for them, they're isolating themselves like China historically did. Now all they have to do is create a proper AI that can surpass top notch researchers.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- pseudohadamard 7mo agoAnd it's NIST, formerly the Bureau of Standards, not the NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration). Apparently having evil furriners being able to mess with the definition of the furlong or the hundredweight is a national security threat.