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.
It’s protectionism. These lab positions are basically like residencies. They are government paid research spots that enable people to do government funded work in furtherance of their PhD. Why should American taxpayers basically be paying for foreign nationals to complete their PhDs?
> 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.
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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
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?
"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.
Trump hates science anyway, so why not fire all scientists? Problem solved. /s
It 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?
You're missing the preparation for WW3.
It’s protectionism. These lab positions are basically like residencies. They are government paid research spots that enable people to do government funded work in furtherance of their PhD. Why should American taxpayers basically be paying for foreign nationals to complete their PhDs?
Did you miss who was elected president?
There isn’t much rationality since then.
> 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.
> Since there is too much trouble to figure out who is a spy, might as well ban all of them for the moment.
You know why not put them into concentration camps for now, just to be sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
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.
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?
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.
But aren't they happy you bring them democracy? I am confused..
> 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.
That's my guess anyway.
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.
It could also be a signal that they intend to take on the world; so they could technically not be racist if "everyone else is a threat".
That was so years ago, this is the point we're at now.
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"
There have been cases of British, Bulgarian, Canadian, German and Irish nationals also gotten in their claws. Seems pretty race agnostic to me.
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.
If it was racism there would be extremely high false positive ratios. Is it observed?
Researchers from "low risk countries" will be thrown out later this year.
> 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.
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.
I’m not seeing any ambitious people trying to get into Chinese undergrad universities.
I know a handful of folks who worked at them, and then found a more permanent position in the US.
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.
> I’m not seeing any ambitious people trying to get into Chinese undergrad universities.
If you mean internationally, there are some, mostly from Africa.
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
Reminds me of this one :D https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/attachments/usteam-jpg.114...
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
https://youtu.be/pG6taS9R1KM?si=QqquYHFG2S7o7-73
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.
President Biden’s Executive Order 14117 is related
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2024-03-01/pdf/2024-0...
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...
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.
>Citizenship laws in the West are hardly very robust.
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.
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
Last time I checked, only congress can declare a war.
Remind me again when was the last time congress declared war and how many other wars the US was involved in since then.
The administration is doing what’s called “pragmatism”. Xenophobic will the reaction within society to justify it.
way overdue, US labs are wide open for China spies
Does the 1 day old account have any type of source or information to back up this claim?
Yep, NIST does open, unclassified research. Hard to see the point.
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