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Why does the US still allow Chinese nationals to study at its universities and work at its companies? Seems like a big risk that cutting edge research and trade secrets will go to America’s main adversary. Industrial espionage by China has a long history, and China has more valuable things to steal from America than the other way.



The last time I talked to our local embedded CIA guy in my previous US company, he was very proud of their efforts to keep all the Chinese scientists out of the major hacking conferences. And he was very keen to get access to all Arab and East Asian critical infrastructures. Talking about industrial espionage efforts


I have good news for you. DeepSeek openly bragged that none of its people have “overseas experience”. They are all local talents.


Weren’t some of them educated abroad?


And as we all know the Russians, oops the Chinese, invented LLMs and transformers.

Randomly picking the first author in the r1 paper, Daya Guo, he interned and was a researcher for Microsoft, a well known Chinese company. So I guess he didn't have any "overseas experience" whatsoever.

I'm sure China has plenty of talent. But an oppressive society is going to be self limiting.


Your snarky tone aside, “overseas” usually means outside of one’s country. Microsoft has research teams all over the globe. You don’t have to be in the U.S. to work for Microsoft.


I know what overseas means and I realize Microsoft has teams all over the globe. But Microsoft is a US company and by working there as a researcher you are trained and have access to know-how that is technically American in origin.

The intent of the original "boast" is to somehow claim the know-how comes solely out of China. It's boasting about China's abilities to generate cutting edge technology without reliance on the west. This has nothing to do with where you physically reside.

The gp said:

> Industrial espionage by China has a long history, and China has more valuable things to steal from America than the other way.

And you were countering that by saying nonono, these guys learnt everything they know solely from some Chinese origin. They've never been overseas.


> The intent of the original "boast" is to somehow claim the know-how comes solely out of China.

No, it isn’t. It’s likely they mean they haven’t studied aboard or have worked in the U.S., which has been long seen as a prerequisite to innovate in the tech industry there.

My original comment was merely citing what they think. It’s unfortunate that you cannot tell the difference between describing and endorsing.


Here's the sequence:

>> Why does the US still allow Chinese nationals to study at its universities and work at its companies? Seems like a big risk that cutting edge research and trade secrets will go to America’s main adversary. Industrial espionage by China has a long history, and China has more valuable things to steal from America than the other way.

> I have good news for you. DeepSeek openly bragged that none of its people have “overseas experience”. They are all local talents.

...

> My original comment was merely citing what they think

Fair enough. So my comment is towards what they think? What is your position?

EDIT: Do you feel that DeepSeek open bragging about none of its people having "overseas experience" is simply to say they have not been overseas or that the technology originates in China? I'll admit I'm not down to the nuance of how studies overseas are viewed in China.


I don’t have a position. I’m simply very curious how this will play out.

You don’t have to guess what they mean since the CEO did an interview about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42845612


You'd rather they do all of the cutting edge research back in China?


Agreed, who needs engineering talent when we can just hire some H1Bs and let them and Copilot do all the work? Unlike the Chinese, H1Bs don't want to be sent on a plane back home to their 3rd world country so they'll always do as they are told. When we tell them to work 80 hours, they work 80 hours.


[flagged]


How about, instead, we call it national security.


Why shouldn't every other nation treat us the same way? Based on our criminal history of invasion, back-stabbing, and genocide should US citizens be banned around the world? Why should the racist "yellow peril" narrative be credible the 1000th time?




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