Not only are the Chinese students crowding out qualified Americans from the few top spots in some of the world's best universities, it is a well-known fact to the FBI that Chinese (and other foreign) intelligence agencies recruit citizens studying in the US to steal research information that the hackers in Shanghai can't as easily get from afar.
My father was a researcher for a major university for decades. He fought tooth-and-nail for every dollar in grant money he could get to create the knowledge that underpins the basic electronics that run our devices. And he would get tens of thousands of hacking attempts from China every single day.
He also spent years building a hardware test environment, and a Chinese grad student that worked in the same lab took the designs and replicated them in China for a tenth of the cost - all without as much as a decent thank you.
But the Chinese pay full price so the few American students who can get in save a little on tuition, so it's all ok.
Their point stands. The Chinese government is a bad actor with a history of tapping university students for industrial espionage. Their population also dwarfs ours which could justify some concern about American students being "crowded out."
Yes, yes I am. The Chinese government is completely complicit with the information robbery campaign that they have waged for decades. They don't give two fucks about the trials and tribulations necessary to create knowledge as long as they can steal it and make it for cheap.
Am I blaming the average Chinese citizen? No.
But the Chinese government IS composed of millions of people, who are either complicit (in that the information stolen benefits them directly or the local businesses whose growth helps the bureaucrat's rankings) or actively working to steal every byte of information that American researchers worked damn hard to create.
And before anyone comes back with the predictable "but America stole information to grow their economy in the 19th century too!" response, first tell me why abundant land, natural resources, and immigrants weren't as big a factor, unless you seriously think forging steel is as significant as manufacturing high-precision electronics.
Well, if its ok for USA to do Industrial Espionage (see Echelon programm), I don't see how it is wrong for Chinise to do the same to get economic advantage. You Reap What You Sow.
It is one thing to have a total surveillance program for the purposes of national security. Every reason exists to do so.
However, I believe that one must either commit to being despicable and brazenly stealing industry secrets to benefit one's own nation's, or to keep those secrets within the confines of intelligence agencies.
Now - and this is where ethics get a bit fuzzy - one could very easily argue that economic advantages allow one nation to enrich itself at the impoverishment of others, and so it is a long-term matter of national security to ensure that national economies are "topped off" with secrets that help them compete against foreign corporations.
But to follow that line of thinking, industrial espionage is an act of war.
Did your father publish the research and try to keep the hardware test environment secret? If not, and the research was proprietary for companies, that is messed up. Otherwise, graduate students leaving and taking their work with them, as well as experiences and knowledge from the research they provided during their time as students is pretty par for the course. It's a two way street, your father provided funding, the student provided labor in return for education. After you're done, you don't just leave that research in your adviser's lab, you often build on it at either a postdoc or professorship, in return for citations and a working relationship.
So we just declare our research labs "safe spaces" to keep them out. And if any Chinese student complains we deflect by accusing them of cultural appropriation for wearing clothes from the Gap.
From the related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12015388
"In today's digital world, it appears to be a virtual certainty that computers accessing the Internet can—and eventually will—be hacked."
=>
"In today's education world, it appears to be a virtual certainty that research information from countries which allow foreign students can—and eventually will—be stolen."
An open source information treaty might solve the problem. Share info between overlapping projects and GPL the resulting IP, publish in an open journal. Everyone saves money on research and hacking.
Let's not blame Chinese learners for the US's political refusal to provide free university education. And when the US was developing, it notoriously thieved intellectual property, to Charles Dickens' dismay. (Because that's how you develop.)
Not only are the Chinese students crowding out qualified Americans from the few top spots in some of the world's best universities, it is a well-known fact to the FBI that Chinese (and other foreign) intelligence agencies recruit citizens studying in the US to steal research information that the hackers in Shanghai can't as easily get from afar.
My father was a researcher for a major university for decades. He fought tooth-and-nail for every dollar in grant money he could get to create the knowledge that underpins the basic electronics that run our devices. And he would get tens of thousands of hacking attempts from China every single day.
He also spent years building a hardware test environment, and a Chinese grad student that worked in the same lab took the designs and replicated them in China for a tenth of the cost - all without as much as a decent thank you.
But the Chinese pay full price so the few American students who can get in save a little on tuition, so it's all ok.
/rage