[HN Gopher] FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who h...
___________________________________________________________________
FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone
incommunicado
Author : JaimeThompson
Score : 481 points
Date : 2025-03-30 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| tptacek wrote:
| The fact pattern doesn't fit well with ICE, because Indiana
| University cooperated with the investigation (and struck him and
| his wife from their pages).
|
| The track record of espionage investigations against people of
| Chinese origin is not great, so it's not a defense of this
| investigation to say that that the details rhyme with that rather
| than immigration.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're
| caught, imprisoned and tried in huge public media-heavy trials.
| The USSR even did huge public trials for American spies,
| because there's no incentive to forgo the nationalist boost to
| public opinion when collaborators would be aware of the
| disappearance either way.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Media-heavy espionage cases are the exception, not the norm.
|
| "Diplomats" routinely get declared persona non grata and just
| put on the next plane home. Neither the U.S. nor the other
| country wants to make a fuss.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| That's generally because those diplomats can't be tried for
| their activities in the host nation, and also because said
| diplomats are running spies, not stealing secrets
| themselves.
|
| In other words, they aren't the traitors, their agents are.
| And those agents are the ones who get tried in the media
| circuses we're all so familiar with.
| tptacek wrote:
| Being removed from your employer's web pages isn't "being
| vanished"; we don't even know if Wang is in custody. All I'm
| saying is, in the fact pattern where this is another unhinged
| ICE raid, IU doesn't strike a tenured faculty member in an
| endowed chair position from all their websites. I've got
| nothing past that.
|
| _Later_
|
| From the TPM follow-up link downthread: faculty at IU were
| notified more than a week before the raid that he'd been
| placed on leave, and it was at that point Wang's pages were
| zapped from the IU sites.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It's also pretty clear that this isn't matching the pattern
| of an espionage case, since they gave everyone more than a
| week of advance notice that something was to happen.
| tptacek wrote:
| Who knows? The "advanced notice" (I'm assuming here
| you're referring to IU's decision to place him on leave,
| remove him from their web pages, and notify his
| colleagues, more than week before the raid) makes this
| look less like some extrajudicial ICE-type thing, not
| more. But nobody knows anything right now! We know he has
| legal representation, from the story, and competent legal
| representation is going to tell you to shut the absolute
| hell up in a situation like this, so there's not much to
| learn from the fact that Goodin can't raise him for a
| quote.
|
| My only take here (besides the certainty that the shadowy
| hand of the FISA FISC court is not behind all this) is
| that it doesn't look like another ICE raid.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Sure, I mean, the FBI's involvement makes it not look
| like another department's case. I am saying that on top
| of that, an arrest of any kind would (normally) go
| differently than whatever happened to this professor. The
| idea that the FBI would call the employer of a suspected
| spy, inform them that something was going to happen, that
| all of his colleagues would be informed, and _then_ after
| a week they 'd search his home, stands out as not a full
| explanation.
| lolinder wrote:
| > The idea that the FBI would call the employer of a
| suspected spy, inform them that something was going to
| happen, that all of his colleagues would be informed, and
| then after a week they'd search his home, stands out as
| not a full explanation.
|
| I don't think anyone, least of all OP, is suggesting this
| is what happened.
|
| Everything is rank speculation at this point, but if I
| _were_ going to speculate I 'd speculate that Wang
| suddenly left the country of his own volition and the
| employer began investigating his disappearance and
| stumbled on things that led to them calling in the FBI.
|
| That's still purely speculation, but it would account for
| the sequence of events and the manner of investigation
| way better than any ideas about him being "vanished" by
| the US government.
| belter wrote:
| > It's also pretty clear that this isn't a normal
| espionage case,
|
| You don't know if its detained, you don't know if is in
| the territory of the USA, you don't know anything....If
| it's a US Citizen would be espionage because?
| jillyboel wrote:
| > we don't even know if Wang is in custody
|
| so you're saying he vanished...?
| lolinder wrote:
| There's an enormous semantic distinction between "Wang
| vanished" and "Wang was vanished".
|
| Yes, as far as we know he vanished, but as far as we know
| he did so under his own will before the university even
| put him on leave.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Maybe the Chinese disapprared him brcause his cover was blown
| :/ The Chinese are alleged to havr their own secret police in
| the United States keeping tabs on important citizens..
|
| An expert in cryptography seems like someone theyd be keeping
| tabs on if they really do this.
|
| Just spit balling here and dont mean to accuse the guy of
| anything.
| nurettin wrote:
| A lot of "spies" seem to be falling off the window/balcony
| /stairs lately.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically.
| They're caught, imprisoned and tried
|
| Or they vanish themselves before they're caught and are never
| heard from again _because they got away_.
|
| We don't know that anyone has Wang in custody. He was
| scrubbed from the University computer systems weeks before
| the FBI raided his house, which suggests that _whatever_
| happened started then and built up to this recent raid which
| finally drew media attention.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| They all get "vanished" before the media-heavy trials. You
| normally find out at the end not when they've been arrested.
| gdilla wrote:
| what if your "employer" vanishes you?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Some spies in the USSR did just get vanished, especially low-
| level domestic spies. Yeah the American dude running around
| and being caught for spying would probably get the media
| circus, but the mid-level manager he gave some cigarettes and
| money to in exchange for information about the production
| levels at the factory the manager worked to might instead
| find himself quietly arrested one evening, tried and sent off
| to the gulag by the early hours of the morning. You didn't
| really want or need to make a spectacle of those kinds of
| spies, since everyone already sort of had an idea of what
| happened.
| briandear wrote:
| This has zero to do with ICE. FBI does counterespionage
| investigations (among other things,) but doesn't have anything
| to do with immigration.
| derbOac wrote:
| I have a problem with any of this being secret one way or
| another. If someone is detained the public has a right to know
| about the case. Otherwise it's all abductions as far as I'm
| concerned.
| tptacek wrote:
| We don't even know that he's been detained!
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Or who has taken him. We rolled up cells of the Chinese
| security services who would disappear (or worse) Chinese
| nationals on foreign soil.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-
| chin...
| orochimaaru wrote:
| This isn't immigration. He's a tenured professor and already
| has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a
| US citizen.
|
| FBI is most likely dealing with an espionage angle. His
| research field of cryptography and using it to protect genomic
| data probably has something to do with it.
|
| The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal
| with several researchers having their career and livelihood
| destroyed.
|
| What he did was public domain, unless he consulted for alphabet
| agencies. The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record
| of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage
| by making life hard for family back in china
| tptacek wrote:
| (For what it's worth, at the time I wrote the comment, the
| rest of the comments on this story were about ICE raids).
|
| Nobody knows anything about this story. He might be in
| custody, he might be in Indiana, he might be abroad, he might
| be about to get charged, he might not be, he might keep his
| positions at IU, he might have lost all his positions at IU.
|
| It's an interesting story worth paying attention to because
| he's a prominent figure in an area of research we all pay
| attention to. But given some kind of criminal investigation
| is in process, and that he has a lawyer, there's no signal to
| derive from the fact that we can't get quotes from him in the
| media; that could just be him being smart.
| kortilla wrote:
| Does he have a lawyer? It wasn't clear who retained
| council, it sounded like it was just a woman living at the
| Carmel house, which could have been a rental tenant...
| freeopinion wrote:
| Are you suggesting that it isn't helpful or useful to
| speculate that he was an undercover FBI agent working to
| infiltrate US-based dark web crypto gangs and that the
| University's actions tipped off the gangs? So when he went
| missing the FBI kicked into high gear? Just making stuff up
| like that doesn't provide clarity?
| cma wrote:
| Permanent green card residents have been sent to El Salvador
| prisons without trial in the recent stuff. This incident does
| say it was with a court behind it though.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| The FBI does not deal with immigration action.
| stonogo wrote:
| Yes it does. It's always had Title 8 authority, and
| several recent executive orders have directly expressed
| support for such action.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhs-authorizes-federal-law-
| enfo...
|
| https://www.wsbradio.com/news/local/fbi-atlanta-confirms-
| new...
|
| https://www.wkrg.com/baldwin-county/fbi-immigration-
| enforcem...
|
| https://www.nbcpalmsprings.com/2025/02/27/fbi-arrests-
| coache...
| orochimaaru wrote:
| That's the DHS authorization. It deals with immigration
| issues as a part of its investigations (for all federal
| agencies). But immigration action is not its primary
| role. They won't come looking for you because you broke
| immigration laws. But they will enforce them if it's
| found that you broke immigration laws while investigating
| something unrelated.
| stonogo wrote:
| Not only is that whole different set of claims from "The
| FBI does not deal with immigration action," but the new
| set of claims are also incorrect, which you can see from
| the links I've already provided.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You say that like Trump isn't president now. Maybe he
| said something mean about Elon Musk.
| ck2 wrote:
| ICE has and is arresting US Citizens
|
| ICE is immune to prosecution for improper behavior so they've
| dialed that up to 11 this year
|
| Who exactly is going to stop them? Courts just say "don't do
| that" and they nod
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Read the article. It's the FBI in this, not ICE.
| ck2 wrote:
| FBI is after the fact follow up.
|
| Someone else may be responsible for his disappearance in
| the first place.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Maybe, maybe not. It does follow a pattern of how FBI
| handles espionage though. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
| frontline/shows/spy/spies/fou....
| fracus wrote:
| > The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of
| pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage
| by making life hard for family back in china
|
| China also has a history of establishing "police" stations in
| foreign countries with the mandate to harass and control
| expats. They did this in Canada at least, surely they did in
| the US too.
| sureglymop wrote:
| I can only urge you to provide one or more good primary
| sources if you are making such a claim. It should be a
| given...
| fracus wrote:
| Sure. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/rcmp-chinese-
| police-st...
| dcrazy wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/new-york-city-
| resident-...
| scythe wrote:
| >The track record of espionage investigations against people of
| Chinese descent
|
| For context:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsue-Chu_Tsien
| tlogan wrote:
| We don't know whether Xiaofeng is a U.S. citizen, a Chinese
| national, or holds some other status. He's been in the U.S. for
| at least 20 years. He hasn't been arrested, but it's unclear
| whether he's been located or is currently missing.
|
| Let's not spread misinformation. This could turn out to be a
| simple criminal case. He might even be a victim. Or it could be
| something bigger--maybe a spy case, or even something on the
| scale of Watergate. At this point, no one really knows.
| tomohelix wrote:
| Sound scary but when looking at the facts, it is probably
| reasonable.
|
| Both the university, the court, and the lawyer seem to not
| raising any fuss yet, signaling that whatever this is, it likely
| all legal and severe enough to warrant absolute silence.
|
| The employer was likely contacted far in advance for detail not
| available to the public, and very likely they complied and
| realized there are serious issues that can tarnish the
| university's reputation, so they erased his name from their
| payroll. This indicated court order and sufficient evidences for
| multiple parties to be concerned.
|
| So... best guess? National security matter. Like it or not,
| espionage is a thing and under this administration, all
| foreigner, naturalized or not, are under extra scrutiny. And the
| US is not above applying stereotypes.
| sitkack wrote:
| https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/iu-professor-bloomin...
|
| https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-situati...
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/ncweaver.skerry-tech.com/post/3lljl...
| sitkack wrote:
| From bsky, he is the Chair of ACM Special Interest Group on
| Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC)
|
| https://www.sigsac.org/
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Problem is, with things as they are now in USA, when you see
| stuff like this first question is : is this the ongoing,
| developing oppression, or is there is a real issue here?
| avs733 wrote:
| While the question is not unreasonable, it is worth remembering
| that the FBI is not just a criminal investigation department.
| They also are the nations internal intelligence - I.e. anti
| foreign intelligence- leads.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > They also are the nations internal intelligence - I.e. anti
| foreign intelligence- leads.
|
| And they are still bound by whatever who is in charge of the
| FBI wants. Always remember how the FBI was used in the Nixon
| era to target Black people and hippies [1].
|
| [1] https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-
| past...
| avs733 wrote:
| You aren't wrong but there is no evidence of that here, at
| least for now.
| vessenes wrote:
| FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing
| on the public docket likely means FISA court, which is _in
| theory_ reserved for espionage and terrorism in the US. Most
| University cryptographic research happens in public these days,
| so I have a hard time imagining a sequence of events strictly
| bounded by cryptography research + chinese origin that yields
| FISA court motions.
|
| The real thing to say here is that we will probably never know
| what's alleged, much less what's happened.
|
| Interesting would be if he were a skilled enough cryptographic
| theorist to have gotten a backdoor into a NIST approved
| algorithm; new ideas in this field are almost always appreciated.
| tptacek wrote:
| No? FISA isn't an adversarial court that hears espionage cases;
| it exists solely to handle applications for surveillance.
| Espionage and national security cases are handled by ordinary
| federal courts.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What kind of court was Drake tried in?
| tptacek wrote:
| I have no idea, but nobody is "tried" at FISC. FISC has no
| jurisdiction over any criminal case and is strictly ex-
| parte.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Drake who?
|
| Whoever, it wasn't FISC, because FISC doesn't have
| jurisdiction to do any trials.
| irundebian wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake
| dragonwriter wrote:
| So, he wasn't tried at all, he was convicted on a guilty
| plea, and the case was in the United States District
| Court for the District of Maryland, not the Foreign
| Intelligence Surveillance Court (which, as previously
| stated, doesn't handle criminal cases.)
| kasey_junk wrote:
| https://sgp.fas.org/news/2010/04/doj041510.html
|
| Federal criminal court in Maryland
| sitkack wrote:
| It could be that it wasn't an adversarial attack but a
| discovery, either of a weakness or an intentional flaw.
| Regardless, the crypto power gradient changes and that is
| concerning.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| What's a FISA court?
| hypeatei wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig.
| ..
|
| > to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against
| foreign spies inside the United States by federal law
| enforcement and intelligence agencies.
|
| Secret courts that some say are unconstitutional[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.aclu.org/documents/why-fisa-amendments-act-
| uncon...
| tptacek wrote:
| FISA is a special process set up, partly by the Church
| Committee, in the last 1970s in order to oversee foreign
| signals intelligence. It's staffed by federal Article III
| judges, and its purpose is to handle paperwork applications
| for surveillance of communications pertaining to foreign
| nationals where any leg occurs on domestic soil.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| One of exactly two courts--the Foreign Intelligence
| Surveillance Court (FISC) that handles initial applications
| for surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence
| Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence
| Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) which can handles
| reviews of denials of applications by FISC.
|
| These two courts are _not_ "reserved for espionage and
| terrorism", they are dedicated to assuring that limitations
| on impact on US persons of surveillance justified on foreign
| intelligence grounds are observed. They handle only warrant
| applications for foreign intelligence surveillance that has
| some US nexus, _not_ charges /allegations of any kind, and no
| one targeted or impacted by such a warrant would ever get
| notice that proceedings were occurring, much less be
| represented, in these courts.
| user3939382 wrote:
| FISA, our secret court with secret proceedings to deal with
| secret charges under secret laws with secret interpretations.
| What could go wrong?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the higher
| level Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISA
| is the law limiting government surveillance certain of whose
| provisions they enforce) don't deal with "charges" at all,
| and the statute they do enforce the warrant requirements for
| (FISA) isn't secret.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| The person in question is not a cryptographer, but rather works
| more broadly in computer security. He has not contributed to
| NIST standards AFAICT
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub +
| nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court
|
| No, it doesn't. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
| proceedings are only warrant applications for surveillance that
| cannot be used on criminal trials; targets wouldn't be informed
| of or represented in proceedings.
|
| Espionage or terrorism charges are handled by normal US
| District Courts, on the public docket (though certain documents
| and proceedings within those--or any other--cases dealing with
| classified evidence are handled under special procedures to
| preserve the secrecy of the evidence )
| vessenes wrote:
| past the edit window, but thanks for educating me. I think I
| was conflating Nacchio's long fight over Qwest's NSA requests
| with FISA.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a
| professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins
| University, wrote on Mastodon. He continued: "Has anyone been in
| contact? I hear he's been missing for two weeks and his students
| can't reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???"_
|
| Prof. Green also posted about the vanishing of Prof. Wang here on
| HN the other day,
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518196
|
| (That's where I first heard of it). But HN is an increasingly
| difficult place to discover such stories, what with the
| systematic flagging brigades.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I'm missing the chronology here
|
| So he was missing for two weeks already and then the FBI raid
| occurred Friday? Who was the woman at the house if not his wife
| dcrazy wrote:
| The woman was at their second home, which I am guessing she
| was renting as a tenant.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > But HN is an increasingly difficult place to discover such
| stories, what with the systematic flagging brigades.
|
| What stories are getting flagged?
| jaredklewis wrote:
| A lot of stories with a political angle get flagged.
|
| I also don't want the site to become all politics, but it
| feels weird to me that stories like this with overt overlap
| with tech and SV still often get flagged.
| slg wrote:
| You can see it on this story. It was in the top 3 on HN as of
| a few minutes ago and now is already down to #20 on the front
| page. Although this could also be potentially blamed on the
| flamewar detector, but I'm not sure if the specific cause
| matters in this instance since the primary complaint is the
| lack of visibility these stories get.
|
| It also seems like perihelions's comment likely received some
| flags as it went from being the top comment to being buried
| down at the bottom near a bunch of fully flagged comments.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > You can see it on this story
|
| This story is on the front page and stories like it have
| been on the front page almost every day since last October.
| slg wrote:
| Did you stop reading at the end of that sentence you
| quoted? Because you completely ignored the reasoning I
| provided for that statement. This story suddenly dropped
| 15+ spots on the front page. That type of immediate
| downranking is evidence of either flagging or triggering
| of the flamewar detector.
|
| At the time of writing, this story is #19 on the front
| page with 410 points, one spot behind an article with 10
| points that was posted a minute after this story. There
| is clearly something causing this story to lose
| visibility compared to the average HN post.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Did you stop reading at the end of that sentence you
| quoted?
|
| I read and ignored it because when I see people making
| claims like this it sounds conspiratorial. You have been
| here a while, though, so I'll assume you know how the
| rank algorithm works, in which case I would say that the
| flame war detector you're describing is the more likely
| explanation. There were six top-level comments flagged
| dead when I opened the thread.
|
| These kinds of threads hit the front page every day,
| though, so I don't get why people act upset that they get
| flagged when 90% of them don't belong here.
| refulgentis wrote:
| https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-situati...
|
| Exclusive with more info on the timeline, but nothing substantive
| enough to clarify entirely.
|
| TL;DR: Professor was placed on leave which was announced to
| colleagues around 3/14.
|
| "What's still unclear is whether the University investigation
| lead to the federal law enforcement actions or whether early
| stages of a federal law enforcement investigation led the
| University to place Wang on leave and take these other actions.
| What's clear though, according to my information, is that the law
| enforcement searches two days ago did not lead to Wang being
| placed on leave."
|
| "One additional detail, it's not clear that Wang has been fired.
| That was not what colleagues were told in mid-March and there
| does not appear to have been any update on that front to the
| contrary to colleagues."
| tptacek wrote:
| This is good stuff and is probably a better link for the story
| than Dan Goodin's Ars story, much as I like Dan.
| outer_web wrote:
| Seems like it'd be difficult or legally troublesome to fire
| someone (in his role) who has been afk for a couple of weeks.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| FBI might have their reasons and they are doing their job, so no
| objections there. But the university data scrab is stupid, you
| can't undo history.
|
| Universities should stay neutral.
| tptacek wrote:
| The university scrub precedes the FBI raid by two weeks.
| dathinab wrote:
| predates known FBI actions
|
| does not necessary predate FBI involvement,
|
| a university "silently" scrubbing someone is most times due
| to there being something which could cause heavy reputational
| damage to tangentially related to that person (or secret
| orders/pressure from courts or other agencies)
|
| for example someone gets caught doing something bad by the
| university but not yet outright criminal, the university puts
| the on leave and investigates further maybe informs police or
| FBI too, which then start investigation but not yet without
| any public actions. The person knows when put on leave that
| they likely will find more things and disappears themself
| (issue with that story is the woman at on of the houses and
| her being let go by the FBI and coming back with a lawyer and
| her being not identified as his wife, which just doesn't fit
| in at all)
| rolph wrote:
| if you look around, you can find, reconstruct a c.v.
|
| this guy is someone you dont want the badguy to get ahold of.
|
| AI research in an adversarial context is dual purpose tech, and
| could easily awaken ITAR
| mimsee wrote:
| So if AI research is dual-use tech, would an AI research _er_
| be dual-use human, and get travel restricted because of weapons
| export controls. Dude is a weapon!
| rolph wrote:
| in a manner of speaking that is a feasible concept [e.g.
| paperclip]
| echoangle wrote:
| Are the humans working on current dual-use tech dual-use
| humans? The current ITAR-restricted algorithms are also
| developed by humans.
| dathinab wrote:
| you might try to make a joke
|
| but US courts had done rulings which where basically like
| that
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Please don't blabber nonsense speculation. There are plenty of
| academic researchers that study AI safety and security and who
| all publish their work and code in open-access venues and
| preprint repositories.
| rolph wrote:
| is it speculation to assume that knowing with precision, how
| to mitigate a problem also puts you in an expert position to
| facilitate said problem?
|
| if you also look at this persons past research, and tenure,
| you will see this is not speculation, nor is it nonsense.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Perhaps they left and are already in mainland China ???.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Hard to say what's going on, but if he was a spy that is a
| plausible response.
|
| I've known ex-govvie infosec folks who get calls periodically
| from their contacts in government about Chinese state-sponsored
| spies embedded in big tech companies. It's a thing.
|
| If this was just another "let's screw over an immigrant for
| saying something we didn't like", we'd have some clue as to the
| professor's politics. But of course, anything is possible.
| dathinab wrote:
| > It's a thing.
|
| so is China threatening, blackmailing and disappearing Chinese
| ethic people (and/or their children) even if the people in
| question have US citizenship and/or have not grown up in China
| at all
|
| like we can't really say much about this case without
| additional information
| Animats wrote:
| This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now.
| Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed
| to do.
|
| Here's Xiaofeng Wang's bio on the Indiana University site.[1]
|
| Google Scholar.[2]
|
| Archived version of home page at Indiana University.[3]
|
| If anybody has a PACER account, please check there.
|
| [1] https://alliance.iu.edu/members/member/8580.html
|
| [2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pONu-5EAAAAJ&hl=en
|
| [3]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240930195057/https://homes.lud...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| What evidence do you have that they US government disappeared
| him? It's just as likely that he is an escaped spy and the
| university wants nothing to do with him.
| swarnie wrote:
| Maybe OP is making an assumption based on recent events, it
| has been happening an awful lot.
|
| Has anyone checked Louisiana or El Salvador detention centres
| for him?
| outer_web wrote:
| I believe the term is "to John McAfee".
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Ballot box, soap box, jury box, ammo box
| cluckindan wrote:
| I want to get off Mr. Bones' wild Haskell course.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Wait till everyone is in the streets and the power is out,
| the helis are up and the MRAPS roll in.
|
| Nothing more exhillarating than the smell of napalm in the
| morning.
| lolinder wrote:
| We have no evidence that Wang "was" disappeared. We know that
| he's nowhere to be found, that the university put him on leave
| weeks ago [0], and that the FBI recently searched his home.
| Notably, the university put him on leave _weeks_ before the FBI
| searched his home.
|
| That sequence is _better_ explained by the hypothesis that Wang
| vanished _himself_ suddenly and the university called in the
| FBI to investigate things that they found in the aftermath.
| (Note that that 's still pure speculation, but it's speculation
| that better accounts for all known facts.)
|
| [0] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-
| situati...
| slg wrote:
| On the long list of problems caused by the government
| "disappearing" people (which they have objectively been doing
| lately) is that it destroys trust and therefore makes even
| valid legal proceedings seem more shady than they would in a
| world in which due process was a universal guarantee in
| practice. I don't fault anyone for jumping to conclusions
| implicating the government is in the wrong here rather than
| Wang.
| lolinder wrote:
| > by the government "disappearing" anyone (which they have
| objectively been doing lately)
|
| Notably, they _haven 't_ been "disappearing" people in the
| manner that would have to be happening here. Even the most
| egregious cases, which are _very_ bad, have left a paper
| trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. This case is
| notable because _no one_ seems to know where this man has
| gone.
|
| But yes, point taken: the extrajudicial actions of ICE
| recently are absolutely not helping people stay calm in the
| face of something like this.
| slg wrote:
| >Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have
| left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow.
|
| How can you be confident in this? Is it possible that you
| are saying this because the only cases we know about are
| when they have happened to leave "a paper trail for
| lawyers and journalists to follow"?
| lolinder wrote:
| Sure, it's possible, but it's also speculation. You can't
| rationally use speculated _possible_ hushed-up
| disappearances as evidence to fuel further speculation:
| there lies the road to totally unhinged conspiracy
| theories.
|
| If we see more cases _like this one_ of someone
| disappearing without a trace and their disappearance
| getting documented but not explained, I 'll accept this
| one as evidence to fuel future speculation. Until then,
| speculation used to fuel speculation is a dangerous path.
|
| EDIT: Apparently my reference to conspiracy theories is
| pushing buttons? Unfortunately this is literally true:
| the logic of the conspiracy theorist builds upon itself,
| with as minimal reference to exterior circumstances as
| possible. The lizard people did it. How do we know?
| Because they did it before!
|
| If we want to be different from conspiracy theorists, we
| need to cultivate an insistence on reasoning from
| documented facts, rather than building elaborate towers
| out of theories alone.
| slg wrote:
| My first comment was not speculation. I only speculated
| in my second comment to highlight how your rather
| definitive "they haven't been "disappearing" people in
| the manner that would have to be happening here" was also
| in fact speculation.
| lolinder wrote:
| Point taken.
|
| Better said: We have no evidence that they _have_ been
| disappearing people in this manner. We also, clearly,
| have a large body of people who are on guard for any such
| possible evidence, so I would reasonably expect that if
| it were happening with any kind of regularity we would
| have seen it by now. There 's a possibility that this is
| instance #1 and we see repeats. If we do see repeats, I
| will happily engage in speculation that this is a pattern
| and the government may in fact be disappearing people.
|
| Until then, the known facts don't match a government
| disappearing program as well as they match other possible
| explanations.
| trod1234 wrote:
| In fairness, there was no public evidence of the Nazi
| death camps up until they decided to turn the prison
| camps into that at the Wannsee Conference either.
|
| It was only in retrospect that we learned the true horror
| of the Holocaust.
|
| Given that period of history, and how it brought the
| world to the brink, any patterning closely similar to
| that (which we are seeing today) these things should be
| considered happening until it can be proven otherwise.
|
| Complacency and a lack of accountability in the moment is
| how these things happen, and turn good people to sloth.
|
| Saying "Trust us", just isn't going to cut it given the
| existing state of no credibility that is a consequence of
| over a half century of bad acting and abuse of authority,
| and the trusted news initiative (which is not trustable).
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm totally in favor of holding the current
| administration accountable for what they are doing and
| clamping down on all the authoritarian actions as much as
| possible. But I'm not in favor of compromising principles
| to do it.
|
| There are plenty of things that they're doing that are
| documented that are evil. There's no need to waste energy
| and credibility speculating about things that aren't yet
| understood or documented, unless you _personally_ have
| the means to investigate Wang 's disappearance and shed
| light on what happened.
| bigiain wrote:
| > if it were happening with any kind of regularity we
| would have seen it by now.
|
| If the "unhinged conspiracy theories" turn out to be at
| least partially true, I'm sure we'll find out it's
| happening regularly, but only started within the last few
| weeks. This could easily be the first of the "we would
| have seen it" cases, not some unexplainable solitary
| incident.
|
| > the known facts don't match a government disappearing
| program as well as they match other possible
| explanations.
|
| Maybe? The known facts about the way he was removed from
| his university job and web presence with absolutely no
| explanation and being referred to the FBI when asked for
| reasons arguably matches better with a government
| disappearing program then any of the other possible
| explanations offered around.
| lolinder wrote:
| Sorry to keep doing this to you, but it's a big thread
| and most arguments have already been made. Here's a link
| to the best guess I have, which accounts for the delay
| between university action and law enforcement action
| (which notably has no explanation in the government
| disappearing program version):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528036
|
| As with everything, this is pure speculation, merely put
| forward as a possible explanation that accounts for all
| known facts. I've yet to see any other explanation
| account for the sequence and timeline.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Everyone that's been looked for has been found in some
| jail in Louisiana before further transport
|
| Of course there are people that nobody looks for
|
| But everyone that has inquired so far has been able to
| figure out location
|
| Given the ambiguous chronology here, it seems like this
| professor dipped out in advance and the FBI freaked out
| later. So he wouldn't be in a system if that were the
| case
|
| But of course it could be FISA court related
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's _clearly_ not true that everyone is properly
| documented.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/lawyers-advocates-
| say-48...
| lolinder wrote:
| This article says that the communities are having a hard
| time figuring out which 48 people were arrested, which is
| a very different problem than having a specific person
| you're looking for and not knowing where they went to.
|
| Again: still bad, still inexcusable, but not the same
| thing as what would have to be happening here.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Documentation is hard to do accurately when someone
| illegally immigrates with no documents.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| The scenario everyone here is hoping for, that he was
| absconded in the middle of the night in a red, white, and
| blue painted Cybertruck by men in suits and sunglasses,
| is also the least likely to have happened.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| > and blue painted Cybertruck by men in suits and
| sunglasses
|
| You forgot "with short penises". Most likely.
| gtirloni wrote:
| > This case is notable because no one seems to know where
| this man has gone
|
| If this was simply a missing person case, wouldn't the
| local police be involved instead of the FBI? If it's
| still in the FBI's jurisdiction (odd), wouldn't they have
| something to say instead of nothing?
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Not necessarily -- if there's evidence of the
| disappearance being across state borders, FBI might get
| involved because that's now federal jurisdiction.
| Similarly, if it's someone of high profile, or involved
| with a high-profile organization, the local police might
| also choose to hand that over to the FBI to deal with
| since they can probably get better access.
|
| In this case, this was a professor working on
| cryptography stuff, which if you will recall was
| infamously treated as munitions by the US govt for a long
| time. And he is likely either a naturalized citizen or
| greencard holder who was originally from China, so
| there's both an international and potentially
| geopolitical aspect to it. I suspect that if the local
| police were involved, they very quickly handed that off
| to the FBI. There aren't many police forces in the US
| equipped to deal with that nexus of factors.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The article claims his status is unknown ("Their resident
| status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is
| currently unknown."), but I doubt a non-citizen could be
| "Director of NSF Center for Distributed Confidential
| Computing".
| jltsiren wrote:
| The "center" in that means a collaborative project with
| multiple PIs instead of a grant used to fund a single
| lab. The total funding for the project in the current
| funding cycle seems to be ~$10 million over 5 years: http
| s://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/simpleSearchResult?queryText.
| ..
| emmelaich wrote:
| You can become a police officer in California without
| being a citizen( _). So who knows? I doubt there 's any
| official rule against this position regarding
| citizenship. Or duel citizen.
|
| (_) Albeit with full legal work authorization.
| Animats wrote:
| The main site of the Center for Distributed Confidential
| Computing[1] is up, and the chart of "principle
| investigators" still shows XiaoFeng Wang as the center
| director. But many other links on that site are broken
| and pages have been cut down, compared to an archive from
| last month.[2]
|
| They used to have a Github.[3] But now it says "No public
| repositories".
|
| Here's their NSF funding.[4][5] About US$3 million.
| Xiaogang (Cliff) Wang is listed as the principal
| investigator.
|
| [1] http://nsf-cdcc.org/principle-investigators/
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250120221302/https://nsf-
| cdcc....
|
| [3] https://github.com/CDCC-Project
|
| [4] https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-announces-awards-
| advance-cybers...
|
| [5] https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2207
| 231&His...
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| You're right, I've updated my comment to be less
| authoritative on the residency status.
| facile3232 wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if the perception is that the
| state is arresting arbitrary people for arbitrary things.
| lolinder wrote:
| We here--those of us having a conversation on Hacker News
| --are capable of analyzing our perceptions and molding
| them to better fit the observed facts. We do not need to
| be victims of our own instinctive reactions.
|
| So whether or not it _does_ matter if the facts don 't
| line up with the speculation, it _should_ matter.
| facile3232 wrote:
| Hacker news is not relevant to politics. I don't know why
| I should put effort into validating other people's
| perception of what is factual.
|
| Notably, "observed fact" is an oxymoron. You mean
| observation of something you then produce a statement to
| lossily refer to. Especially if the "fact" is bound to
| floating signifiers.
|
| Most of the terms of the alleged "facts" are floating
| signifiers. Good luck.
|
| You'll find a lot more success appealing directly to
| peoples' emotions surrounding materially clear
| situations. Eg it's obvious ripping contributing members
| of society out of their homes and expelling them from the
| country is bad for us. But it's the validation of
| peoples' immaterial fantasies of being raped by
| immigrants that sustains this material violence. Leaning
| into analysis of floating signifiers just enables this
| societal dysfunction.
|
| Facts are useful, but only if they're actually factual.
| You haven't grounded any of your factual assertions in
| material analysis. Any factual analysis of "disappearing"
| is impossible as this inherently relies on your
| expectations of the potential behavior of the government
| when the government never attempted to provide a material
| basis for the justification of violence to begin with.
|
| That is, whether or not you consider "disappearing" to be
| a valid concept very much relies on whether or not you
| thought the government attempted to treat people in good
| faith to begin with. I personally think you're a moron if
| you trust the state to do anything but look after itself.
| bigiain wrote:
| > Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the
| manner that would have to be happening here.
|
| Not that we know about yet. Someone's got to be the first
| of that sort of government action to be discovered and
| come to the notice of more than just their friends and
| family, and it's highly unlikely to be discovered the
| very first time it happened.
|
| I'm reasonably confident that if this news manages to get
| covered widely enough. there's going to be a bunch of "me
| too" reports of coworkers or family that have disappeared
| under similar circumstances in the last 3 or 4 weeks.
| I'll be curious to see what other nationalities and
| professions show up in those reports.
| lolinder wrote:
| I replied to this argument in response to a sibling. I'll
| link my reply instead of repeating myself:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527605
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I understand why people are tempted, but I worry that
| jumping to such conclusions is counterproductive. If
| everyone who gets in trouble with federal law enforcement
| is considered "disappeared" in the public imagination until
| they make a public statement about it, we're going to end
| up with a lot of justified cases bundled in with the
| unjustified ones. The source article quotes two professors
| at other schools who rightly note that this story is very
| abnormal, but nobody in particular seems to be saying that
| they've lost contact with Mr. Wang. (The neighbors told
| local news that they rarely saw and never spoke to him in
| the first place: https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/ne
| ws/local/2025/03/2...)
| fracus wrote:
| Doesn't the sequence of events read more like the University
| found something grave enough to put him on leave and contact
| the FBI, and for both the teacher and school to keep it
| quiet?
| dathinab wrote:
| > the university put him on leave weeks
|
| but then why did his students not know about it?
|
| if normally a professor or similar is put on leave there are
| procedures about informing students in affected courses,
| replacement professors being found or courses being cancelled
| etc.
|
| the fact that this procedures seem to not have been followed
| is strange and looks like someone wanted this to go over
| without much attention
|
| that his wife seems to be affected too is even more strange
|
| that no even vague reason is told even now is also supper
| strange
|
| I mean thing about it especially given how much it has blown
| up there is no reason for them to not at least give a vague
| reason, if they don't it's because they can't (e.g. court
| order) or they have a good reason to not want to (which is
| strange by itself).
| bediger4000 wrote:
| > That sequence is better explained by the hypothesis that
| Wang vanished himself
|
| That probably isn't correct given that IU has scrubbed him
| from their web pages. That alone makes this look like
| disappearing him and his wife.
|
| The feds unconstitutionally "disappearing" this couple
| doesn't exactly fit either, but based on the article, that's
| what fits best.
| lolinder wrote:
| > That probably isn't correct given that IU has scrubbed
| him from their web pages. That alone makes this look like
| disappearing him and his wife.
|
| Why?
|
| As a possible explanation: Wang disappears suddenly and
| without warning. The university investigates and in the
| course of the investigation discovers that he was working
| as a spy for the PRC for the past 20 years while employed
| with them. They freak out, knowing that the current
| political climate (especially in their state) is one where
| they can't afford to become known as that school that
| harbored a Chinese spy, so they rush to try to keep
| everything under wraps.
|
| Unfortunately, they have to report what they found to the
| FBI, which proceeds to very un-subtley raid Wang's homes,
| drawing media attention and possibly triggering the
| firestorm they hoped to avoid.
|
| ---
|
| As with anything at this stage, this story is entirely
| supposition, but it does explain the known facts, and it
| explains them better than any other explanation I've seen
| floated in this thread.
| cma wrote:
| Unlike the other recent disappearances and deportations to the
| concentration camp in El Salvador, this one does say it was
| with a court order.
| lucubratory wrote:
| Great! Can you provide a link to the court order so we can
| see?
| dcrazy wrote:
| The article author attempted to get the court order but
| could not find one. This is common when the order is made
| as part of an ongoing investigation, or else criminals
| could just watch for their names in PACER to know when to
| fire up the shredders.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Occam's Razor suggest he was exfiltrated.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Seems like the most likely explanation to me. If he were
| arrested for being a spy, presumably the DOJ would want to
| showcase it.
| runarberg wrote:
| Think like a Bayesian. How many spies have been caught
| lately? of them, how many did the DOJ showcase?
|
| Wikipedia has a list of imprisoned spies in the USA. It is
| pretty sparse, the last spy to be convicted in the USA was
| in 2016.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies
|
| Searching the DOJ homepage with the search term "spy" (to
| see which they have showcased) gives us 209 results,
| including a bunch of news around the 2009 conviction. The
| most resent news I found was from 2022
| (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/five-individuals-
| cha...) a very vague news which is actually more about
| harassing private citizen (presumably piggy-banking out of
| the anti-asian hate following Covid). The most resent news
| about actual spying against the US government was from 2020
| (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-cia-
| officer-a...) Alexander Yuk Ching Ma. He was actually found
| guilty in may 2024 (so he is missing from that Wikipedia
| list). The DOJ article about the conviction doesn't use the
| word spy, so it is missing from my search, but here it is:
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-cia-
| officer-s....
|
| Given the above, I think it is safe to bet that if he was
| arrested for being a spy, the DOJ would indeed want to
| showecase it. However, spies are very rare, and the
| likelyhood of OP's case being a spy is very low. It is much
| more likely that he disappeared for other reasons.
| runarberg wrote:
| I know this is HN and we love these simplistic universal laws
| here (Hanlon's razor being another beloved law) but Occam's
| razor isn't really applicable here, or at the very least, it
| isn't very helpful, and it certainly isn't conclusive. That
| he was exfiltrated by the Chinese government also requires
| the same number of variables as that he was disappeared by
| the American government. So Occam's Razor actually suggests
| nothing here.
|
| Occam's razor is a rule of thumb which suggests that if
| several hypotheses explain the same thing, the simplest one
| should be favored. When we have a missing person with several
| unknown variables, until we see some evidence, any guess is
| as good as other. And no hypotheses should be ruled out.
|
| On HN we also like Bayesian analysis, so instead of looking
| for the simplest explenation, we should be asking what we
| already know. What is the probability that this person was
| disappeared by the government, given that 3 other students
| have been disappeared by the government lately? Given that
| these 3 other students were also people of color? Etc.
| echoangle wrote:
| > When we have a missing person with several unknown
| variables, until we see some evidence, any guess is as good
| as other.
|
| Really? So that he was abducted by aliens is also on the
| table and has the same probability?
|
| Obviously there can be some prior information that makes
| ,,he was exfiltrated by Chinese intelligence services" more
| likely than ,,he was disappeared by US intelligence
| services".
|
| I'm not saying there is, but philosophically, you don't
| need to know anything more than ,,A person with relations
| to china disappeared" to be able to determine one
| hypothesis as the most likely one.
| runarberg wrote:
| I answered the exfiltration likelihood in a sibling
| thread. The summary is that spies are very rare and it is
| not a likely explanation. Keeping the Bayesian hat on we
| can pretty much rule out aliens. We have never witnessed
| an alien abduction, so the chances of this being an alien
| abduction is actually infinitely smaller than
| exfiltration.
|
| We can set the same prior probability to all the
| possibilities, that is fine. But given the evidence the
| posterior for alien abduction is very close to 0, if not
| just simply 0.
|
| Given the recent pattern of behavior from the US
| government, we have seen quite a few people disappeared.
| The posterior for US government involvement is IMO much
| higher than exfiltration. That said, no government
| involvement is higher still (and is actually the
| hypothesis favored by Occam's Razor).
| this_user wrote:
| Wrapping your conspiracy theories into pseudo-science
| based on wild guesses doesn't make them more likely.
|
| There is a long series of scientists in the US that were
| secretly working for the Chinese government. It is simply
| the most likely explanation that this is another instance
| of that.
|
| It also doesn't make any sense that the US government
| would secretly "disappear", as you put it, this
| individual while they are openly deporting thousands
| elsewhere, often based on flimsy evidence. Furthermore,
| if you are secretly getting rid of someone, you do it to
| avoid taking responsibility. Why would you send the FBI
| to raid their residence afterwards? That immediately
| connects you to the disappearance, thereby sabotaging
| your own scheme.
| runarberg wrote:
| I did say the likeliest explanation is no government
| involvement, but that USA involvement is still likelier
| than China's involvement given recent pattern of conduct.
|
| Chinese exfiltration is also a conspiracy theory. In fact
| chinese exfiltration requires a larger conspiracy than
| USA disappearance. If you want to apply Occam's Razor
| (which you shouldn't), you should actually favor
| disappearance over exfiltration (but really you should
| favor no government involvement).
|
| > There is a long series of scientists in the US that
| were secretly working for the Chinese government.
|
| If that is so, can you provide me with a list. That list
| would actually have to be pretty long to make
| exfiltration the likeliest hypothesis. Like there would
| have to be more than a couple of dozen cases this
| century.
|
| EDIT: I did quick googling to find any sources which
| backs your claim. This NY Post article is the strongest
| one (https://nypost.com/2025/02/20/us-news/us-science-
| labs-face-g...) it is basically a propaganda piece citing
| far right US politicians who claim extraordinary numbers
| (like 8000 scientists) without any evidence. As we know
| _extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence_.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Nah...exfiltration does sound like the most likely scenario
| (to anyone with commonsense).
| trod1234 wrote:
| Just an FYI, you do know that Hanlon's Razor isn't a law,
| or even a rule of thumb.
|
| It was a joke in a joke book, and has been taken entirely
| out of context by most people who use it to justify
| anything.
| runarberg wrote:
| haha, I did not know that. The first time I saw it, it
| was actually used against my point here on HN.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| > 3 other students have been disappeared by the government
|
| If you're talking about the students I think you are,
| they're detained in Louisiana and Texas. They haven't been
| "disappeared" in any way.
| trod1234 wrote:
| There are no published facts aside from this guys missing, so
| there can be no adequate accounting of the facts.
|
| You've misused Occam's Razor.
| diggan wrote:
| > Disappearing people is not something the US government is
| allowed to do
|
| Since when? Been happening for a long time, here is just one
| recent-ish (2021) report:
|
| > FFI documented 698 enforced disappearances of immigrants in
| Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody between 2017
| and 2021
|
| https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/news/2021/8/30/detained...
|
| Has to be countless more that aren't documented, especially
| when you take the entire government into account, not just one
| agency.
| dathinab wrote:
| lets also not forget how the US has a history especially in
| the recent ~decade or so to redefine all kind of things as
| "domestic terrorism" and then use it to remove very
| fundamental rights from people which at most are activists
| dale_huevo wrote:
| > This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now.
|
| Is it typical for the media to write stories when spies
| surreptitiously sneak out of a country?
|
| I speculate this guy was long gone before the feds kicked in
| his door. Assuming he and his wife were indeed spies of course.
| Right now we cannot confirm or disconfirm that, but the
| narrative fits it so far.
|
| > Disappearing people is not something the US government is
| allowed to do.
|
| Do you have any sources that this guy was vanned, besides the
| very reliable Ars Technica comments section crying about
| 'fascists' and random schizos on BlueSky?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > Disappearing people is not something the US government is
| allowed to do.
|
| > What sources do you have for this besides the Ars Technica
| comments section?
|
| The US Constitution?
| dale_huevo wrote:
| Yes, apologies, original post was misworded and corrected.
|
| Everyone is assuming this guy was maliciously
| 'disappeared', but no evidence has been presented proving
| that vs. that he vanished on his own.
|
| Everything is rage-porn speculation at this point, like a
| fresh airplane accident where everyone becomes an armchair
| pilot.
| lovich wrote:
| >Disappearing people is not something the US government is
| allowed to do.
|
| They are allowed to disappear people simply by virtue of the
| fact that no one is going to stop them
| Fricken wrote:
| It sounds like the China initiative is back:
|
| >Two bills introduced by the Republican Party that passed the
| House of Representatives on September 11, 2024, have been
| described as reviving the China Initiative. The bills are part of
| "China Week", a House Republican-led effort to advance China-
| related legislation
|
| >The China Initiative was a program by the United States
| Department of Justice to prosecute potential Chinese spies in
| American research and industry, in order to combat economic
| espionage. Launched in November 2018, the program targeted
| hundreds of prominent Chinese-American academics and scientists,
| of which an estimated 250 lost their jobs. Many more had their
| careers negatively impacted and the prosecutions also contributed
| to at least one suicide.
|
| >According to a Bloomberg News analysis of the 50 indictments
| displayed on the China Initiative webpage, the program had not
| "been very successful at catching spies." Most of the cases
| listed by December 17, 2021, involved individual profiteering or
| career advancement by the accused, rather than state-directed
| spying. Despite this, many of these indictments portray the
| alleged crimes as for the benefit of China. Seton Hall University
| law professor Margaret Lewis described this as "a conflation of
| individual motives with a country's policy goals" that has led to
| the criminalization of "China-ness."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative
| jimmydoe wrote:
| Yes, it's not surprising, considering the Alien Enemies Act of
| 1798, which is significantly more severe, is also being
| revived.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| Know little about this case, but given what happened with China
| Initiative in Trump I, I'm genuinely surprised there are still
| Chinese professors not leaving or preparing to leave US.
|
| 200+ lost jobs, at least one suicide, if that still not ring
| alarm for these Chinese-born professionals, their IQ may not
| match up the tenure I assume.
| luyu_wu wrote:
| It's not easy to leave a tenured position you worked half your
| life to get to I suppose...
| lucubratory wrote:
| From what I understand the PRC tries pretty hard to provide a
| lot of incentives to academic returnees. I do wonder if they
| have a tenure match program, where if you have tenure at an
| American university of a given calibre you are automatically
| granted tenure at a Chinese university of a similar calibre
| if you return to China. They probably should.
| Andrex wrote:
| If that's true, then that seems to be the simplest
| explanation for what happened here? (Honestly asking.)
| dathinab wrote:
| but where to leave to?
|
| Many of them are basically refuges which did use their nogen to
| be able to escape the Chinese regime and find a home without
| technically being refuges at any point.
|
| Some grew up in the US.
|
| Many have family and children in the US, thus which very well
| might be US citizens.
|
| For many they do not have a place to go, the US is their only
| home.
|
| Even for thus which where involved in spying not all of them
| did so of their free choice. It's not a secret that China
| secret police is present in most countries with larger China
| ethnicity including the US and there had been more then one or
| two cases of them threatening and blackmailing ethnic Chinese
| people (including such with full US citizenship). Including
| e.g. kidnapping their children.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527154
| rglover wrote:
| Charles Lieber [1] or Houston Chinese Consulate vibes [2].
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/harvard-
| university-p...
|
| [2] https://abc13.com/fire-chinese-consulate-documents-being-
| bur...
| generationP wrote:
| His old website:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240415075438/https://homes.lud...
|
| An app he wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240304061200/https://sit.luddy...
| or
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240727022112/https://homes.lud...
|
| A news (probably PR) article about it:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220622001223/https://www.compu...
|
| None of these sites is available any more. This looks suspicious,
| even given the regular bit rot of American college servers. The
| app is supposedly downloadable at https://apkcombo.com/app-
| guardian/edu.iub.seclab.appguardian... . Anyone around with a
| disassembler and too much time?
| ctrlp wrote:
| If it turns out that he was somehow repatriated to his home
| country under compulsion that would not be terribly surprising.
| Nor would it be surprising if he was a "spy" or even a double
| agent. The FBI raiding his home suggests that he was somehow
| implicated either as a foreign agent or as a compromised
| intelligence asset, and one side or the other wanted him back.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Picking flowers, making honey
|
| https://www.aspi.org.au/report/picking-flowers-making-honey
| Lerc wrote:
| So what's going on here then?
|
| https://github.com/wangxiaofeng7/wangxiaofeng7.github.io
|
| Someone making a homepage in the last few days, but to what
| purpose?
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(page generated 2025-03-30 23:00 UTC)