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Scientific Research Encountering More Restrictions
vab writes "MSNBC is running an article
that details how the MIT AI Lab, the birth place of the free software movement, walked away from a $404K study because the government wanted to restrict participation by foreign students. The article talks about further restrictions the US Government is trying to impose in the name of homeland security and how other research institutions are reacting."
Federal funding controls the research, evidentally.
I was a grad student at Texas Tech until a few months ago and one of my prof.s had funding from US DOD to study dispersion of chem./bio. warfare agents. The project was multi-year and for 90% of the project, no foreign national was allowed to work on it. That was finally overturned, however, mainly because there weren't enough Americans to work on it.
The project was new just before Sept. 11th and I'm not sure I can blame them for their restrictions at the time. I think they finally figured out that, at least in this case, it didn't matter who worked on the project. It wasn't going to propogate information about how to make delivery agents more effective, just how they interact with urban, rural, etc. environments.
That and Lubbock isn't a hotbed for terrorists if you know what I mean. Cow-tippers, yes. Foreign spies, no.
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President Bush signed a law last summer prohibiting students from countries considered sponsors of terrorism from working with germs and toxins most likely to be used for bioterrorism.
I'm a computational biologist, but not an expert on biological weapons, by any means. Let me say at the outset: the government has no business regulating scientific inquiry. I'm sure other people will argue this point eloquently and what they may say about AI research applies to biology as well.
It's a good idea to keep something in mind - the history of the entire field of computer science is heavily intertwined with the rise of the modern intelligence apparatus here in the US. Likewise, nuclear technology. The same is NOT true of my field (biology.)
However, while you can use your m4d sk1llz to annoy uncle Sam, they're not really dangerous. The danger is in NCB (non-conventional) weapons:
1) Nuclear weapons technology is already restricted up the wazoo.
2) Chemcial weapons technology requires a great deal of industrial infrastructure. The cat is out of the bag. All sorts of foreigners know chemistry. The oil industry is incredibly secretive anyway. Government intrusion into chemical engineering is unlikely.
3) Biological weapons are extremely difficult to make. HOWEVER, my colleagues and I are doing our best to make molecular biology as easy as possible. There's a shortage of technicians; we train people without discriminating against Pakistanis. Advances in the field make molecular biology easier, quicker, cheaper and increase your yield.
The point is that molecular biology technology, used only once in a successful terrorist context (the Anthrax, mailed by a former Marine who had no trouble getting clearance; you know he's guilty), is POTENTIALLY the most dangerous of all. The only reason I don't need security clearance to do molecular biology is because Uncle Sam failed to get in at the ground floor - molecular biology has always been very much an international effort. Of course, US military labs remain the exception.
So, we (biologists) need to be ready and determined to resist the intrusion of security concerns into our laboratories; the pressure to do so will be fierce.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
What does this have anything to do with homeland security? I think they're getting a little paranoid if you ask me. This whole homeland security thing is based on fear. Isn't that what the terrorists want? To strike fear into the hearts of "non-belivers", make us panic and do stupid things like approving scientific studies before their released. that's censorship if you ask me. Everyone needs to calm down about all this "Osama's gonna get us" crap.
~Common sense is the most evenly distubuted of all things, everyone thinks they have enough, and wants no more
I am tired of Foriegn students coming to America and taking up spots in good Universities and Colleges that could go to Americans.
And this is were your reasoning is flawed. As I remember the costs for MIT are steep. It's so expensive that american students come to holland to study at the university of Delft because they can afford this and they can't afford MIT. The places at MIT that are filled by foreign students are places that wouldn't be filled if it wasn't for them.
Basically you prefer an empty MIT above one that is actually filled by (parially) foreign students. And don't forget the research MIT has great value for American companies who can use this knowlidge for far less then it would cost them to do the research them self
Heh...
Actually, sums that small, and that is small, are in discretionary funds that many Government departments can access for "miscellaneous" projects.
I don't recall the exact number, but I think it's in the neighborhood of half a million or so that triggers the entire government accounting process. These days, it's probably higher.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
There is no saying it was racist.
Nationalist, sure, but that isn't the same thing.
If the 'strings' had said "No French" or "No Germans", then this conversation wouldn't be happening.
In this case, the NSA wanted to pre-screen any foreign nationals working on the project.
I'm sorry, but I don't see the racism there. They didn't say that they (the foreign nationals) automatically couldn't work on the project, they just wanted to check out whichever ones did.
Profiling? Maybe. But it happens regularly in government and business. The last two companies I worked for had a much more rigorous screening process for foreign nationals. In their defense, they'd gotten burned at least once.
But then so has the US Government. I don't blame them for being careful.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Not to start a flame war, but I do find some value in the actions the government is taking. In hind site, sure it looks bad and probably prejudice, but put yourself in power and tell me what you would do? The country is treatened mostly by terrorists from the Middle East. Their background indicates most took advantage of student visas. Where would you start plugging the holes. Yeah, it may be prejudice, but it's just common sense. To a certain degree, I don't think prejudism can be avoided. If a group of 100 aliens from PlanetX attacked PlanetY and you only had one week to secure PlanetY from another attack, would it not make sense to check ids for PlanetX folks. Oh yes, highly prejudice, but would this not make sense? Now, to launch a hate crime attack against all PlanetX aliens would most definitely be wrong, but I see nothing wrong with profiling your enemy.
What makes you think that more funding will improve the situation? The reason the percentage of foreign grad students pursuing PhDs is so high is because (this is the case in the uk and I assume also the us) the income from a PhD is so low. When faced with the choice of doing a PhD and earning $12k per year for 3-4 years or taking that job offer with company xyz for $30k per year rising to $60k after 4 years, it's easy to see why uk born graduates take the job.
More funding will simply increase the amount of new PhDs available, not increase the salaries of the people doing the PhDs.
Also, many of the PhD graduates I have known have the opinion that one's employability after completing the PhD is the same (and sometimes less) than before the PhD, unless the objective is to stay in academia.
I think the problem has a lot more to do with the US government making themselves the policeman of the world, toppling governments in every corner of the world, killing others because of an interest in oil or control over a region or a people they think are different from them and disrespecting what those people consider to be their holy land, supporting Isreal no matter what evils the state does against the real owners of that land, ... There are just too many reasons why the US is losing the world's favor. (Heck, even moderate, peaceful people are beginning to see the US as a money-hungry, power-hungry Beast that cares only for itself and nothing about the rest of the world or even simple environmental issues. True, absolute power corrupts absolutely.) And the nationalistic cockiness of many Americans, these evils notwithstanding, does not help the situation.
If you do not see the reasons why the US is hated by many, you either have an inability to reason, or live a very sheltered life of CNN propaganda.
I wouldn't take a cent from that administration. Bush's presidency has become an Orwellian nightmare which DOES parallel Hitler's rise... (compare the sloganeering of Bush with the exact same from adolph) "404" K ----- just like a non-existent website? the money will never show? ROFLMAO! good for MIT, they have the balls to stand up to that rascist-texas-moron....
I call computer-illiteracy job security
--I'm more concerned over home grown terrorist like robert mcnamara, henry kissinger,both the clintons, george the elder, king george the present, rumsfield, cheney, the hierarchies in the democratic national committe and the republican national committee, the membership of the council on foreign relations, the members of the tri-lateral commission, and various criminal gangs and cartels inside the various combined workgroups of the military/industrial complex who profit from war and drug smuggling in the private sector, especially banking, and the spook, law and justice "communities".
..list to reflect more serious potential threats and dangers, to go down to slightly less serious,to less serious and so on. History has shown just over and over again that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the history of the 20th century shows that citizens of various countries around this ole whirrled have a much higher odds-on probability of being exploited/murdered/enslaved by their own governments and "connected ones" then by "outsiders". For every person killed by a "foreign invader" in the 20th century, there's 5 to 10 killed by their own nation's power structure once they became absolute tyrants.
Hegelian dialectic is alive and working daily to bring a fascist reality to the US. It don't matter what label or name these gents go by, a dictatorship "system" that lies chronically, steals everything that ain't nailed down, and uses their positions for personal and secret profit are way more of a danger than anything else.
Now this viewpoint doesn't negate the possibility and probability of various other foreigners being up to "no good". I take that as a gimme as well. It's reality, there ARE foreign bad guys here and also domestic low level independent nutjobs. We got a population of around 270 million or so, law of averages comes into play. I just think it's better to have th..
IMO, having watched politics and "current events/news/history" as a major interest since the late 50's/early 60's, I'd say that the US has well more than it's "fair share" of power mad dictators or dictator wannabe's,from the very highest levels to local levels, very public to very private, governmental and business, and it's official pronouncements have been full of lies and misdirections.
Just since I've been a teenager I've watched *someones* get away with whacking a president-JFK, to starting a decades long war-for-profit based on a total lie -nam war with the gulf of tonkin fairy tale, to shafting it's own vets -agent orange was a "myth" and "all in their heads", and gulf war syndrome was "in their heads", to experimenting on their own people by aerial and ground spreading of chemical, bioliogical and radiological agents-something they denied for years and finally admitted. And so forth and on and on, way too many examples to list. Heck just the federal reserve perpetual debt note scam is big enough to prove how much people get lied to and brainweashed into believing the lies.
The gestalt is-the old cliche is true, for a basic rule of thumb, when a politician's lips are moving..well, take it with several large handfuls of salt. Right now, IMO again, we are being lead down the dictatorship path with lies much more deep and sinister than minor accounting lies at enron, and those were large enough. That's chump change to what's really going on now with this "war on terrorism".
Anyone's MMV obviously, just fool me once, shame on you, fool me 4873 times, shame on me. Learn from history or repeat it, binary choice.
Basically, MITs reason is much more prosaic than some sort of "intellectual freedom" (*snort*). If MIT was restricted from using foreign students on a research project, that project would very likely die for lack of interest. Let's face it: US students are for the most part smarter than wasting 4-7 years in a PhD program, given the financial risk involved. Thus we have the observation that the graduate student bodies at many (most?) large research schools are foreign.
From the universities point of view, this is just good business sense: large pool of willing labor that works cheap. Also, don't be fooled by high tuition for foreign. That's just a numbers game to charge what is essentially more overhead for these same grants.
MIT sees this as a dangerous precedent. If they accepted these restrictions, it would be more difficult to refuse them later, and could really dent the supply of indentured labor available to fuel university researh programs.
The whole thing make sense in the context of an "education industry".
you belong to Caesar. It's a concept simple enough that it was expressed by a simple bookshelf builder who grew up out in the sticks two thousand years ago.
Once upon a time the great private universities were the bastions of independant thinking, but a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. They started takeing Caesar's money. A little aid here, a little aid there, and then the big money, government contracts.
This has created on odd state of affairs where a private institution has a public face presenting public knowledge, and at the same time a public face creating very, very, VERY private knowledge.
Or worse, presenting as public knowledge that which it is payed to present as public by Ceasar. Do you really need it spelled out that some of that "knowledge" lacks a bit around the edges in the "truth" department?
When a government contracts for science the government OWNS that science. I mean this quite literally.
If you wish to do science, or engage in ANY free thought for that matter, the solution is obvious and simple. Don't take Caesar's coin.
The poet laureate, by accepting the the coin and protection of the Lord is compelled by his very state to write only that which is pleasing and/or flattering to the Lord. If you don't think this happens in science you are naive. The poet who rejects the Lords money may say anything he wishes, although his life may otherwise be somewhat harsher.
Which way to go is a choice. Choose wisely, if not well.
KFG
The short version is that with WW2 the US swapped places with the UK. The US provoked Japan into attacking it, as 80% of Americans didn't want to enter the war, because it saw that Japan was quickly building its own empire. Industrialization had been going strong in the US for a century, and the capitalists needed markets in which to sell products. The US came out of the war with a built-up industrial base, and an excuse to build military bases throughout the globe. Europe was decimated, leaving America the world's only superpower.
Since that time, we've worked to expand our economic sphere, as empires are wont to do, throughout Asia and South America. Through the CIA, the US has sponsored and/or outright led several military coups: Chile, Indonesia, Guatemala, Panama, and many more. The latest -- failed! -- attempt was Venezuela this past April.
Why would the US do this? Do Americans hate other people? Of course not. That assumes that Americans make choices which affect the US's foreign policy. I certainly wasn't asked about whether or not I wanted to overthrow the overwhelmingly democratically-elected president of Venezuela. But Venezuela controls a lot of oil, and capital needs oil (resources). So capital made that choice for me. Can you think of another country that controls a lot of oil? Hint: it starts with "I" and ends in "raq."
The fairy tale that terrorists hate all of our freedoms is so amazingly idiotic, I'm shocked that anyone buys into it. Yes, that's a sad statement on our citizens. Do you really think bin Laden is sitting in a cave somewhere thinking, "Stupid Americans! Why can't I have my MTV?! I'm so jealous." No, he's pissed because the US has military bases in what he believes to be the holy land of all Muslim people (over a billion world-wide). Whether or not we stop supporting Israel (his other beef), I think we at the very least should pull out of Saudi Arabia just to appease one sixth of the world's population. That's just common sense if not common courtesy.
It's easy to get cynical or give up when you look upon the world stage and see what the US does to other countries and peoples (1.5 million dead in Iraq due to economic sanctions). I just hope that by talking with others we can wake up enough people to take back control of the country. How? I wish I knew, but I'm convinced it's not going to happen through the ballot box.
You can go read any number of political essays and books yourself, but I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that our touted two-party system is not really a one-party system: the capital party. No, I'm not socialist or communist, though those systems haven't really been tried in the real world. I've been reading more about anarchy* and know that, once we stop hating each other for silly reasons, it's the way to go. The only question is can we get there?
Me? I'm actually hopeful.
* If you think Anarchy means mob rule or no order, you don't understand anarchy. Neither did I. Start skimming the FAQ, but the basic tenant is that you are a sovereign individual and should not be giving up your power to anyone.
P.S. For a good history of the US, I highly recommend A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Preset by Howard Zinn. I'm only up to the Civil War (and the other Civil War), but it's very good so far.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!