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Microsoft Funds First US-Based Chinese Research University Degree Program
theodp writes: Microsoft will give $40 million to help fund a graduate-school program with the Univ. of Washington and China's Tsinghua University. The Global Innovation Exchange, which will be located in the Seattle area, marks the first time a Chinese research university has established a physical presence in the U.S. The center will open in 2016 with the goal of attracting 3,000 students within a decade, according to Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith. UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce and Tsinghua President Qiu Yong made the announcement Thursday afternoon in downtown Bellevue, accompanied by Gov. Jay Inslee and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Both Cauce and Smith waved off concerns about the possibility that a partnership with a Chinese university could lead to corporate espionage or hacking. "The solution to mistrust is more contact, not less," said Cauce, whose UW currently hosts 3,500+ students from China.
I had some philosophical bog roll with quotes like that on it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"“Helping Chinese universities or the Chinese government get global branding definitely provides a very good view to the government, which is good for building up the relationship between Microsoft and the government.”
Wow Microsoft, that's sure nice of you, after having built your empire on the backs of hard working Americans who paid you big dollars for your software, to take some of your easily earned money and support a country who is pointing nukes at us. Hey, why don't you do the same for Russia and North Korea? Oh, that's right, they don't have over a billion people who may want to buy your products.Or maybe you're long-term play here is to foster international competition by training up a large number of foreigners who will go back and work in their own country (oops, I mean form IT consultancies that will provide much needed staffing (spies) to American companies through H-1B visas, because, after all, Suckerberg really needs some help).
If it's just contact, nobody worries. However, it's more like a leakage than contact.
When the Chinese have proven themselves time after time to be untrustworthy, and responsible for innumerable hacking, how does 'more contact' resolve that? Do some research on the Sandia National Labs hack... The Chinese had a spy AT the lab. Disclosure: I run a small ISP.. the VAST majority of hacking attempts against my organization originate from China. Just this week, I blocked 3 class C ranges that belong the the University of China.
"The solution to mistrust is more contact, not less."
This is true if you think the mistrust is falsely placed.
We need to move from mistrust of the flood of Chinese students to detecting the spies and imprisoning them instead of sending them home.
Prison solve a lot of trust issues.
On the plus side, this takes $40M from Microsoft, so that it cannot be used for other, even more nefarious purposes.
Other than that, I don't see that any good can come of this.
I'm at UW. There have been several recent occasions where we've ended up firewalling blocks of Chinese IP addresses from accessing our department's servers. It will be interesting to see what happens if we run into a new bad actor who's on the same network as one of these new collaborators from over there.
#DeleteChrome
After letting the Chinese walk out with everything from Nortel, Huawei now exists a PRC government-backed entity.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Bro, are you even trying?
If you're going to beta-troll, try actually saying something. Or is this some bizarre Nihilist abstraction of a troll, where all superfluous detail has been abstracted from the minimalist core of the dice:soylent binary?