Astronomers Dump on NASA About China When Congress Is To Blame
US scientists boycott Nasa conference over China ban, Guardian
“Nasa officials rejected applications from Chinese nationals who hoped to attend the meeting at the agency’s Ames research centre in California next month citing a law, passed in March, which prohibits anyone from China setting foot in a Nasa building. The law is part of a broad and aggressive move initiated by congressman Frank Wolf, chair of the House appropriations committee, which has jurisdiction over Nasa. It aims to restrict the foreign nationals’ access to Nasa facilities, ostensibly to counter espionage.”
Keith’s note: Some of the scientists who are quoted in this article with complaints about NASA have apparently been living under a rock for the past several years. Newsflash: It is utterly illegal for NASA to allow Chinese participation – in any way. Complaining about NASA’s decision is simply ill-informed. Where were all these people when this law was being formulated – or when hearings were held on it? Dumping on NASA or boycotting this meeting is pointless – only Kepler will suffer. If a change in the law is what is needed then these people need to talk to Congress about that – starting with Rep Wolf.
Check H.R. 1473 (112th): Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011, Sec. 1340. (a) to see the sort of prohibitive language has been in place for several years. NASA’s hands are tied.
– Second Kepler Science Conference – Nov. 4-8, 2013, NASA Ames
– Previous China postings
Frank Wolf’s hatred of China goes beyond reason into the realm of delusion. As a result of his bizarre statements, documented in Wikipedia, he was removed from the Foriegn Relations Committee and put in charge, by the GOP, of the NASA budget, and he has used NASA in a shameful way to implement his personal animosity. He succeeds because his fellow Republicans move in lockstep with his bizarre whims, ie using NASA to attack, on the national stage, a poor Chinese graduate student who was invited to the US to use his remarkable software skills help prevent our airplanes from crashing.
China is the world’s biggest market. Every state, including Virginia, wants to export there. Every business that wants to export to China should understand that Frank Wolf stands between them and their goals.
Wolf has indeed gone off the deep end. I live a few miles (i.e. 4) from his congressional district. For the most part, people who live there simply do not think like this. But Wolf brings home the bacon so they tolerate his lunacy.
Interesting. One wonders if there are any voters of Chinese descent in his district, and if so, what they might think of him. Or for that matter, if there is anyone concerned about space.
I live in Reston – 4 miles away. We’re a pretty diverse area here.
Perhaps in the mind of Wolf, the nation of China, its people and culture are every bit as nefarious as Al-Qaeda? If NASA wasn’t forced to purchase Soyuz seats, the ISS would be doomed.
For Jove, I am bad at stealth and stealing, does not have any ties to the Communist government, and have the same amount of enthusiasm just like any other students of any ethnicity in a STEM program. So tell me, why can’t I visit any NASA facility? I *didn’t* choose my birthplace. I bet that if a group of students from China were to visit a NASA facility, their first thought would be “holy cow that is awesome” instead of “I need to steal this FOR MINE COUNTRIZ”.
I agree, Frank Wolf is insane.
It must be kept in mind that China’s government right has trump over all intellectual property rights, as such any work exported, manufactured or developed in around or by Chinese Nationals is subject to the domain of China. It’s in some ways like ITAR but much wider, anything that they desire can be produced or subsidized for production by the state, undercutting if not ruining global competition and business for materials and goods this is sometimes done very quietly using multiple shell corps to hide government involvement. Exporting to China sounds great, but your IP is not protected from knockoffs and copies of high tech complicated devices is encouraged, while it is illegal to re-ship to global partners I have read it is not illegal for China to sell such US patent violations internally. In that there is every probability you might export a few items, to quickly find that demand falling off due to an internal Chinese competitor producing a cheaper copy in country using your reverse engineered software and or mechanical systems to do it.
This relates to consumer goods 3 years ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/b…
This is more recent
http://www.wired.co.uk/maga…
This is a threat to US space contractors doing business with China, not to mention them probing for info on Rad hard testing, and asking you to send them controlled documents so they have “verification” or some garbage of that nature.
http://www.wired.com/danger…
China can make cheap stuff, but their government is looking way down the line and the cost globally could close your business down.
Just look how China tries to control the market for the materials needed for neodymium magnets, again read wired.
Your point is well made re IP. I think there are two things that most of us basically object to: first is the insulting nature of the way that Wolf and the legislation come across (a little diplomacy and explanation wouldn’t have been too much to ask); and 2) US citizen have no choice, at all, in their dealings with China, and I think that is the biggest issue; it goes against the grain of the traditional American way of life. One half-hidden piece of legislation changes US industry and business to a staggering degree in today’s markets and finacial world. And it all happened essentialy through the actions of one biggoted old man.
I’m not sure which half-hidden piece you would be speaking of but the old men involved you could say that it happened after Kennedy with a variety of policy implementations that moved the US closer and closer to alignment with complete international free trade apparently much of that policy is formulated at the WTO, now I get why the weirdo hippies were protesting such G-summits and the resultant WTO policies, perhaps more Americans should have paid attention before most all semiconductor manufacture was moved to Asia. From my research it looks like most of the globe was in some state of reconstruction, most Asian nations were still unstable and not yet capable of handling large contracts for international business. A real indicator of the future and the ground work being laid is when Mattel moved it’s toy manufacturing to Malaysia in 1983, you could use that as an indicator of trade policies that made it possible to outsource US labor, that happens to be the 3rd year of Regan’s term. So yet again I find lines leading back to Regan, his failed energy policy (canceled fusion research) and now indications that he set the tone for the continued fleecing of America and all the economic stability of the post WW2 environment. Just to keep it real after that you have the
Bush’s NAFTA, CAFTA, then you also have continuing changes on trade policy by Clinton and more expansive negotiations with China. It’s truly a bi partisan deal, a really incidious type of insider trading that removes US GDP while making massive profits, in a way you could call it turning factories into cash. After that you get money laundering via securities. NASA wouldn’t be in the boat it’s in if America had maintained it’s trajectory in terms of it’s economy after Eisenhower, while there were still many problems, the country would not have outsourced it’s infrastructure industries, steel, high tech, Aluminum and so on. Also the silly environmental policies about the Columbia river have really affected the US ability to produce commercially competitive aluminum.
Obviously if a Chinese company wants to buy just one example of your product to copy its design they can do so whether you export to China or not. But simply having a copy of a high-tech product tells little about how to make it. Nor, ITAR notwithstanding, is there any IP of significance on the ISS. As to US satellite manufacturers, they have been willing to launch with China because (until SpaceX) no US launch service companies were willing to be competitive in cost.
The real IP transfer is from the companies that are manufacturing high-tech products in China to cut costs and increase their profits when they sell them in the US, so they can boost their stock price. That would be companies like Apple, HP, and many of the Fortune 500. If you are concerned about IP, they are the people you should be talking to, not NASA. However I doubt they will listen. One reason they aren’t overly concerned is because they are moving toward both manufacturing and marketing in China. One might say they are becoming Chinese companies.
I would have to disagree about your feelings on the significance of the IP on the ISS. When I was at JSC I had the opportunity to consult the full classified training, meaning non open to China training documents, while China may have already stolen those documents via espionage there was a large amount of IP that was invested upon by the government and US contractors. The layout of those systems makes the ISS reliable for long duration expeditions even if it’s seemingly old there is not much else that actually exists that beats it’s function. Sure once another space station is built you could make the argument that there is NO IP that the ISS has that is worthwhile for transfer to American corporations or to steal by international competitors. Currently that is not the case, that againg late 70’s and 80’s tech is still state of the art until something else is on orbit in operation past it’s initial test phases. Keep in mind all space stations are experimental, as there is not a single commercial capacity station manufacturing company in existence, the ones that did exist in America are on the verge of failure due to budget issues, and project cancellations.
I would have to agree with Keith on the subject.
It is open secret China does “copy” US everything from McDonald Big Mac down to over eating fat, fat, overweight junkies children and adults… US and China is in twin, there is too many common interests for two countries corporate. At this stage to stop Chinese to par in open conference at NASA is hilarious. If some brain dead Republicans really want to do it, I would recommend to acting the following immediately:
1. start today, forbidden all US university admitted any Chinese graduate students, kick out all already admitted chinese graduate students from US universities immediately
2. kick out all Chinese research professors, regardless they naturalized US
citizen or not. Or anyone, if their last name is spelled like Chinese name, no matter from Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, kick them out as well.
3. No more electronic communication between US and China
Or, NASA also needs to kick out all Russian cosmonauts from International Space Station, rename International Space Station to “USA Freedom Station”, stop using Russian vehicle to carry US astronauts in-out. Bring one or two retired shuttles from museums to carry our boys and girls home.
>” if their last name is spelled like Chinese name…”
This kind of thing has happened before. PBS had a program about completion of transcontinental railway and economic problems in later 1800s in San Francisco, many blamed Chinese immigrants. Laws were passed restricting only this nationality, it was not until WWII when we were fighting Japan and China was an ally is when these laws were repealed.
Bruwer:
Good point. Why didn’t Wolfe go ‘all the way’?
My guess is that national security laws don’t quite trump hate speech or race discrimination laws… yet!
tinker
Wolf only has NASA as a weapon. When he was on the Foreign Relations Committee he was even more destructive.
In my limited experience as an instructor, there are US students who are every bit as smart and hardworking as the Chinese students. Unfortunately they are relatively few in number; most American students simply don’t want to work as hard as the international students (not just from China). Most major US research universities simply could not be competitive without their international graduate students, many of whom are Chinese. OTOH many stay in the US and add to our industrial competitiveness.
If china want’s to participate in a joint venture, then they would need to respect US Patents and security and offer just as much Risk load in terms of financial capitol, and risk of IP loss to US competitors. The other option would be to share all resources in as open source once cleared of course so that Iran and North Korea don’t get any ideas.
The US patents law is problematic itself anyway… just look at the cat-fight between Apple and Samsung.
The law states that:
The limitations described in subsections (a) and (b) shall
not apply to activities which NASA or OSTP has certified—
(1) pose no risk of resulting in the transfer of technology,
data, or other information with national security or economic
security implications to China or a Chinese-owned company;
The law allows attendance at conferences like this by Chinese nationals (note that the Chinese national in questions is a US based scientist).
This is a case of NASA covering their ass in order to not upset Wolfe. This situation makes everyone look bad but it was preventable.
DR. ExP:
Very interesting. Maybe Rep. Wolf hasn’t read his own law!
I mean, the whole thing shouldn’t be a law in the first place, but couldn’t there be an ‘non-interferance clause’ directed at law makers? Or would that defeat the purpose of the law in the first place?
tinker
Having read more about what is required to get a waiver (30-day in advance congressional approval) I decided my comment was not accurate and deleted it.
FWIW your comment still appears as being from “Guest”. Glad you checked the review process. We make everything in our government stupider and more complicated than remotely necessary. Also, getting the waiver assumes that Rep. Wolf (with his xenophobic tendencies) will not block a waiver request for totally stupid reasons.
“This is a case of NASA covering their ass in order to not upset Wolfe. This is a statement by someone (“Dr. Planet”) who hasn’t a clue as to what they are talking about. Just because you *think” this is not an issue and/or is oh-so-simple to get a waiver on does not mean that it is not an issue and/or easy to work.
Folks:
The ‘message’ these scientists are sending will fall on deaf ears where it counts, with those who made the laws in the first place. In fact, Rep. Wolf would smile at his part in putting another nail in the coffin of ‘science’ in general!
If the scientists went to Rep. Wolf with their complaint, they would probably find themselves under investigation, denied federal grants, have tenure posponed, be denied essectial hardware, travel privilages, etc., etc, etc!
When has America gone down this kind of road before?
This is just the beginning!
tinker
Tinker,
The scientists going to Rep. Wolf would be a waste of time anyhow, since governments never revise or withdraw laws; they just add more.
Steve:
True, but if the scientists had gone to Rep. Wolf with a petition for exemptions for this event, maybe they’d have something to hand to Admin. Bolden.
But I guess the argument is mote because of this gov. shutdowm (which I still have a hard time fathoming).
tinker
China has the ability to instantly close it’s doors, it’s not a “free country” in the manner that Americans suppose. To that end with the current Chinese government it’s like dealing with IP vampires, that once they have surpassed US innovation levels are just as likely to close their Markets, and deal only internally once again. Sure there are Amazing Chinese programmers and scientists, but they were more than likely trained at an American university or in a program that uses educational materials from the US. In a little while if the trend continues we will all need to learn Chinese so we can learn how to build and use Chinese innovations. In Global politics and trade it’s either lead or follow and China is focused on leading while our government is shutdown.
I’m curious, what about naturalized citizens from Taiwan and work at NASA, will they be next? I’m old enough to remember when there is a distinct difference between mainland China and Formosa China. Just wondering.