The Academy seems to have a universal rejection of the current Administration bordering on what may be possibly abject hatred. The most recent explosion was over the proposed elimination of student visas in light of the Academy's refusal to allow students to return to their respective campuses. I take no position in these debates. Reif, who currently heads MIT, has stated in the NY Times[1]:
In any long-running competition, no one understands your strengths better than your rivals. At a dinner I attended a few years back, Chinese tech leaders contended that China’s most important economic advantage is scale: China’s vast population and market offer a permanent leg up. But they also remarked on America’s persistent advantage in scientific creativity. What gives our country this advantage? Their explanation surprised me. Because the U.S. is heterogeneous, these leaders told me, it draws the best and brightest from all over the world to work and create together. This, they said, was much more difficult for China. This astute observation perfectly captures why forcing foreign students to abandon their studies here would be disastrously self-defeating for America: Precisely at a time of sharp economic rivalries, we are systematically undermining the very strength our competitors envy most. Why is foreign talent so important to the United States? For the same reason the Boston Red Sox don’t limit themselves to players born in Boston: The larger the pool you draw from, the larger the supply of exceptional talent. Moreover, America gains immense creative advantage by educating top domestic students alongside top international students. By challenging, inspiring and stretching one another, they make one another better, just as star players raise a whole team’s level of play.
It is worth deconstructing this paragraph since in my
opinion and in my experience, it reveals the most critical of threats. Here we
have Communist Chinese members telling the President of a major US institution,
also involved in significant national security research, that China is better
organized than the US but the US has a more productive education and research
structure. Thus, they send their best students to the US to get trained. This
is so transparent a statement of IP theft as I have ever seen. It also
demonstrates the gross naiveite of the writer in not seeing the obvious threat.
The paragraph presents the following points:
1. Reif gets his input from Communist Chinese Technology
leaders. As one who has dealt with the Russian before and after the fall of
Communism, I am aware that such meetings are all too often intelligence
gathering and propaganda transmittal functions and that one should be highly
suspicious of what is said.
2. The Communist Chinese Technology leaders posited that
Communist China's advantage is scale whereas the US is scientific creativity.
Clearly China has more people but scale as an economic term means the ability
to increase output while decreasing costs. The US has for most of its existence
demonstrated superiority at this.
3. The Communist Chinese Technology leaders extol the US
scientific creativity based upon the US ability to get the best and brightest
from all over the world. Read that as the US facilitates the education,
training and intellectual property transfer of its creativity to those
"students".
Clearly the Communist Chinese have taken every advantage to
use the openness of the US to their gain. Reif seems to miss the very facts he
presents. Namely, China is not just a rival but a well understood adversary.
Its intentions are quite obvious and its ruthless behavior has been
demonstrated over the past seventy years. Tens of millions are dead from the
regime, murdered or perhaps better said, slaughtered. From Mao forward, we see
an oppressive regime. However, over past US administrations, the country seemed
willing to overlook these human transgressions and invite massive numbers of
students to the US, often being supported by taxpayer money, while at the same
time allowing massive amounts of intellectual property to move to Communist
China.
The question we should be asking is; who pays for the
Communist Chinese grad students and post-docs at MIT? The answer is the US
Taxpayer through research grants to faculty to perform research. It is not, for
the most part, that China pays MIT or the US anything, we openly accept the
students and post-docs, fund their research, and then they return to compete or
potentially worse with the US.
Regrettably the above excerpt shows a level of naivety that
is significant and moreover a concern. We should not be concerned about
students from France, Poland, Argentina, India, Japan, or other similar
democratic countries. We should, however, not base one's arguments on advice
garnered from Communist Chinese Technology leaders, or whatever they may really
be. We should, however, be cautious of those who are adversaries.
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