Comment by cameronh90
4 years ago
Although there's nothing to suggest that this professor is in any way supported by the Chinese state, I don't think it's completely unreasonable to wonder.
The UK government has already said that China is targeting the UK via academics and students. China is a very aggressive threat with a ton of resources. It's certainly a real scenario to consider.
Just as this "research" has burnt the trust between the kernel maintainers and the UMN, if China intentionally installs spies into western academia, at some point you have to call into question the background of any Chinese student. It's not fair, but currently China is relying on the fact that we care about fairness and due process.
I acknowledged it's a possibility and there is precedence for it, at least in industry, in the US.
That said, prove what they did was wrong, prove whether controls like the IRB were used properly and informed correctly, prove or disqualify the veracity of their public statements (like the ones they made to the IEEE), then start looking at possible motivations other than the ones stated. I get that's difficult because these folks have already proven to be integrity violators but I think it's worthwhile to try to stick to.
If you jump straight to dual loyalty it is unfortunately also a position that will be easily co-opted by other bad faith actors and needlessly muddies the conversation because not all good faith and reasonable possibilities have been explored yet. I'm promoting the idea of a well-defined process here so that nobody can claim that it's just bigoted people making these accusations.