Comment by NooneAtAll3
4 hours ago
if you "genuinely" want to understand, start considering the opposite - what is the easiest way to defend policy like this?
"science with outside helps the other side" - done.
Current administration sees US as losing its positions, so the main answer is to close the leaks that feed its opponents with US effort
I don't understand the argument. Imagine flipping positions. You're saying that if an American researcher goes to China, gets employed by a Chinese university, and do research funded by China which is then commercialized by Chinese companies, the researcher is actually aiding America in expense of China.
The missing piece is an ethnic and political identity which gives allegiance to the US in that “tables turned” analogy.
Fine, imagine that the researcher is a black American then.
4 replies →
I am genuinely unable to understand because even if the United States is descending into fascism or whatever, research is the last thing that an effective state wants to disrupt and scientists are one of the last groups that an effective state wants to alienate.
I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.
1. Much of US policy toward science is backlash to Covid vaccinations. Being anti-Science is a way of preventing Science from inflicting itself on the populace again in the future.
2. Science trends toward meritocracy, which is bad if your goal is to promote a particular social hierarchy.
It's been there so much longer, even Carl Sagan talked about it, and its inherently tied to religion.
3 replies →
They are concerned with their first objective which is consolidate power. Running an "effective state" is not their goal at this point in time. Infact it helps them as thingn get worse, because every bad thing that happens they spin into being their oppositions fault, which helps with objective no 1