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The US government is ending the China Initiative. Now what?

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The US government is ending the China Initiative.  Now what?


Ending the initiative 

An MIT Technology Review investigation published in December found that the China Initiative had strayed far from its initial mission. Instead of focusing on economic espionage, the initiative appeared to be an umbrella for cases with some connection to China. Defendants were often charged with lesser infractions like grant fraud, visa fraud, or lying to investigators,. But even when defendants were not being accused of espionage, federal prosecutors still painted them as national security threats.  

Concerns about Chinese economic espionage have been growing among US government officials for years. During the Obama administration, Justice Department officials brought a record number of cases under the Economic Espionage Act, including many against Chinese entities. It was this department that filed cyber-espionage charges against five hackers affiliated with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army—the first time that state actors had ever been indicted for hacking. 

But the China Initiative, announced by the Trump administration on November 1, 2018, was the first country-specific initiative in Justice Department history. The announcement followed months of confrontational rhetoric by Trump and administration officials that portrayed China as a threat requiring a “whole-of-society” response and cast all Chinese students in American universities as potential spies.  

“While I remain focused on the evolving significant threat that China poses I have concluded that this initiative is not the right approach. And instead, the current threat landscape, demands a broader approach.” 

Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen

Our investigation involved compiling and reviewing a list of cases known to be part of the initiative, based primarily on Justice Department press releases highlighting activities and successes—although the department’s lack of transparency made it impossible to pull together a complete list. 

We found some cases that aligned squarely with the stated purpose of the initiative, such as the indictments of hackers linked to Chinese state security who are believed to be behind the massive Equifax data breach, or the prosecution of a Taiwanese company and three individuals for stealing trade secrets from an American semiconductor company to benefit a Chinese state-owned enterprise. 

But the review found that prosecutors increasingly focused on research integrity issues like grant fraud or “double-dipping”—seeking funding for the same research from both American and Chinese sources—even though most of the academics involved worked on foundational research intended to be published openly.  

Our data also showed that almost all the defendants—88%—were ethnically Chinese, including many American citizens or people who had been living and working in the US for many years. 

After MIT Technology Review published its findings, Andrew Lelling, a former federal prosecutor who helped shape the initiative as a member of its steering committee, wrote in a LinkedIn post that the initiative “was sound policy“ but “has drifted and, in some significant ways, lost its focus.” He continued, “DOJ should revamp, and shut down, parts of the program, to avoid needlessly chilling scientific and business collaborations with Chinese partners.”

A country-specific policy

In his 2018 announcement of the initiative, Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke about “non-traditional collectors,” pointing to researchers in labs, universities, and the defense sector who were being co-opted to transfer technology contrary to US interests.

“‘Non-traditional collectors’ has been used as a euphemism for ‘spies,’” Gisela Kusakawa, a staff attorney for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said in an email. 

“It blurs the line between China’s government and people of Chinese descent. Essentially, the fixation on ‘non-traditional collectors’ has the effect of focusing on people of Chinese descent, rather than on those committing State-sponsored acts of espionage,” she added. 

Our investigation found that by 2021, cases classified by the federal government as “China Initiative cases” had become a mishmash of prosecutions accusing defendants of a wide range of offenses. The only throughline was what Justice Department officials have described vaguely as a “nexus to China.” 

Many of the groups and individuals who have advocated for the end of the initiative have said that they do see some of the actions of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party as posing legitimate economic or security threats. 

But those same groups and individuals have said that the government can tackle these concerns without targeting Asian-Americans.

Moving toward clarity

Part of the issue, in many of the academic cases, was that guidelines for disclosing foreign affiliations and other sources of funding were not always clear. Participating in a Chinese talent program, for example, is legal–although that participation has been a cause for suspicion and a factor in several China Initiative cases. 

Collaboration with researchers at foreign institutions has long been an accepted and encouraged part of academic life. But the tense political relationship between the US and China, and the prosecutions of academics under the China Initiative, has created uncertainty about what the future of cooperation between American and Chinese researchers holds.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) new guidelines on strengthening US research security, released in early January, provide some new clarity on what kinds of international collaboration are allowed. 

The guidelines are meant to clarify requirements for federally funded researchers and develop best practices for federal research agencies. 

They set out a goal of standardized disclosure requirements and forms for researchers seeking federal funding, and give more information for when researchers should disclose potential conflicts of interest and participation in foreign programs like the Chinese talent plans. The guidelines also lay out the potential consequences for violations, including the possibility of criminal charges. 

And while the guidelines do create more clarity, it’s unclear exactly what impact they will have.

The OSTP explicitly denounced xenophobia and called for the guidance to be implemented without negatively impacting scientific collaboration and recruitment. 

“The research security challenges we face are real and serious: some foreign governments, including China’s government, are working hard to illicitly acquire our most advanced technologies. This is unacceptable,” former OSTP Director Eric Lander wrote in the report introducing the guidelines.  

“At the same time, if our policies to address those actions significantly diminish our superpower of attracting global scientific talent — or if they fuel xenophobia against Asian Americans — we will have done more damage to ourselves than any competitor or adversary could. So we need a thoughtful and effective approach.”

Many experts who offered written input into the rules recommended that the guidelines contain some mechanism for “amnesty,” a way for people who have been involved in talent programs and other affiliations to disclose those ties without fear of punishment—though when this idea was first floated early in 2021, Republican lawmakers quickly shot it down. 

When asked how researchers should proceed in the absence of an amnesty provision, an OSTP official pointed toward language in the guidelines instructing research agencies to “ensure that mechanisms for correcting disclosures exist, are communicated clearly, and are simple and straightforward.” The OSTP’s rules encourage researchers to come forward to disclose past violations–but the language may not be enough to reassure researchers after three years of the China Initiative. 

“The China Initiative was going after problems in academia that academia hadn’t even realized were issues yet,” says Emily Weinstein, a China policy analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, who was one of the experts recommending some form of amnesty. 

“There needs to be some type of olive branch,” she says. “Just fixing the disclosure requirement is just slapping a bandaid on it.” 

A moment of celebration, and a need for reflection

But even with the end of the initiative, there is a “palpable fear” in the academic community, says Rory Truex, a Princeton University professor who has written about the initiative’s effect on American science. 

It’s notable that hundreds of people in the academic community have come together to push back against the government’s actions—including many researchers who are not ethnically Chinese, Truex says. 

“Scientists and academics in general rarely act collectively,” Truex says.

The changes to the initiative may not fully address the concerns in the Asian American community. 

“The end of the DOJ’s China Initiative is a huge step towards stopping the racial profiling of Chinese scientists,” Jenny J. Lee, a professor in the University of Arizona’s Center for Educational Policy Studies and Practice, wrote in an email to MIT Technology Review before Olsen’s announcement. 

“However, antagonistic views of China, including those associated with China, will likely continue,” she added. “Negative stereotypes and discrimination against the Asian community extend well beyond the courtroom.”

“The China Initiative and the broader rhetoric around it has harmed our nation’s competitiveness, ruined the careers of innocent scholars, and severely damaged the government’s relationship with Asian American communities,” Linda Ng, national president of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates’, said in an emailed statement after the announcement.. “While we are cautiously optimistic about the Justice Department’s review of the program, it should not be a rebranding exercise. Attorney General Garland and Assistant Attorney General Olsen must commit to implementing reforms that are substantive and focused on preventing unfair racial targeting. National security interests should never be used as an excuse to systematically strip Asian Americans and Asian immigrant scientists of their civil liberties.”

And for the scientists who have been prosecuted by the government, the ordeal also continues—sometimes for years—after they are exonerated. 

The cases of hydrologist Sherry Chen and Xi Xiaoxing, a physics professor, both pre-date the China Initiative—charges against them were brought in 2014 and 2015, respectively.  But they followed similar trajectories, with prosecutors dropping charges before trial. Years later, both are still pursuing legal actions and damages against the federal government. 

Meanwhile, MIT professor Gang Chen, who was accused of wire fraud, making a false statement on a tax return, and failing to disclose a foreign bank account, ultimately had his charges dismissed before trial because the government could not meet its burden of evidence. 

He is back in his laboratory and back in the classroom. He’s adamant that he will continue his work, but will not apply for federal grants in the future–even though government grants make up a significant portion of the money available to fund research. ”I don’t know how I’ll do that yet,” he told MIT Technology Review in an interview days after his dismissal. “I’ll have to figure it out.” 

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Why I became a TechTrekker

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group jumps into the air with snowy mountains in the background


My senior spring in high school, I decided to defer my MIT enrollment by a year. I had always planned to take a gap year, but after receiving the silver tube in the mail and seeing all my college-bound friends plan out their classes and dorm decor, I got cold feet. Every time I mentioned my plans, I was met with questions like “But what about school?” and “MIT is cool with this?”

Yeah. MIT totally is. Postponing your MIT start date is as simple as clicking a checkbox. 

Sofia Pronina (right) was among those who hiked to the Katla Glacier during this year’s TechTrek to Iceland.

COURTESY PHOTO

Now, having finished my first year of classes, I’m really grateful that I stuck with my decision to delay MIT, as I realized that having a full year of unstructured time is a gift. I could let my creative juices run. Pick up hobbies for fun. Do cool things like work at an AI startup and teach myself how to create latte art. My favorite part of the year, however, was backpacking across Europe. I traveled through Austria, Slovakia, Russia, Spain, France, the UK, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Hungary. 

Moreover, despite my fear that I’d be losing a valuable year, traveling turned out to be the most productive thing I could have done with my time. I got to explore different cultures, meet new people from all over the world, and gain unique perspectives that I couldn’t have gotten otherwise. My travels throughout Europe allowed me to leave my comfort zone and expand my understanding of the greater human experience. 

“In Iceland there’s less focus on hustle culture, and this relaxed approach to work-life balance ends up fostering creativity. This was a wild revelation to a bunch of MIT students.”

When I became a full-time student last fall, I realized that StartLabs, the premier undergraduate entrepreneurship club on campus, gives MIT undergrads a similar opportunity to expand their horizons and experience new things. I immediately signed up. At StartLabs, we host fireside chats and ideathons throughout the year. But our flagship event is our annual TechTrek over spring break. In previous years, StartLabs has gone on TechTrek trips to Germany, Switzerland, and Israel. On these fully funded trips, StartLabs members have visited and collaborated with industry leaders, incubators, startups, and academic institutions. They take these treks both to connect with the global startup sphere and to build closer relationships within the club itself.

Most important, however, the process of organizing the TechTrek is itself an expedited introduction to entrepreneurship. The trip is entirely planned by StartLabs members; we figure out travel logistics, find sponsors, and then discover ways to optimize our funding. 

two students soaking in a hot spring in Iceland

COURTESY PHOTO

In organizing this year’s trip to Iceland, we had to learn how to delegate roles to all the planners and how to maintain morale when making this trip a reality seemed to be an impossible task. We woke up extra early to take 6 a.m. calls with Icelandic founders and sponsors. We came up with options for different levels of sponsorship, used pattern recognition to deduce the email addresses of hundreds of potential contacts at organizations we wanted to visit, and all got scrappy with utilizing our LinkedIn connections.

And as any good entrepreneur must, we had to learn how to be lean and maximize our resources. To stretch our food budget, we planned all our incubator and company visits around lunchtime in hopes of getting fed, played human Tetris as we fit 16 people into a six-person Airbnb, and emailed grocery stores to get their nearly expired foods for a discount. We even made a deal with the local bus company to give us free tickets in exchange for a story post on our Instagram account. 

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The Download: spying keyboard software, and why boring AI is best

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🧠


This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How ubiquitous keyboard software puts hundreds of millions of Chinese users at risk

For millions of Chinese people, the first software they download onto devices is always the same: a keyboard app. Yet few of them are aware that it may make everything they type vulnerable to spying eyes. 

QWERTY keyboards are inefficient as many Chinese characters share the same latinized spelling. As a result, many switch to smart, localized keyboard apps to save time and frustration. Today, over 800 million Chinese people use third-party keyboard apps on their PCs, laptops, and mobile phones. 

But a recent report by the Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto–affiliated research group, revealed that Sogou, one of the most popular Chinese keyboard apps, had a massive security loophole. Read the full story. 

—Zeyi Yang

Why we should all be rooting for boring AI

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is setting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed at “analyzing and integrating” AI tools such as large language models across the department. It hopes they could improve intelligence and operational planning. 

But those might not be the right use cases, writes our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkila. Generative AI tools, such as language models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they make things up. They also have massive security vulnerabilities, privacy problems, and deeply ingrained biases. 

Applying these technologies in high-stakes settings could lead to deadly accidents where it’s unclear who or what should be held responsible, or even why the problem occurred. The DoD’s best bet is to apply generative AI to more mundane things like Excel, email, or word processing. Read the full story. 

This story is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The ice cores that will let us look 1.5 million years into the past

To better understand the role atmospheric carbon dioxide plays in Earth’s climate cycles, scientists have long turned to ice cores drilled in Antarctica, where snow layers accumulate and compact over hundreds of thousands of years, trapping samples of ancient air in a lattice of bubbles that serve as tiny time capsules. 

By analyzing those cores, scientists can connect greenhouse-gas concentrations with temperatures going back 800,000 years. Now, a new European-led initiative hopes to eventually retrieve the oldest core yet, dating back 1.5 million years. But that impressive feat is still only the first step. Once they’ve done that, they’ll have to figure out how they’re going to extract the air from the ice. Read the full story.

—Christian Elliott

This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, set to go live tomorrow. Subscribe today for as low as $8/month to ensure you receive full access to the new Ethics issue and in-depth stories on experimental drugs, AI assisted warfare, microfinance, and more.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 How AI got dragged into the culture wars
Fears about ‘woke’ AI fundamentally misunderstand how it works. Yet they’re gaining traction. (The Guardian
+ Why it’s impossible to build an unbiased AI language model. (MIT Technology Review)
 
2 Researchers are racing to understand a new coronavirus variant 
It’s unlikely to be cause for concern, but it shows this virus still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. (Nature)
Covid hasn’t entirely gone away—here’s where we stand. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Why we can’t afford to stop monitoring it. (Ars Technica)
 
3 How Hilary became such a monster storm
Much of it is down to unusually hot sea surface temperatures. (Wired $)
+ The era of simultaneous climate disasters is here to stay. (Axios)
People are donning cooling vests so they can work through the heat. (Wired $)
 
4 Brain privacy is set to become important 
Scientists are getting better at decoding our brain data. It’s surely only a matter of time before others want a peek. (The Atlantic $)
How your brain data could be used against you. (MIT Technology Review)
 
5 How Nvidia built such a big competitive advantage in AI chips
Today it accounts for 70% of all AI chip sales—and an even greater share for training generative models. (NYT $)
The chips it’s selling to China are less effective due to US export controls. (Ars Technica)
+ These simple design rules could turn the chip industry on its head. (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 Inside the complex world of dissociative identity disorder on TikTok 
Reducing stigma is great, but doctors fear people are self-diagnosing or even imitating the disorder. (The Verge)
 
7 What TikTok might have to give up to keep operating in the US
This shows just how hollow the authorities’ purported data-collection concerns really are. (Forbes)
 
8 Soldiers in Ukraine are playing World of Tanks on their phones
It’s eerily similar to the war they are themselves fighting, but they say it helps them to dissociate from the horror. (NYT $)
 
9 Conspiracy theorists are sharing mad ideas on what causes wildfires
But it’s all just a convoluted way to try to avoid having to tackle climate change. (Slate $)
 
10 Christie’s accidentally leaked the location of tons of valuable art 🖼📍
Seemingly thanks to the metadata that often automatically attaches to smartphone photos. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“Is it going to take people dying for something to move forward?”

—An anonymous air traffic controller warns that staffing shortages in their industry, plus other factors, are starting to threaten passenger safety, the New York Times reports.

The big story

Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present

" "

VICTOR KERLOW

October 2022

Since its birth in the late 2000s, effective altruism has aimed to answer the question “How can those with means have the most impact on the world in a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.

It’s no surprise that effective altruisms’ ideas have long faced criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems in favor of abstract math. And as believers pour even greater amounts of money into the movement’s increasingly sci-fi ideals, such charges are only intensifying. Read the full story.

—Rebecca Ackermann

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Watch Andrew Scott’s electrifying reading of the 1965 commencement address ‘Choose One of Five’ by Edith Sampson.
+ Here’s how Metallica makes sure its live performances ROCK. ($)
+ Cannot deal with this utterly ludicrous wooden vehicle
+ Learn about a weird and wonderful new instrument called a harpejji.



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Why we should all be rooting for boring AI

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Why we should all be rooting for boring AI


This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

I’m back from a wholesome week off picking blueberries in a forest. So this story we published last week about the messy ethics of AI in warfare is just the antidote, bringing my blood pressure right back up again. 

Arthur Holland Michel does a great job looking at the complicated and nuanced ethical questions around warfare and the military’s increasing use of artificial-intelligence tools. There are myriad ways AI could fail catastrophically or be abused in conflict situations, and there don’t seem to be any real rules constraining it yet. Holland Michel’s story illustrates how little there is to hold people accountable when things go wrong.  

Last year I wrote about how the war in Ukraine kick-started a new boom in business for defense AI startups. The latest hype cycle has only added to that, as companies—and now the military too—race to embed generative AI in products and services. 

Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is setting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed at “analyzing and integrating” AI tools such as large language models across the department. 

The department sees tons of potential to “improve intelligence, operational planning, and administrative and business processes.” 

But Holland Michel’s story highlights why the first two use cases might be a bad idea. Generative AI tools, such as language models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they make things up. They also have massive security vulnerabilities, privacy problems, and deeply ingrained biases.  

Applying these technologies in high-stakes settings could lead to deadly accidents where it’s unclear who or what should be held responsible, or even why the problem occurred. Everyone agrees that humans should make the final call, but that is made harder by technology that acts unpredictably, especially in fast-moving conflict situations. 

Some worry that the people lowest on the hierarchy will pay the highest price when things go wrong: “In the event of an accident—regardless of whether the human was wrong, the computer was wrong, or they were wrong together—the person who made the ‘decision’ will absorb the blame and protect everyone else along the chain of command from the full impact of accountability,” Holland Michel writes. 

The only ones who seem likely to face no consequences when AI fails in war are the companies supplying the technology.

It helps companies when the rules the US has set to govern AI in warfare are mere recommendations, not laws. That makes it really hard to hold anyone accountable. Even the AI Act, the EU’s sweeping upcoming regulation for high-risk AI systems, exempts military uses, which arguably are the highest-risk applications of them all. 

While everyone is looking for exciting new uses for generative AI, I personally can’t wait for it to become boring. 

Amid early signs that people are starting to lose interest in the technology, companies might find that these sorts of tools are better suited for mundane, low-risk applications than solving humanity’s biggest problems.

Applying AI in, for example, productivity software such as Excel, email, or word processing might not be the sexiest idea, but compared to warfare it’s a relatively low-stakes application, and simple enough to have the potential to actually work as advertised. It could help us do the tedious bits of our jobs faster and better.

Boring AI is unlikely to break as easily and, most important, won’t kill anyone. Hopefully, soon we’ll forget we’re interacting with AI at all. (It wasn’t that long ago when machine translation was an exciting new thing in AI. Now most people don’t even think about its role in powering Google Translate.) 

That’s why I’m more confident that organizations like the DoD will find success applying generative AI in administrative and business processes. 

Boring AI is not morally complex. It’s not magic. But it works. 

Deeper Learning

AI isn’t great at decoding human emotions. So why are regulators targeting the tech?

Amid all the chatter about ChatGPT, artificial general intelligence, and the prospect of robots taking people’s jobs, regulators in the EU and the US have been ramping up warnings against AI and emotion recognition. Emotion recognition is the attempt to identify a person’s feelings or state of mind using AI analysis of video, facial images, or audio recordings. 

But why is this a top concern? Western regulators are particularly concerned about China’s use of the technology, and its potential to enable social control. And there’s also evidence that it simply does not work properly. Tate Ryan-Mosley dissected the thorny questions around the technology in last week’s edition of The Technocrat, our weekly newsletter on tech policy.

Bits and Bytes

Meta is preparing to launch free code-generating software
A version of its new LLaMA 2 language model that is able to generate programming code will pose a stiff challenge to similar proprietary code-generating programs from rivals such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. The open-source program is called Code Llama, and its launch is imminent, according to The Information. (The Information

OpenAI is testing GPT-4 for content moderation
Using the language model to moderate online content could really help alleviate the mental toll content moderation takes on humans. OpenAI says it’s seen some promising first results, although the tech does not outperform highly trained humans. A lot of big, open questions remain, such as whether the tool can be attuned to different cultures and pick up context and nuance. (OpenAI)

Google is working on an AI assistant that offers life advice
The generative AI tools could function as a life coach, offering up ideas, planning instructions, and tutoring tips. (The New York Times)

Two tech luminaries have quit their jobs to build AI systems inspired by bees
Sakana, a new AI research lab, draws inspiration from the animal kingdom. Founded by two prominent industry researchers and former Googlers, the company plans to make multiple smaller AI models that work together, the idea being that a “swarm” of programs could be as powerful as a single large AI model. (Bloomberg)

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