[bradreaves2]

I am a professor of computer security in the US.

Chinese students who want to study this topic in the US face extreme scrutiny in visa interviews. On cursory inspection, there is a logic there.

The logic falls apart when you realize that all academic research is intended to be published. We don’t develop secret IP or trade secrets[1]. Our development offices want us to obtain patents on our work, but that is another form of publication.

I wish the powers that are moving to stigmatize Chinese academics would be clearer why they are doing it.

If they are concerned that students are using a student visa as a cover story for traditional espionage (cultivating assets, etc) they should say so.

If they are doing it in an attempt to starve China of trained workers in cutting edge tech, like they are with chip bans, I wish they would say so.

But claiming this is about “IP theft” makes it unclear if these efforts are pretextual or if our national security apparatus legitimately doesn’t understand the basics of how universities work.

[1] Some labs do classified work, but are limited to cleared citizens.