06-30-2019, 05:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-30-2019, 05:59 PM by Warren Dew.)
(06-30-2019, 01:55 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: Wow! What you're suggesting is even more cynical than anything I've
written.
Actually, I really don't believe that. For Reif to be purposely
stoking hostility targeting Chinese would be at AOC-level stupidity.
It works for AOC because she's targeting an audience that's even
stupider than she is, if that's possible. But if Reif tried the same
thing in the MIT community, it would evoke a lot of backlash.
To be clear, I'm not saying he's stoking the hostility. Rather, he's stoking fear of of hostility, by exaggerating it or making it up.
The hostility you describe between different ethnic groups of China and certainly between Chinese and Japanese, most certainly exists. In my limited recent experience, though, these hostilities don't extend to the MIT campus. Rather, leftist professors reshape any hostility into a hostility against conservatives and Republicans by accusing them of hating nonwhites, as a side effect promoting racial solidarity among Asians of different groups.
I think Reif is doing a form of that, but targeting alum rather than students.
Do you get these emails directly? I do, and every one is 90% leftist virtue signaling. I interpret this email in the same light, since it's from the same person and to the same people. You can call me cynical, but I call it realistic.
Quote:And that's only one aspect. Reif's letter makes a point of mentioning
Lincoln Lab. If I were working on a confidential project at Lincoln
Lab, and a Chinese co-worker from Beijing came and started asking me
questions, then I would be VERY concerned. What I would do would
depend on the specific circumstances, but I can definitely see that
some level of "hostility" would be justified, given that China is
conducting constant cyberwar against the US, is weaponizing Huawei,
and the National Intelligence Law requires every Chinese citizen to
provide intelligence to the military, even when doing so is illegal,
which means that it's quite possible that this co-worker was working
for the Chinese military.
Yes, the Lincoln Lab part struck me, too. Given that most of the work there has to do with national security, of course they would need to be concerned about spying. But for the left, it's more convenient to interpret this, not as justifiable caution about national security, but as racial bigotry against Chinese by the Trump administration. To the extent that there's anything real behind the letter, I think that's what it's about: maybe there was something that was or looked like spying, but Reif is trying to blame it on racial bigotry instead.
