After Being Wrongfully Accused of Spying for China, Professor Wins Appeal To Sue the Government 89
Xiaoxing Xi, a Temple University professor who was falsely accused of spying for China, will be able to bring a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Investigation. From a report: A judge at a federal appeals court ruled in favor of Xi on Wednesday, allowing the physicist to move forward with his case against the U.S. government for wrongful prosecution and violating his family's constitutional rights by engaging in unlawful search, seizure and surveillance. The decision comes after FBI agents swarmed Xi's Philadelphia home in 2015, rounded up his family at gunpoint, and arrested him on fraud charges related to economic espionage, before abruptly dropping the charges months afterward.
"I'm very, very glad that we can finally put the government under oath to explain why they decided to do what they did, violating our constitutional rights," Xi said in an exclusive interview with NBC News. "We finally have an opportunity to hold them accountable." The case will now be kicked back to the district court, continuing a long legal battle. Xi, who's represented in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, attempted to bring a suit against the government in 2017, alleging that FBI agents "made knowingly or recklessly false statements" to support their investigation and prosecution. Xi also claimed that his arrest was discriminatory, and that he was targeted due to his ethnicity, much like other scholars of Chinese descent. A district court dismissed his case in 2021, but Xi appealed the decision last year.
"I'm very, very glad that we can finally put the government under oath to explain why they decided to do what they did, violating our constitutional rights," Xi said in an exclusive interview with NBC News. "We finally have an opportunity to hold them accountable." The case will now be kicked back to the district court, continuing a long legal battle. Xi, who's represented in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, attempted to bring a suit against the government in 2017, alleging that FBI agents "made knowingly or recklessly false statements" to support their investigation and prosecution. Xi also claimed that his arrest was discriminatory, and that he was targeted due to his ethnicity, much like other scholars of Chinese descent. A district court dismissed his case in 2021, but Xi appealed the decision last year.
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And any lawyer would tell him his harm from a random slashdot poster is zero so with no losses he will win nothing even if he wins the libel part.
Libel is a civil issue not criminal.
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Re: Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:2)
It's true. The person they are looking for is code named XI (all caps) which is an alias for Eleven. Xi they figured, was close enough. Naturally him being of Chinese descent, was easy to pick out of a lineup of hobos. The rest of the plot? How should I know, I'm just a random poster on Slashdot.
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Millie Bobbie Brown?
Err durr (Score:5, Informative)
In September 2015, however, the DOJ dropped all charges against him after leading scientists, including a co-inventor of the pocket heater, provided affidavits that the schematics that Xi shared with Chinese scientists were not for a pocket heater or other restricted technology.[3][4] According to Xi's lawyer Peter Zeidenberg, the government did not understand the complicated science and failed to consult with experts before arresting him.[3] He said that the information Xi shared as part of "typical academic collaboration" was about a different device, which Xi co-invented and which is not restricted technology
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I rather like the idea of something he co-invented being "restricted technology" and not something he was permitted to know about. Oh well, not this time.
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If he co-invented a restricted technology while under contract with the US government the issue is sharing it, not knowing about it.
Sheesh
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Informative)
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Not much, they don't have to have evidence to convict they just need preponderance of evidence that they had some justification for suspecting him.
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"Spy" is a loaded term invoking an image of some kind of agent but mixed loyalties are problematic at this point. Many defending him are claiming that he invented technology and shared schematics with the Chinese but that the technology wasn't restricted.
I think the proximity of us having relations with the Chinese and the cold nature of the conflict is clouding perception of this. Really, even taking the defense at face value, how do you think it would play if you swapped in a historical equivalent? A Germ
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The shareholders of the vast American corporation I work for care though, due to the billions in profits they've got out of their Chinese holdings over the years. I'm pretty sure they'd like the money keep rolling in too.
They get worried when people start calling China "the enemy".
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"The shareholders of the vast American corporation I work for care though, due to the billions in profits they've got out of their Chinese holdings over the years. I'm pretty sure they'd like the money keep rolling in too.
They get worried when people start calling China "the enemy"."
Yeah because they are morons. China has done nothing over time if not tie up its interests at the expense of ours. Either they are hoping to somehow land on the Chinese side when that happens they are just looking at today's sto
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Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe this guy is dirty as fuck, but he's presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government thugs hassling people you might not like will eventually run out and turn their attention to you.
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Or the government fucked up royally and needs to be held accountable. Sadly we can't vote for the FBI, but at least there's someone in Congress who'll probably make this a personal crusade.
Oh good let's see who that is. https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]
Maybe this guy is dirty as fuck, but he's presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government thugs hassling people you might not like will eventually run out and turn their attention to you.
Lol, it was all fun and games when the FBI was going after hippies, communists, and black panthers. Now it's not so funny when the FBI is going after right wing domestic terrorists.
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The FBI are making their own terrorists too:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
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Those cases are a bit more ambiguous, mentally ill dumbasses who would like to be terrorists but don't have the resources. I can remember cases where mentally ill dumbasses got hold of knives - nothing hi-tech here - and killed a few people in what they intended to be a murder - suicide-by-cop. One was wearing something made up to look like an explosive suicide-jacket, I can't remember whether the police obliged him or not.
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I am not at all surprised you think the daily beast is a news site.
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Here's her saying it on twitter https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/... [twitter.com]
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I don't care about her at all. She's irrelevant and completely unimportant to my life.
I said, I am not surprised you think the daily beast is a news site. I read it for pure comedy value.
The only thing better was when I read the free People's Daily World when I was in college. It was hard core real life super serious communist news from around the world, by communists for communists. That was fucking hilarious. I had to be careful not to read during lecture lest I laugh loudly during class. I think th
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
And you know that how? Because of his ancestry he must be tainted? That stance puts you into extremely unsavory company.
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And you know that how? Because of his ancestry he must be tainted?
Bingo!!! That's how the MAGA mob that dominates modern US political discourse thinks (or is it MAGAGA now?).
That stance puts you into extremely unsavory company.
Yes, that company being the MAGA mob and the entire rest of the neo-Fascist movement.
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And you know that how? Because of his ancestry he must be tainted?
Bingo!!! That's how the MAGA mob that dominates modern US political discourse thinks (or is it MAGAGA now?).
More like GAGAGAGA.
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Lol, yeah all those white republicans going after the black Supreme Court Justice. Twice.
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Informative)
They fucked up the investigation royally, now this corrupt asshat gets to go around claiming persecution.
FTA:
The espionage case against Xi pertained to his alleged disclosure of manufacturing information with his research community. The Justice Department in 2015 had accused the physicist of sharing schematics for a pocket heater, for which Xi had previously signed a nondisclosure agreement, with peers in China. Testimony from fellow physicists, however, showed the blueprints weren’t for the technology in question, but for Xi’s own invention. And court documents showed that the inventor of the pocket heater had told the lead FBI agent on the case that the technology was “widely known” and not “revolutionary.”
Whether you realize it or not, your comment implies that Xi was guilty of spying and that the FBI "fucked up the investigation" by failing to prove the charge. In fact, the schematics he shared were his own, and didn't describe tech that would give China or anyone else any economic or technological advantage.
As far as I can tell, the FBI fucked up by traumatizing an innocent man and his family at gunpoint for no good reason. Their behaviour might have been suitable for terrorists, but was totally inappropriate for the white-collar crime which Xi in fact did not commit anyway. Sounds to me as though any claims of persecution here are accurate and justified.
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bank Secrecy Act?
That has nothing to do with any of this.
Dude shared information on HIS OWN INVENTION to Chinese colleagues. FBI thought he was sharing something he shouldn't have, but it turns out they don't understand the technology and jumped to conclusions without bothering to talk to actual scientists. Once they did talk to actual scientists, they dropped the case, because it turns out he is allowed to share the tech he did. But they treated the guy and his family so shittily over this that he wants to teach them a very public lesson, in order to prevent shit like that from happening to others.
The BSA has nothing to do with this, as far as I can see. Why did you bring it up?
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Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:4)
BSA - Business Software Alliance
pretty much wrote the book on treating potential white collar crime / infringement like a terrorist cell without having a clue about what most companies were doing or what the impact to their operations would be
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So now you’re saying the Boy Scouts did it? Look they have their problems but they aren’t spies.
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No, I suspect he was tipped off they were on to him, so he tricked them.
China is playing us like a fiddle to protect their very real ethnic Chinese turncoat program, just like Russia did with Snowden. It's all propaganda.
No you fool! This is George Soros, The Deep State, Killary Klinton and the Lizard people!! The Chinese are just contractors teleporting nano-bots into your blood through Huawei 5G base stations that will resequence your DNA and turn you into an atheist gay trans communist soy drinking Demoncrat Beta male or female. Trust the Plan! #WWG1WGA
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You do know George Soros' attempts to manipulate politics are openly stated and not a conspiracy theory; That the "Deep State" is just a term which refers to high level staff in the executive branch who don't turn over with changing administrations aka the unelected bureaucracy and isn't a conspiracy theory but throughout the declassified portions of our history has at all times been engaged in conspiracy theories, and the Huawei spying behavior was proven? I can only assume Killary is a reference to Hillar
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I'm having trouble figuring out why plans for a pocket heater would be worth...anything.
Because after months of surveillance and a crap-ton of investigation that's the level-best they could come up with?
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:4, Informative)
I'm having trouble figuring out why plans for a pocket heater would be worth...anything.
That's because what this is actually about is his work on magnesium diboride thin film superconductors that the FBI suspected was being shared.
Here's an article with some detail.
https://www.aps.org/publicatio... [aps.org]
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As far as I can tell, the FBI fucked up by traumatizing an innocent man and his family at gunpoint for no good reason. Their behaviour might have been suitable for terrorists, but was totally inappropriate for the FBI.
FTFY.
Re: Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrongfully accused my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, I'm not soft on China in the slightest. They have a massive espionage program specifically designed to steal tech from the west, and they are abusing the open nature of our society and our academic/research system. I wouldn't change it for the world, because it's a big part of why we've been on top for a century, but it has it's drawbacks. China is NOT a benign player here.
But this guy's investigation? Supposedly it was done by the FBI but it was the sort of thing you would expect from an 80-IQ Proud Boys member. Somehow, the FBI got a tip that Xiaoxing Xi was sending a piece of restricted tech to China. Did they bother with any real investigation? Nope. Did they consult a, you know, actual expert on the technology in question? Oh-hellz-to-the-no. That's for edicated liberal chumps. They just arrested him in front of his family, charged him with ALL THE CRIMES, and paraded him around in public as a traitor. He lost his career, his job, his reputation, etc. etc.
At that point, a large number of US scientists wrote a joint, open letter to the US government explaining how massively idiotic the FBI was being. 8 months later, the FBI dropped all charges with barely a "whoops tee hee" and just sort of wished the whole thing to dissappear.
This dude absolutely deserves his day in court. If the US government was smart, they would have offered to settle with him for enough money to keep him, and his children afloat for their entire lives. Nah, admitting a mistake is for chumps. Apparently the want to fight it in court. I hope this guy rakes the government over the coals.
We need to keep an eye out for Chinese espionage, but we need to be sure that we don't BECOME THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT while we're doing it. Hey FBI, I fully support your mission, but you need to do your f&*c&ng due diligence.
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Isn't that how the Mexican Joker was created?
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Ironic you'd mention the proud boys since they're an FBI controlled organization.
Maybe next time instead of DC, the FBI could come up with a plan to kidnap a governor... oh wait... too late, been there, done that.
The FBI should have been disbanded and rebuilt decades ago. It's only just recently with easy information access/spread through the internet that normal people are seeing how shitty they've always been. The only new thing is how many people know it now.
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What is depressing is how many people DON'T know it now. It doesn't matter what evidence is uncovered of wrongdoing, the environment has gotten so partisan that discrediting it for half the population is as simple as labeling the investigation/report/committee or what have you as 'GOP' and the reasoning centers of their brains literally switch off.
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Yup, you see it here every day. We both got tagged troll for saying the truth that you can find in any newspaper. Some of these people are so far gone that no matter what facts and evidence and truth are put in front of them they reflexively go the other way because Their Guys or Our Guys are the ones being investigated or doing the investigation, reality be damned.
This has been well studied. Once politics come into a discussion most people's brains really do shut off and they double down when presented
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You can Google. There's plenty out there, I'm not going to search for you only to be told you don't like my link. And for the record I don't watch or read any of those things you listed as bad sources. Not one. Not ever. I'm small elle libertarian, mostly, not stupid.
Here's what you need to know:
1) their leader is an FBI informant
2) leader was in DC but was picked up before anything happened and told to go home, that's not weird at all, huh?
3) several others in PB leadership are FBI informants
This came
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I think what people need to start realizing is this isn't 20 years ago. Aiding Chinese researchers with ANY technological or scientific advancement at this point is comparable to aiding German researchers during WW2. Yes, technically our conflict with them is currently cold and his activity might have slipped outside of what could be charged but the ethics of intentionally aiding the advancement of a genocidal state are clear whether he breached the law or not.
It is suggested that he is weren't Chinese he w
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1. The guy is a US citizen. He studied the books and voluntarily took the oath.
2. During the Cold War, there was a lot of benefit from contact between the scientific communities of the USSR and the west. It was one of several things that helped pave the way to ratcheting down the tensions. The engineering and the tech needs to be kept separate, for sure. But US and Chinese scientists should be maintaining their collaborative work. Same goes for Russia.
Engineering is for the countr
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1. The guy was born, raised and educated in China, under the influence of its propaganda and brainwashing.
2. He shared schematics related to an invention which eases the production of certain types of technology. That IS engineering.
Moreover, while some collaboration occurred during the cold war it wasn't until it was very cold and cooling. China at this stage is not like the USSR, in terms of heat its actions parallel Germany just before WW2. It is ramping up for a fight not maintaining a stalemate.
Also as
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How the fuck did this horseshit comment get modded up to 3? C'mon moderators, do you job!
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You don't know anything about conservatives. They loathe and despise the FBI more than almost anyone else but you just keep echoing away in your echo chamber for the virtue signal points.
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Most likely yet another bungled doxing (Score:3)
FBI got fooled by a racist accusation and doesn't want to admit it.
One nit to pick (Score:5, Insightful)
"Xi also claimed that his arrest was discriminatory, and that he was targeted due to his ethnicity, much like other scholars of Chinese descent. A district court dismissed his case in 2021, but Xi appealed the decision last year."
To many readers, "of Chinese descent" implies Xiaoxing Xi was born in America - however he was born and raised in China (and graduated from Peking University) [wikipedia.org]. Especially given what we know about Chinese spying against the US and other western countries, I don't believe it's unreasonable or discriminatory to closely follow up on allegations of spying under these circumstances... assuming they did due diligence to verify the allegations weren't specious.
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For the true believers, conjecture is enough to hang somebody if that somebody has the wrong genetic makeup. Despicable and repulsive racism? Sure. Widespread? Unfortunately as well. Usually it is just somebody that is rather pathetic that wants to elevate themselves at the cost of others they perceive as inferior. You know, people that would kick puppies and laugh about it.
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But as the GP pointed out, national origin and not genetics were the factor here. And there was more than suspicion at play, he WAS sharing technology with China, they just couldn't prove it was the technology they believed.
It shouldn't matter who you are, aiding China in any form of advancement is definitely morally and ethically repugnant at this point whether it is also illegal or not.
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He was sharing his own, non-secret tech in a research collaboration. As you could have known if you had bothered to find out.
aiding China in any form of advancement is definitely morally and ethically repugnant at this point
Oh? Say, as repugnant as aiding the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons against civilians and that did do so without any military need? The same nation that just recently elected a president that seriously asked why nuclear weapons could not be used again offensively? That level of repugnant?
You are deeply confined in idology. China is mostly just people that want to get through t
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"He was sharing his own, non-secret tech in a research collaboration. As you could have known if you had bothered to find out."
I don't recall indicating otherwise.
"Oh? Say, as repugnant as aiding the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons against civilians and that did do so without any military need?"
I'd say it is far more repugnant to aid a nation engaged in active genocide, annexation of its neighbors, and openly ramping up its war machine than to aid a nation which used a bomb against the axis powers w
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"This has a broad effect of having disseminated a strong feeling of nationalism amongst the Chinese population, which some have come to argue for as "brain washing" but I feel like its more like pride."
The Chinese state is essentially a dictatorship. Whether you choose to interpret the result of the states strict information control and manipulation among the populace as brain washing or not I agree that the message and result is not only nationalist but also carries a strong ethnic overtone. In the stories
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due diligence to verify the allegations weren't specious.
Their due diligence was that his name is Xi.
Re:One nit to pick (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe it's unreasonable or discriminatory to closely follow up on allegations of spying under these circumstances
America is a country with rule of law, and there are legal ways to "follow up" and illegal ways to "follow up." Now the FBI gets a chance to prove they were doing it legally. If they weren't doing it legally, then that's a problem.
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America is a country with rule of law, and there are legal ways to "follow up" and illegal ways to "follow up." Now the FBI gets a chance to prove they were doing it legally. If they weren't doing it legally, then that's a problem.
I agree. And part of that rule of law was designed to correct problems when they occur - which is why this guy is has the right to take the FBI to court and attempt to prove his case.
On the other hand, when things get cloaked in secrecy - e.g. with the FISA court - abuses can feed back on themselves because there is no good check (I don't consider one secret judge signing off on things to be much of a check).
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Even with the secret court it has been shown they lie and fail to disclose things to the court, claiming need to know. We desperately need a law firmly establishing that a court justice reviewing a case has automatic exemption from any executive information controls for the matter they are reviewing and dependent matters. The court always needs to know, is always cleared, and auto-included for any eyes-only designation.
We also need personal consequences for attempting to hide things from judicial scrutiny..
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closely follow up on allegations of spying
The whole point is that they didn't do that.
Had they done that they would have either found some evidence, or left the guy alone. They did neither.
assuming they did due diligence
Why would you assume something so clearly and obviously wrong?
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It doesn't seem right that the government can "verify" these allegations by rounding up a family at gunpoint, doing an extensive search of their property, and then dropping the charges months later because they presumably didn't find anything.
There have to be limited on what the government can do to investigate, because investigations are disruptive, and the threat of spurious charges hanging over someone is highly detrimental to their life.
It doesn't matter where they were born or what their ethnicity is.
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Given the type of crime described... even if the guy was guilty as sin, it seems absurd guns were involved at all. I can't see how there'd be a worry about the situation escalating dangerously.
But the other side of this is... at the moment we've only heard one side, and it's the side of the person bringing the lawsuit. Hopefully we'll hear more of the story as this lawsuit develops.
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It does matter where he was born. That alone is circumstantial evidence of mixed loyalties. Clearly they had evidence he exchanged technology with Chinese researchers and had access to sensitive information. That alone seems like more than reasonable justification to round him up and interrogate him. It isn't as if there is any ethically sound reason to aiding ANY advancement of a genocidal regime.
They probably charged him a bit too soon but that alone shouldn't win his case.
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Have you ever heard what happened to Japanese Americans during WW2? It's widely regarded as an injustice.
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Yes I'm aware. It isn't similar, related, or otherwise relevant but I'm aware of it.
Unless of course you are suggesting the basis was evidence of an active connection to and advancement of Japan and the camps were replaced by 72hr holds for questioning.
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You forgot the ATF.
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Given the sheer amount of money China throws around to turn people, it is a little suspicious how the only ones who get charged tend to have Chinese backgrounds. Smells a lot like they're fishing for involuntary informants to go stir things up who otherwise weren't involved.
It's not just ethnic Chinese who get greedy, not by a long shot. A lot of tech that went into the F-35 was acquired by China not through hacking but by simply dangling money in front of the noses of the leadership of Lockheed Martin's subcontractors, including US based ones. Even 'friend-shoring' is not bulletproof.
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It is and it isn't. Everyone tries to spin it as ethnicity but the common connector is actually chinese national origin, which whether people like it or not IS circumstantial evidence of mixed loyalty... not something that should hold up in court in isolation but definitely a legitimate factor in prioritizing who to look into.
What really plays into it being a concern with China in particular is that the populace is subjected to extreme nationalist propaganda and manipulation, essentially brainwashing with a
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The optimistic interpretation is that they're more willing to give corrupt elements rope to play with since they're more predictable, but at least in the Cold War it was sometimes a sign of corruption it
Explanations (Score:2)
put the government under oath to explain why they decided to do what they did
Lol no. If PapersPlease [papersplease.org] has taught me anything, it's that the government will never explain why they do what they do, especially in cases where they are "abruptly dropping the charges".
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put the government under oath to explain why they decided to do what they did
Lol no. If PapersPlease [papersplease.org] has taught me anything, it's that the government will never explain why they do what they do, especially in cases where they are "abruptly dropping the charges".
Are corporate weasels any different? Is anybody? All humans have an ingrained instinct to cover their ass and weasel out of suffering the consequences of their fuckups. Very few people have the strength to overcome our inner sonovabitch and take responsibility for their mistakes.
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Ok, yes, that's human nature but we're talking about the government here.
When there's a big enough fuckup in government the result is not punishment, it's a promotion.