Geopolitics of Researchers in Science

Notice

As this is a blog which discusses my personal opinions I'm adding this note because the topic being discussed may be sensitive to some as it refers to the ethnic and national origin of peoples. In addition, I point to the disclaimer at the bottom of the blog page with regard to the fact that this is my personal writing.

On LinkedIn there was a post mentioning the PNAS research article "Caught in the crossfires: Fears of Chinese-American Scientist [1] and how it's having a significant impact on scientist and researchers who are chinese nationals or of chinese descent. One thing the paper doesn't clarify in the beginning is how they are delineating between Chinese nationals and Americans of chinese descent. It seems the use "Chinese descent" to cover both and then just refer to "native-born" and "foreign-born". However, I'm not sure this is the best way to differentiate. I think this matters because American citizens can hold dual-citizenship.

I'll provide how I view the distinction in the context of how the U.S. would classify between the two. A chinese national is a person who holds citizenship of the People's Republic of China (i.e., China). I believe Chinese citizenship is granted through your parents, so it doesn't matter if you were born there. Chinese nationals can obtain visas or be permanent residence of the U.S. allowing them to study, work, or domicile in the U.S. and associated territories.

A person of chinese descent in the context of the US would American citizens who's ethnic/national family lineage that can be linked back to China or a ethnic group originating from China. They are Americans! One subtle detail is that American citizens can hold dual citizenship. One thing the paper does not make any distinction about is if when they refer to people of "Chinese descent" is to whether this includes dual citizens.

Okay, so what does this paper report? Well it's a bit saddening in that much of the highly trained talent educated and working in the U.S., for both(?) Chinese nationals and Americans of chinese lineage, feel negatively impacted by US policy against China. Many seem to be seeking opportunities in China to escape unwanted attention and scrutiny simple because of their citizenship or ethnic identity. Just to give you a more visual representation of the sentiment, the authors provide the survey plot below.

Fig. 2 from ref. [1] indicating perception of scholars who are of Chinese descent.

The paper provides some examples of the negative impact U.S. policies and legal cases have had on individuals and the boarder community. As for why the U.S. is pursuing these policies? I don't know nor am I qualified to opine on what harm has been caused by national secret exposures and intellectual property theft by individuals who act on behest of the Chinese government. I can say that US government has reported on very real attempts by the Chinese government to steal IP and technology [2-3]. I'm also not familiar with how data gathering in social sciences is done so its hard to know how complete and representative this paper is.

There is one particular section that concerned me, although already well known, was where the authors provide some percentages on who makes up the PhD recipients in science and engineering. Almost half (46%) of all awarded in 2020 achieved so on temporary visas. Meaning American citizens are barely the majority. Let me first say America is founded on immigration and non-citizens coming to the US in pursuit of opportunity and improvement. This is what made American unique. We need more immigration and interest in the US not less! Especially in areas that the US is lacking in. However, I'm greatly concerned that the US is doing something wrong by not having a more significant proportion of the PhDs granted going to American citizens. We need to both be welcoming and competitive.

There is one other aspect which the paper did not discuss or only mentioned in short, the knock-down effect on other asian ethnic groups. The paper mentions anti-Asian sentiment but doesn't address anything about perspectives from individuals who identify with other Asian groups. Unfortunately, due to conditioning or lack of familiarity, people sometimes presume people of Asian descent to be Chinese when in fact they may be Korean, Japanese, Cambodian, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Laotian, or could even be a distinct ethnic group from within China. Because of this, policies or sentiment can also impact them.

Since I have no knowledge of policy making or best approaches it's hard for me to say what should be done. Even if I did have a good idea, the complexity of executing on it would probably make it impossible. For sure there is the need to protect American interest and national security. We also need talent abroad to remain competitive and grow. Futhermore, people domiciled int he US should feel safe and secure. All I can say is I would hope a paper like this in a few years would read:

"Thriving at the Intersection: Chinese-American Scientists Shaping the Future"

References

[1] Xie, Y., Lin, X., Li, J., He, Q., & Huang, J., Caught in the crossfire: Fears of chinese-american scientists. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(27), (2023). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2216248120

[2] Office of public affairs | chinese citizen convicted of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and conspiracy | united states department of justice. (2020, June 26). Retrieved June 29, 2023, from https://www.justice.gov

[3] Wray, Christopher, The threat posed by the chinese government and the chinese communist party to the economic and national security of the united states [Speech]. July 7, 2020 Retrieved June 29, 2023, from Federal Bureau of Investigation website: https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/

Reuse and Attribution

Book Review: Building a Brain

I finally finished the "Self-assembling Brain" by Peter R. Hiesinger; it took me way to long. First of all, it's a pretty good book if you're interested in the competing views on how Genetics, Neuroscience, Robotics, and AI view intelligence and the human brain. The author really wants the reader to understand the vantage or viewpoints for each of these domain areas. The book is well-written and accessible to most people with a STEM background. However, at times it's hard to keep track of how these domains were developed by key individuals in the mid to end of the 20th century. For example, I really couldn't follow the author's presentation of what Roger W. Sperry was proposing for how a brain wired itself. 

In the book's second chapter, the author presents a dialogue between 4 different scientists/engineers. There is a roboticist, molecular geneticist, AI engineer, and neuroscientist. The playwright then carries on about the different perspectives about whether artificial neural networks are capable and mimic a human brain. The neuroscientist claims more needs to be drawn from biology in terms of function, i.e., how the brain does what it does. The AI engineer thinks we don't necessarily need to replicate the human brain works in order to achieve artificial general intelligence. The roboticist follows a similar thinking as the AI engineer. The interesting one is the geneticist who seems to propose that there is a significant need to understand how to grow a brain based on genetics, the other three push back.

At first, I thought this style would be a bit silly and somewhat gimmicky however it actually was one of my favorite part of the book because it provides context for someone who is on the outside of these fields. This style of discussion between the main actors continues throughout the book at actually makes it easy to follow the different approaches in the various domain areas. You get a clear image of the tension going on between different fields that focus on the human brain, conscience, and intelligence. The value of this is you see how there is no clear consensus on how the human brain does what it does and how artificial intelligence directly relates.

Overall it's an excellent book to be familiar with the different development and perspectives of how the brain may work. Here is the front cover of the book for reference and a link to where you can buy it.

Princeton Press

Reuse and Attribution