Thread 16838997

>Three "Scholars" from University of Michigan Laboratory Charged for Conspiring to Smuggle Biological Materials into the U.S. as part of terrorism plot

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/three-chinese-national-scholars-university-michigan-laboratory-charged-conspiring-smuggle

How bad was the terrorist attack the Chinese were trying to execute? What would the likely death toll have been? What about the economic impact?

thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jZCSC5LU-I

>>16838997 (OP)
Caught smuggling worms? Lol, they were probably just mislabeled. How well can you navigate customs documents in your second language? I struggle with the bio declaration forms in my native tongue.

Any way to your question. What species of worm and how were they prepped or packaged?

Hey that's my university

>>16839102
why don't you just stay in your turd world shithole if you can't speak english

>>16838997 (OP)
>>16838999
Lmao

>>16838997 (OP)
>multiple shipments
>lying about when they received the packages
>refused to attend a university internal meeting or investigation
wtf were they doing?

>>16839282
committing crimes while presuming they could rely on fear of racism accusations to prevent anyone from calling them out on their crimes.

>>16839282
They dindu nuffin, the worms were just their lunch.

>>16839338
how sophisticated and continental

>>16839282
> wtf were they doing?

Probably trying to get easier access to some material for experiments which could not be easily gotten in the US (for one reason or another). What they shipped in (round worms and materials to support their own growth/production of them) are super common in research related to the fundamental biophysics/mol-bio of nervous system functions.

My guess is that they wanted round worms with a particular modification to test its impact, and they either couldn't get them in the US for some reason, or they were way over budget to get the same test materials produced here.

A lab I worked with back in undergrad had a bunch of rabbit hearts shipped in from China because they were looking for a particular mutation of a protein that had only been confirmed in Chinese hare. It was a proper pain in the ass, and I remember the post-doc having to spend days on the phone and dealing with paperwork to make sure that they were following the proper procedures to import these hearts so that it wouldn't be a legal/customs issue. I can imagine if the post-doc didn't know any better or he had some friend at a Chinese university who said something like "just pay me the difference and I'll ship them to you myself" he might have thought it worth the risk.

>>16840144
Couldnt they have gotten one legit shipment and made them breed in lab?

>>16839102
It was literally just C. elegans, one of the most commonly studied species on the planet since it was the first to have its genome fully sequenced and neurons fully mapped. Almost any biology lab has a ton of them and they probably just wanted a specific mutation they couldn't get in the US.

Only in America would it be considered terrorism if a scientist studying something is trying to get their hands on the object of their studies just because they come from a country the USA desperately wants justifiable war with

>>16840344
There's also the case of Prof. Charles Lieber, who was named the leading chemist in the world for the decade 2000-2010.

Lieber lied to the government about his involvement in and money received from a Chinese talent organization but from all I could read, only did so thinking it could get him closer to a Nobel prize. Regardless of what you may believe, the DOJ attempted to paint him as an international spy and a court found him guilty on 6 felony counts: 2 counts of making false statements to the U.S. government, 2 counts of filing a false income tax return, and 2 counts of failing to report foreign bank accounts. The DOJ wanted him in jail for 20 years but as he was diagnosed with cancer, he only served 2 days in jail followed by 2 years of supervised release with 6 months of house arrest in 2023.

Being deprived of his academic status, Lieber was left no option to continue his academic career... besides moving to China, which is exactly what happened:
https://www.sigs.tsinghua.edu.cn/Lieber_en/main.htm
So now the top chemist in the world of the 00's is in China's hands, all because the US is too retarded to pay its top talent proper wages and would rather go to war with China.

>>16840398
Still better than what they did to Qian Xuesen
>professor at MIT and Caltech, founded the JPL
>army colonol during WWII
>recruited Wernher von Braun to the US rocket program
>stripped of his clearance and placed under house arrest for 5 years without any evidence or trial before being deported to China
>went on to lead the Chinese ballistic missile, space flight, and nuclear weapons programs

>>16838997 (OP)
>>16839224

>>16840201
From my understanding, the reason for the different shipments were that each one were of a slightly different modification/population.

I don't know what their particular research was (and honestly I haven't done biosystems/mol-bio research since undergrad so I'm not expert), but it looks like they were labeled with different symbols and tags based on what their usage was. For example, one of the petri dishes had "PRK 5" written on it, which is a bit of genetic material that's commonly involved in cytoskeletal regulation (e.g., helping the cell's cytoplasm maintain its shape and architecture).

They probably were working on a few different papers all at once and were getting in a new shipment as needed instead of growing the roundworms themselves.

>>16838997 (OP)
Are they also "teens" and/or "British", as well?

>>16840398
>>16840434
future historians will sum up the rise of china in the late 20th century simply as: "the west gave them everything"