News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors”. Parent comment

Re:The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-a... by cscurmudgeon on Tuesday May 26, 2020 @11:32PM (#23319104)
> I think it is unethical to hide research when it could save lives

Why are you assuming the US is hiding research?

Are you aware that there are protocols in medical research against premature release of information as it will taint the results (placebo effects etc)?

There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted.

Also a lot of research has lag time. Experiments can take a lot of time.

You are also assuming that China is hacking to release information for the greater good. You are discounting the following:

1) Hacking to corrupt results and data.

2) Hacking to patent possible cures first.

3) Getting to a cure first to use as leverage over countries. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/us/politics/coronavirus-c...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-a... by dheera on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @01:07AM (#23319555)
> There are blackout periods etc. just to make sure that the analysis is valid and not tainted.

This is an interesting potential debate. In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data. But the world is apparently wanting to choose probabilistically more deaths + clean data.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-a... by cscurmudgeon on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @11:50AM (#23325088)
> In some sense we are sacrificing lives for scientific validity, because it is potentially possible that we could deploy early, ignore blackouts, and have probabilistically fewer deaths + tainted data

This is spurious logic.

How are you saying that tainted science + bad data will result in fewer deaths long term?

You may end up with probabilistically more deaths + tainted data.

Why is that not a possibility?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-a... by croon on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @02:34AM (#23320029)
Your parent specifically already covered #2 and #3. Even if they do it's better.

Secondly, patent where? If they do it to limit the use I doubt many nations would respect that patent.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The FBI investigating hacking of Covid research by “PRC-a... by cscurmudgeon on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @11:49AM (#23325063)
So you honestly believe that China will be more generous with a hacked cure than the US.

With #3 you are just arguing for a form of debt slavery.

Thanks for conveniently ignoring #1.

[ Parent | on HN ]