FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
494 comments
·March 30, 2025Animats
lolinder
We have no evidence that Wang "was" disappeared. We know that he's nowhere to be found, that the university put him on leave weeks ago [0], and that the FBI recently searched his home. Notably, the university put him on leave weeks before the FBI searched his home.
That sequence is better explained by the hypothesis that Wang vanished himself suddenly and the university called in the FBI to investigate things that they found in the aftermath. (Note that that's still pure speculation, but it's speculation that better accounts for all known facts.)
[0] https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-situati...
slg
On the long list of problems caused by the government "disappearing" people (which they have objectively been doing lately) is that it destroys trust and therefore makes even valid legal proceedings seem more shady than they would in a world in which due process was a universal guarantee in practice. I don't fault anyone for jumping to conclusions implicating the government is in the wrong here rather than Wang.
lolinder
> by the government "disappearing" anyone (which they have objectively been doing lately)
Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here. Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. This case is notable because no one seems to know where this man has gone.
But yes, point taken: the extrajudicial actions of ICE recently are absolutely not helping people stay calm in the face of something like this.
easterncalculus
> the government "disappearing" people (which they have objectively been doing lately)
If you know where someone is being held (like Louisiana, for example) they weren't 'disappeared'.
SpicyLemonZest
I understand why people are tempted, but I worry that jumping to such conclusions is counterproductive. If everyone who gets in trouble with federal law enforcement is considered "disappeared" in the public imagination until they make a public statement about it, we're going to end up with a lot of justified cases bundled in with the unjustified ones. The source article quotes two professors at other schools who rightly note that this story is very abnormal, but nobody in particular seems to be saying that they've lost contact with Mr. Wang. (The neighbors told local news that they rarely saw and never spoke to him in the first place: https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2025/03/2...)
tejohnso
Is there a site that keeps track of these government abductions? Are you talking about American citizens? Can you name five occurrences within the last 18 months, or whatever you mean by "lately"?
rayiner
The government isn’t “disappearing people.” It’s deporting illegal aliens. You don’t need a press release every time you do that.
fracus
Doesn't the sequence of events read more like the University found something grave enough to put him on leave and contact the FBI, and for both the teacher and school to keep it quiet?
lupusreal
No, not really. That wouldn't explain the gap of weeks.
tptacek
Do we even know that he's "nowhere to be found"? "Not answering Dan Goodin's requests for quotes", or even "not responding to his grad students" is not the same thing as that.
lolinder
No, and that's a good call-out.
sbassi
That is the way it works, there is no "evidence of being disappeared", as there is no negative probe. This already happened in Argentina in the 70's, there were no record, in many cases until several years after, or never.
stevage
Your hypothesis definitely doesn't account for the university scrubbing him from their website.
lolinder
It accounts for it substantially better than the government whisking him away. I laid out the hypothesis in full here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43528036
Again, pure speculation, as is everything right now.
dathinab
> the university put him on leave weeks
but then why did his students not know about it?
if normally a professor or similar is put on leave there are procedures about informing students in affected courses, replacement professors being found or courses being cancelled etc.
the fact that this procedures seem to not have been followed is strange and looks like someone wanted this to go over without much attention
that his wife seems to be affected too is even more strange
that no even vague reason is told even now is also supper strange
I mean thing about it especially given how much it has blown up there is no reason for them to not at least give a vague reason, if they don't it's because they can't (e.g. court order) or they have a good reason to not want to (which is strange by itself).
kortilla
> but then why did his students not know about it?
But the students do know. They are saying they can’t contact him, which is not the same as not knowing he’s on leave
tw04
[flagged]
lolinder
If in the ensuing investigation they found out that he'd been spying for the PRC for the last 20 years and they were freaked out about the reputational implications of having been harboring a Chinese spy in a red state in the current political climate?
I don't know anything for sure, my main point is that everything is speculation, but some speculation is better grounded in the facts than other speculation.
EDIT: I see you've engaged in the very frustrating practice of editing your comment to reply to my comment. This time with even less etiquette than normal, because you didn't even have the courtesy to flag upfront that it was an edit. I'm not going to play that game by replying in turn, but I do want to call it out as bad form.
Rebelgecko
Obviously this is speculation, but one reason would be if the reasons for his disappearance would generate bad PR for the university and they were fairly sure both he and his wife were involved and won't be returning
null
bediger4000
> That sequence is better explained by the hypothesis that Wang vanished himself
That probably isn't correct given that IU has scrubbed him from their web pages. That alone makes this look like disappearing him and his wife.
The feds unconstitutionally "disappearing" this couple doesn't exactly fit either, but based on the article, that's what fits best.
lolinder
> That probably isn't correct given that IU has scrubbed him from their web pages. That alone makes this look like disappearing him and his wife.
Why?
As a possible explanation: Wang disappears suddenly and without warning. The university investigates and in the course of the investigation discovers that he was working as a spy for the PRC for the past 20 years while employed with them. They freak out, knowing that the current political climate (especially in their state) is one where they can't afford to become known as that school that harbored a Chinese spy, so they rush to try to keep everything under wraps.
Unfortunately, they have to report what they found to the FBI, which proceeds to very un-subtley raid Wang's homes, drawing media attention and possibly triggering the firestorm they hoped to avoid.
---
As with anything at this stage, this story is entirely supposition, but it does explain the known facts, and it explains them better than any other explanation I've seen floated in this thread.
diggan
> Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do
Since when? Been happening for a long time, here is just one recent-ish (2021) report:
> FFI documented 698 enforced disappearances of immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody between 2017 and 2021
https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/news/2021/8/30/detained...
Has to be countless more that aren't documented, especially when you take the entire government into account, not just one agency.
csomar
These are not people that HN/Academia identifies with and thus they are not considered people with full rights. See how the goals moved from rights for every single person, to rights for documented migrants, to rights for citizens only. We are now moving faster to rights for people similar to you but make no mistake this will end up with rights for no one but the king.
Yeul
The US has always been very divided on who is considered a US citizen.
Atheists, black people, Hawaiians, Germans, Japanese- all of them have found themselves in court.
dathinab
lets also not forget how the US has a history especially in the recent ~decade or so to redefine all kind of things as "domestic terrorism" and then use it to remove very fundamental rights from people which at most are activists
frm88
New developments:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/bizarre-turn-in-bizarre...
dale_huevo
> This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now.
Is it typical for the media to write stories when spies surreptitiously sneak out of a country?
I speculate this guy was long gone before the feds kicked in his door. Assuming he and his wife were indeed spies of course. Right now we cannot confirm or disconfirm that, but the narrative fits it so far.
> Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do.
Do you have any sources that this guy was vanned, besides the very reliable Ars Technica comments section crying about 'fascists' and random schizos on BlueSky?
sc68cal
You're asking someone for sources, after accusing someone of espionage with no sources?
runsWphotons
Tons of people above are suggesting he was "disappeared" with no sources (and no real cases of this really happening otherwise, recent cases have all had paperwork). Seems fair to ask and suggest a more likely alternative.
dragonwriter
[flagged]
dale_huevo
Yes, apologies, original post was misworded and corrected.
Everyone is assuming this guy was maliciously 'disappeared', but no evidence has been presented proving that vs. that he vanished on his own.
Everything is rage-porn speculation at this point, like a fresh airplane accident where everyone becomes an armchair pilot.
graemep
> Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do.
If a government was disappearing people they would not do it with police raids. The last thing they would want is to take responsibility for it.
I have lived in a country where journalists and others were being disappeared, and it was done by unidentifiable people in unmarked vans.
hmcq6
> unidentifiable people in unmarked vans.
This literally happened 4 days ago to Rümeysa Öztürk
Or the "cops" who refuesed to identify themselves to Mahmood Khalil's wife?
graemep
They were not disappeared (the links below say we know where they went), and they were arrested by people who do have legal powers of arrest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil#Ar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...
I am not saying it is the right thing to do, but it is a very very long way from someone being grabbed, bundled into an unmarked van by people who are never identified (either as individuals or who they work for), and turning up later dead - or never turning up at all.
lovich
>Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do.
They are allowed to disappear people simply by virtue of the fact that no one is going to stop them
karaterobot
Sure, they "disappeared" him, then forced the University to take down his profile, email address, and office phone. Having scrubbed him from the faculty listing index, he has effectively been removed from history. He's a ghost. Never mind this Ars Technica article, or all of the other information about him on the web. I mean, I get all my news from university phone directories, how about you?
rayiner
What do you mean by “disappearing people?” We had a foreign spy arrested at my kid’s school (she and her husband sold Navy secrets to China). For obvious reasons, arrest warrants don’t need to be made public. Nor is the FBI required to issue a press release when it arrests someone.
It’s not even clear this professor is in government custody. It sounds like he may have gotten wind of the investigation and escaped.
pyuser583
This is why habeas corpus is so important. An attorney goes before the court, and demands the client be produced, and a justification be given for their detention.
It sounds like such a meaningless right. But it creates a clear line between a legitimate detention and disappearance.
red-iron-pine
> It’s not even clear this professor is in government custody. It sounds like he may have gotten wind of the investigation and escaped.
Bingo. Dude vanished well before his Uni was a aware and starting making a stink.
laretluval
Is there a news article about the spy at your kid’s school?
tptacek
The fact pattern doesn't fit well with ICE, because Indiana University cooperated with the investigation (and struck him and his wife from their pages).
The track record of espionage investigations against people of Chinese origin is not great, so it's not a defense of this investigation to say that that the details rhyme with that rather than immigration.
orochimaaru
This isn’t immigration. He’s a tenured professor and already has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a US citizen.
FBI is most likely dealing with an espionage angle. His research field of cryptography and using it to protect genomic data probably has something to do with it.
The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal with several researchers having their career and livelihood destroyed.
What he did was public domain, unless he consulted for alphabet agencies. The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage by making life hard for family back in china
tptacek
(For what it's worth, at the time I wrote the comment, the rest of the comments on this story were about ICE raids).
Nobody knows anything about this story. He might be in custody, he might be in Indiana, he might be abroad, he might be about to get charged, he might not be, he might keep his positions at IU, he might have lost all his positions at IU.
It's an interesting story worth paying attention to because he's a prominent figure in an area of research we all pay attention to. But given some kind of criminal investigation is in process, and that he has a lawyer, there's no signal to derive from the fact that we can't get quotes from him in the media; that could just be him being smart.
freeopinion
Are you suggesting that it isn't helpful or useful to speculate that he was an undercover FBI agent working to infiltrate US-based dark web crypto gangs and that the University's actions tipped off the gangs? So when he went missing the FBI kicked into high gear? Just making stuff up like that doesn't provide clarity?
kortilla
Does he have a lawyer? It wasn’t clear who retained council, it sounded like it was just a woman living at the Carmel house, which could have been a rental tenant…
fracus
> The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage by making life hard for family back in china
China also has a history of establishing "police" stations in foreign countries with the mandate to harass and control expats. They did this in Canada at least, surely they did in the US too.
pyuser583
A while back there was a bad arrest of an NYPD officer for working at one of these illegal "police stations."
He was either found innocent or the charges were dropped, which is very rare.
sureglymop
I can only urge you to provide one or more good primary sources if you are making such a claim. It should be a given...
cma
Permanent green card residents have been sent to El Salvador prisons without trial in the recent stuff. This incident does say it was with a court behind it though.
orochimaaru
The FBI does not deal with immigration action.
leptons
>He’s a tenured professor and already has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a US citizen.
The current administration have proven they do not care about any of these things. Even natural born citizens are now under threat.
brigandish
Can you name one?
riku_iki
> The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal with several researchers having their career and livelihood destroyed.
specific numbers from wikipedia(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Initiative):
250 have been fired, 77 cases opened, 28 prosecutions, 8 got convicted.
Also, I suspect many cases were closed or not pushed because of change in president administration.
ck2
ICE has and is arresting US Citizens
ICE is immune to prosecution for improper behavior so they've dialed that up to 11 this year
Who exactly is going to stop them? Courts just say "don't do that" and they nod
orochimaaru
Read the article. It's the FBI in this, not ICE.
whatshisface
Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried in huge public media-heavy trials. The USSR even did huge public trials for American spies, because there's no incentive to forgo the nationalist boost to public opinion when collaborators would be aware of the disappearance either way.
tptacek
Being removed from your employer's web pages isn't "being vanished"; we don't even know if Wang is in custody. All I'm saying is, in the fact pattern where this is another unhinged ICE raid, IU doesn't strike a tenured faculty member in an endowed chair position from all their websites. I've got nothing past that.
Later
From the TPM follow-up link downthread: faculty at IU were notified more than a week before the raid that he'd been placed on leave, and it was at that point Wang's pages were zapped from the IU sites.
whatshisface
It's also pretty clear that this isn't matching the pattern of an espionage case, since they gave everyone more than a week of advance notice that something was to happen.
null
null
jillyboel
> we don't even know if Wang is in custody
so you're saying he vanished...?
genocidicbunny
Some spies in the USSR did just get vanished, especially low-level domestic spies. Yeah the American dude running around and being caught for spying would probably get the media circus, but the mid-level manager he gave some cigarettes and money to in exchange for information about the production levels at the factory the manager worked to might instead find himself quietly arrested one evening, tried and sent off to the gulag by the early hours of the morning. You didn't really want or need to make a spectacle of those kinds of spies, since everyone already sort of had an idea of what happened.
bigfatkitten
Media-heavy espionage cases are the exception, not the norm.
"Diplomats" routinely get declared persona non grata and just put on the next plane home. Neither the U.S. nor the other country wants to make a fuss.
aerostable_slug
That's generally because those diplomats can't be tried for their activities in the host nation, and also because said diplomats are running spies, not stealing secrets themselves.
In other words, they aren't the traitors, their agents are. And those agents are the ones who get tried in the media circuses we're all so familiar with.
null
lolinder
> Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried
Or they vanish themselves before they're caught and are never heard from again because they got away.
We don't know that anyone has Wang in custody. He was scrubbed from the University computer systems weeks before the FBI raided his house, which suggests that whatever happened started then and built up to this recent raid which finally drew media attention.
TechDebtDevin
Maybe the Chinese disapprared him brcause his cover was blown :/ The Chinese are alleged to havr their own secret police in the United States keeping tabs on important citizens..
An expert in cryptography seems like someone theyd be keeping tabs on if they really do this.
Just spit balling here and dont mean to accuse the guy of anything.
salynchnew
Being American right now makes this whole episode feel like a 1950s McCarthyism/Qian Xuesen-type situation.
Maybe another xenophobic red scare-type U.S. gov't overreaction will inadvertently export top talent to China a second time.
nurettin
A lot of "spies" seem to be falling off the window/balcony /stairs lately.
gdilla
what if your "employer" vanishes you?
derbOac
I have a problem with any of this being secret one way or another. If someone is detained the public has a right to know about the case. Otherwise it's all abductions as far as I'm concerned.
tptacek
We don't even know that he's been detained!
radicalbyte
Or who has taken him. We rolled up cells of the Chinese security services who would disappear (or worse) Chinese nationals on foreign soil.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/explainer-chin...
tlogan
We don’t know whether Xiaofeng is a U.S. citizen, a Chinese national, or holds some other status. He’s been in the U.S. for at least 20 years. He hasn’t been arrested, but it’s unclear whether he’s been located or is currently missing.
Let’s not spread misinformation. This could turn out to be a simple criminal case. He might even be a victim. Or it could be something bigger—maybe a spy case, or even something on the scale of Watergate. At this point, no one really knows.
null
lokar
Green card holders are now subject to arbitrary revocation of that status, lengthy detention and deportation.
briandear
This has zero to do with ICE. FBI does counterespionage investigations (among other things,) but doesn’t have anything to do with immigration.
scythe
>The track record of espionage investigations against people of Chinese descent
For context:
generationP
His old website: https://web.archive.org/web/20240415075438/https://homes.lud...
An app he wrote: https://web.archive.org/web/20240304061200/https://sit.luddy... or https://web.archive.org/web/20240727022112/https://homes.lud...
A news (probably PR) article about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20220622001223/https://www.compu...
None of these sites is available any more. This looks suspicious, even given the regular bit rot of American college servers. The app is supposedly downloadable at https://apkcombo.com/app-guardian/edu.iub.seclab.appguardian... . Anyone around with a disassembler and too much time?
testplzignore
App YouTube channel is still up: https://www.youtube.com/@appguardian6684
Fricken
It sounds like the China initiative is back:
>Two bills introduced by the Republican Party that passed the House of Representatives on September 11, 2024, have been described as reviving the China Initiative. The bills are part of "China Week", a House Republican-led effort to advance China-related legislation
>The China Initiative was a program by the United States Department of Justice to prosecute potential Chinese spies in American research and industry, in order to combat economic espionage. Launched in November 2018, the program targeted hundreds of prominent Chinese-American academics and scientists, of which an estimated 250 lost their jobs. Many more had their careers negatively impacted and the prosecutions also contributed to at least one suicide.
>According to a Bloomberg News analysis of the 50 indictments displayed on the China Initiative webpage, the program had not "been very successful at catching spies." Most of the cases listed by December 17, 2021, involved individual profiteering or career advancement by the accused, rather than state-directed spying. Despite this, many of these indictments portray the alleged crimes as for the benefit of China. Seton Hall University law professor Margaret Lewis described this as "a conflation of individual motives with a country’s policy goals" that has led to the criminalization of "China-ness."
jimmydoe
Yes, it’s not surprising, considering the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is significantly more severe, is also being revived.
vessenes
FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court, which is in theory reserved for espionage and terrorism in the US. Most University cryptographic research happens in public these days, so I have a hard time imagining a sequence of events strictly bounded by cryptography research + chinese origin that yields FISA court motions.
The real thing to say here is that we will probably never know what's alleged, much less what's happened.
Interesting would be if he were a skilled enough cryptographic theorist to have gotten a backdoor into a NIST approved algorithm; new ideas in this field are almost always appreciated.
dragonwriter
> FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court
No, it doesn't. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court proceedings are only warrant applications for surveillance that cannot be used on criminal trials; targets wouldn't be informed of or represented in proceedings.
Espionage or terrorism charges are handled by normal US District Courts, on the public docket (though certain documents and proceedings within those—or any other—cases dealing with classified evidence are handled under special procedures to preserve the secrecy of the evidence )
tptacek
No? FISA isn't an adversarial court that hears espionage cases; it exists solely to handle applications for surveillance. Espionage and national security cases are handled by ordinary federal courts.
null
giantg2
What kind of court was Drake tried in?
tptacek
I have no idea, but nobody is "tried" at FISC. FISC has no jurisdiction over any criminal case and is strictly ex-parte.
kasey_junk
https://sgp.fas.org/news/2010/04/doj041510.html
Federal criminal court in Maryland
dragonwriter
Drake who?
Whoever, it wasn’t FISC, because FISC doesn’t have jurisdiction to do any trials.
user3939382
FISA, our secret court with secret proceedings to deal with secret charges under secret laws with secret interpretations. What could go wrong?
dragonwriter
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the higher level Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISA is the law limiting government surveillance certain of whose provisions they enforce) don't deal with “charges” at all, and the statute they do enforce the warrant requirements for (FISA) isn’t secret.
user3939382
Their interpretation of the statutes is secret thus we have secret law enforced by this court. The charges related to these warrants are secret if not adjudicated by the court. To be more direct, the existence of this court is an abomination in the context of a democracy.
null
sitkack
It could be that it wasn't an adversarial attack but a discovery, either of a weakness or an intentional flaw. Regardless, the crypto power gradient changes and that is concerning.
vessenes
past the edit window, but thanks for educating me. I think I was conflating Nacchio's long fight over Qwest's NSA requests with FISA.
Ar-Curunir
The person in question is not a cryptographer, but rather works more broadly in computer security. He has not contributed to NIST standards AFAICT
mvdtnz
What's a FISA court?
hypeatei
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
> to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Secret courts that some say are unconstitutional[0].
[0]: https://www.aclu.org/documents/why-fisa-amendments-act-uncon...
tptacek
FISA is a special process set up, partly by the Church Committee, in the last 1970s in order to oversee foreign signals intelligence. It's staffed by federal Article III judges, and its purpose is to handle paperwork applications for surveillance of communications pertaining to foreign nationals where any leg occurs on domestic soil.
dragonwriter
One of exactly two courts—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that handles initial applications for surveillance warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) which can handles reviews of denials of applications by FISC.
These two courts are not “reserved for espionage and terrorism”, they are dedicated to assuring that limitations on impact on US persons of surveillance justified on foreign intelligence grounds are observed. They handle only warrant applications for foreign intelligence surveillance that has some US nexus, not charges/allegations of any kind, and no one targeted or impacted by such a warrant would ever get notice that proceedings were occurring, much less be represented, in these courts.
guerrilla
[flagged]
mlissner
I run CourtListener.com, which aggregates Pacer data.
So far nothing there, but I created an alert for his name, and I’ll post here and to Dan Goodin (the author of the article) if anything pops up.
csense
This doesn't have to be geopolitical or cryptography-related. He could have committed some ordinary crime -- say, he had a hobby stealing Legos -- then someone at the university said "Why is this closet in your lab stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Legos?" University isn't the police, so he's not arrested -- he's just put on leave until they figure out WTF is going on with this bizarre situation. Removing contact information might be SOP for any university employee placed on leave for this type of investigation.
(Note, I have absolutely zero reason to believe this man is stealing Legos. This is just a hypothetical example of a slightly bizarre but not entirely implausible crime that has nothing to do with politics, geopolitics or computer science.)
Of course in this situation, being placed on leave by the university has thoroughly tipped him off that the cat is out of the bag, and it's only a matter of time until he's arrested. So he skips town before the police get involved.
Why's the FBI involved?
- (1) Maybe it's a FBI relevant matter (e.g. there's a whole Lego theft ring)
- (2) If he told his family where he went, the court system could force them to reveal that information to the police, under threat of jail time. It'd be safer for his family if he didn't tell them where he's going or why. So he ends up as a missing person, which triggers FBI involvement.
- (3) Maybe the FBI is just as confused as we are. They get involved it's thinking it might be national security related because of the international intrigue or cryptography research angles. They don't know it's merely an "ordinary" crime (or at least they didn't when they decided to get involved -- maybe they've investigated enough to figure it out by now.)
ctrlp
If it turns out that he was somehow repatriated to his home country under compulsion that would not be terribly surprising. Nor would it be surprising if he was a "spy" or even a double agent. The FBI raiding his home suggests that he was somehow implicated either as a foreign agent or as a compromised intelligence asset, and one side or the other wanted him back.
declan_roberts
Maybe the USA is finally cracking down on China's "thousand talents" program.
https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/the-chin...
mmooss
> Nor would it be surprising if he was a "spy" or even a double agent.
It would be very surprising. How many spies and 'double agents' are there?
suraci
> Approximately 7% of Chinese people are registered CCP members
so in a rough estimate, if you have 10 chinese coworkers around you, there is over a 50% probability that CCP is watching you
blitzar
20% of US people are registered Republican members. If you have 10 US coworkers around you, there is over a 90% probability that GOP is watching you.
csb6
This is some of the worst use of statistics I have ever seen on this site. Genuinely something the John Birch Society or McCarthy would have said.
BirAdam
Even “friendly” and “allied” nations spy on each other.
mmooss
That doesn't tell us about the proportion of spies in the population.
ctrlp
Many, many, many.
forrestthewoods
> It would be very surprising. How many spies and 'double agents' are there?
Talk to anyone who deals in sensitive matters and attends conferences and they will tell you the number of people trying to pry information is overwhelming.
So the answer to your question is lots. A tremendous number of people, especially in academia, feed information to foreign governments. Not only is it not rare, but it's obnoxiously common for those who have to deal with it.
runjake
People here keep claiming he was disappeared but what evidence is there?
In the absence of evidence and since the FBI is handling it, and with the secrecy, it seems more likely espionage-related.
Xaiofeng could had fled to China for all we know. It’s certainly important to question our government though.
sitkack
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/iu-professor-bloomin...
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-situati...
https://bsky.app/profile/ncweaver.skerry-tech.com/post/3lljl...
sitkack
From bsky, he is the Chair of ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC)
sitkack
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/xiaofeng-wang-aaup-i...
https://fox59.com/news/iu-faculty-protests-firing-of-profess...
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/fbi-searches-xiaofeng-wang-h...
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/after-fbi-raids-on-h...
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1jnl64l/fbi_rai...
Letter from his Union to the Provost of IU Rahul Shrivastav https://aaup.sitehost.iu.edu/reports/AAUP_March_31_Letter_Sh...
nothrowaways
FBI might have their reasons and they are doing their job, so no objections there. But the university data scrab is stupid, you can't undo history.
Universities should stay neutral.
tptacek
The university scrub precedes the FBI raid by two weeks.
dathinab
predates known FBI actions
does not necessary predate FBI involvement,
a university "silently" scrubbing someone is most times due to there being something which could cause heavy reputational damage to tangentially related to that person (or secret orders/pressure from courts or other agencies)
for example someone gets caught doing something bad by the university but not yet outright criminal, the university puts the on leave and investigates further maybe informs police or FBI too, which then start investigation but not yet without any public actions. The person knows when put on leave that they likely will find more things and disappears themself (issue with that story is the woman at on of the houses and her being let go by the FBI and coming back with a lawyer and her being not identified as his wife, which just doesn't fit in at all)
mmooss
Two weeks isn't much. The government could have been working on this issue and talking to the university for much longer than two weeks.
This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now. Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do.
Here's Xiaofeng Wang's bio on the Indiana University site.[1]
Google Scholar.[2]
Archived version of home page at Indiana University.[3]
If anybody has a PACER account, please check there.
[1] https://alliance.iu.edu/members/member/8580.html
[2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pONu-5EAAAAJ&hl=en
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20240930195057/https://homes.lud...