Well said. Arbitrarily cutting off Chinese or any international students from coming to the US is cruel and runs counter to what has helped enrich the country financially and culturally for the past nearly 100 years.
Revoking visas to Chinese PhD students is economically shortsighted and inhumane.
Most Chinese PhD students stay in the U.S. after graduation (first image, stats from 2022). They're staying and building technology in the U.S., not taking it to China.
Immigrant students create startup companies that employ Americans (second image, stats from 2018). I couldn't find stats for Chinese students specifically but anecdotally they are a significant force powering GenAI and LLM companies. These are the next $1B companies that are going to hire thousands of people even as other jobs are automated.
There are no real "secrets" in academic GenAI. Everything is open-source. What is the security risk? It's a much higher risk to give DeepSeek and others an advantage in hiring the most talented young researchers in these areas by preventing them from coming to the U.S.
Revoking visas for these students destroys American innovation for no benefit.
It's also unfair and inhumane. In my experience, Chinese PhD students are hardworking young researchers interested in their fields of study and being part of the cutting edge of academic and industrial innovation. They aren't geopolitical pawns. Stop implementing policies that treat them that way.