University erases info • worry: “None of this is in any way normal”
Xiaofeng Wang, a prominent researcher at Indiana University, who for 20 years has published academic articles on cryptography, integrity and cyber security has disappeared. It reports local media in Indiana, USA.
All information about Wang has also disappeared from the university’s website and both the FBI and Homeland Security have hit his two homes.
The university has also deleted all information about Wang’s wife, Nianli Ma, who in his profile on the website has previously been presented as a leading system analyst and programmer.
At present, there are no traces of the American-Chinese couple. Indiana University has also not wanted to answer the media questions, neither whether the couple is still working for the university nor why their profile pages and research are deleted from the website.
FBI silent
Indiana University instead refers to the FBI – which does not give much info about what has happened in Indianapolis.
“The FBI conducted one of the court authorized law enforcement activities in their home last Friday. We have no further comments at the moment,” writes a press spokesman at the FBI to the newspaper Ars Technica.
Other researchers have expressed their concern on what has happened on social media.
“None of this is in any way normal. Has anyone been in contact? I hear that he has been missing for two weeks and his students cannot reach him. How is this not noticed in two weeks ???,” writes Matthew Green, professor specialized in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, at Mastodon.
Matt Blaze, professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, responds in the thread:
“It is difficult to imagine what reason there may be for the university to scrub his website as if he had never worked there.”
Concerns for “China Initiative 2.0”
Chinese South Morning China Post Writes that the event has resurrected the fear of racial profiling in the Trump-led United States-in what some call a “China initiative 2.0”.
“China Initiative” was a program that was launched during Trump’s last term, led by the US Justice Department, with the goal of prosecuting potential Chinese spies in American research and industry.
More than 250 Chinese-American academics and scientists are estimated to have lost their jobs and the program, which ended in 2022, has been criticized for being racist.