"It's not immoral to violate trade sanctions if you don't think they should exist".

▲ kelnos 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, why not? Morality and law are not always aligned. I'm not sure I would go so far to consider these sorts of trade sanctions "immoral", but I wouldn't fault someone for believing so.

In this case, though, I think Huang just believed these sanctions were the wrong move, and would end up long-term helping China and hurting the US. Which is fair to believe, but believing a law is counterproductive doesn't give you immunity if you break it.

▲ adolph 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Morality and law are not always aligned

This is a significant philosophical point.

  The thing about that Lord Moulton said is that there are a bunch of things that are wrong that are not illegal, and we have to do that because people have to be capable of self-control. Patrick Deneen, in . . . The Failure of Liberalism said that he thinks liberalism is failing because it has come to the view that anything that is not illegal is moral.

https://www.econtalk.org/public-choice-and-politics-without-....

▲ jappgar 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it immoral for Jensen to cheat on his wife?

What if he "believed fidelity was the wrong move" and that he'd end up divorced eventually anyways?

When is disloyalty and dishonesty immoral?

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kergonath 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s something you are not equipped to judge. You don’t know much about his private life and the private life of the people around him. Having sex in itself is not the problem, and so far what was demonstrated was that he had sex, at least one with an alleged spy evading trade sanctions, and once with a subordinate. Either are improper and ground for firing; both together are untenable (plus the possibility that there are other skeletons; we don’t know for now).

The relationship with his wife is neither here nor there, unless she wants to make it public. If she feels betrayed, wants a quick buck, or otherwise wants to for any reason, she will sue for divorce and, considering the publicity of the cases, she should get a favourable judgement.

It’s easy to impose our morals on others. But more than half of republicans believe that gay sex is immoral just as strongly as you believe that adultery is.

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jappgar 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, I don't disagree.

I'm trying to point out the inconsistecy with the OP who implied sanctions evasion is not implicitly immoral but that "cheating" is.

Huang may have had an agreement with his wife that this was fine.

But he did not have an agreement with the justice department to flaunt the law and funnel GPUs to China.

	▲	pj_mukh 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>>But he did not have an agreement with the justice department Neither did conscientious objectors? I don't think you mean to claim that the justice department is the final word on morality? Just that on this topic, you agree with the justice department (which is fine), but they will do things that you disagree with. They are no final arbiter and have helped enforce plenty of immoral laws in the past. There is even a case to be made that flooding the Chinese market with advanced GPU's will hamstring China's ability to build their own, just like they have done to our ability to manufacture. In fact that is exactly the case Jensen has made plenty of times. By holding back exports you are actually creating the market conditions in China for building advanced GPU's indigenously, CCP doesn't even have to do much, the market is responding. Who's immoral and unpatriotic then?

▲ ifyoubuildit 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Can you make the case for trade sanctions being a moral issue?

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SR2Z 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't the specific trade law being broken related to arms control and dual-use technology?

IMO it's not a terribly strong case to make while Boeing sells whole jetliners to China, but the law was put in place for both moral and practical reasons.

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toast0 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...

If the sanctions are to prevent buying the products of slavery, that's a moral issue, and violating the sactions is also a moral issue.

Same deal if the sanctions are to prevent selling things that will be used to carry out genocide/etc. That's a moral issue, so violating the sanctions is a moral issue.

I don't think there's an alegation that the GPUs will be used for immoral purposes, just that the US government has national security concerns. Those concerns may or may not be valid, and may or may not be served by having trade sanctions applied effectively, but I don't think that's a question of morality.

It's not de facto immoral to violate the law. It could be immoral to violate the law and conceal it.

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ifyoubuildit 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...

But then it would be the thing that is sanctioned that is the immoral activity, not the breaking of a sanction, right?

It's like you said, unlawful != immoral.

	▲	toast0 12 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you can make a case that breaking a rule intended to prevent immoral activity is in and of itself immoral, even if breaking the rule didn't result in the immoral activity. It's arguable either way, morality isn't a formal logic. There's no right answer, and it's mostly judged by popular consensus... If there is a final authority, they don't publish their notes. :p
	▲	jappgar 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It would be immoral to sell weapons to your nation's enemies but not to your allies. Unless you're saying that disloyalty and betrayal are not issues of morality. It's very interesting to read here that Jensen is immoral for betraying his wife but not for betraying his country.

▲ d1sxeyes 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Absolutely. Immoral and illegal/unlawful are separate things alogether.