A riveting true story of industrial espionage in which a Chinese-born scientist is pursued by the U.S. government for trying to steal trade secrets, by a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. In September 2011, sheriff’s deputies in Iowa encountered three ethnic Chinese men near a field where a farmer was growing corn seed under contract with Monsanto. What began as a simple … simple trespassing inquiry mushroomed into a two-year FBI operation in which investigators bugged the men’s rental cars, used a warrant intended for foreign terrorists and spies, and flew surveillance planes over corn country—all in the name of protecting trade secrets of corporate giants Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer. In The Scientist and the Spy, Hvistendahl gives a gripping account of this unusually far-reaching investigation, which pitted a veteran FBI special agent against Florida resident Robert Mo, who after his academic career foundered took a questionable job with the Chinese agricultural company DBN—and became a pawn in a global rivalry.
Industrial espionage by Chinese companies lies beneath the United States’ recent trade war with China, and it is one of the top counterintelligence targets of the FBI. But a decade of efforts to stem the problem have been largely ineffective. Through previously unreleased FBI files and her reporting from across the United States and China, Hvistendahl describes a long history of shoddy counterintelligence on China, much of it tinged with racism, and questions the role that corporate influence plays in trade secrets theft cases brought by the U.S. government. The Scientist and the Spy is both an important exploration of the issues at stake and a compelling, involving read.
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You will learn more about China from this thrilling, real-life drama than you will from a whole stack of China-related books by lesser talents. Mara Hvistendahl has given us an utterly original, provocative, and revealing tale of the relationship between China and the United States — and what a tale it is. Intrepid, humane, and always tough-minded, she writes with the lucid precision of a science writer and the flair of a seasoned spy novelist.
The only reason this book is two stars instead of one, is that I enjoyed how Hvistendahl told the story about Robert Mo’s espionage case. That I found interesting. However, Hvistendahl felt the need to interject herself into the book and distract from the main story. While writing about an espionage case, she makes a concerted and determined effort to water down the severity of foreign espionage and cast the U.S. and its corporations in a negative light. In between the chapters about Mo, Hvistendahl will narrate a chapter to promote her personal views that are held together with some cherry-picked research and sources. It leads to a disjointed narrative that does not flow well at all. It seems that Hvistendahl was trying to cram three books into one: one about Robert Mo, one about the evils of big corporations in agriculture, and one about the failures of the intelligence community and law enforcement community within the U.S. What we are left with is a mess, and half-formed ideas that are presented as truths.
Before there was a trade war, there was industrial espionage. To understand today’s fight between the United States and China, you need to understand the seeds of the conflict, and this book is on the money. A nonfiction thriller for our times.
The Scientist and the Spy is as compulsively readable as espionage thriller and as darkly troubling as any morality tale. Told with empathy, insight, and remarkable detail, the author shines a clear light on the increasingly relentless federal investigation, its Chinese targets, and the powerful government and business interests that drive the story to its fascinating conclusion.
Mara Hvistendahl is the most fluid of writers and the deepest of reporters, so The Scientist and the Spy unfurls with the style and pace of a thriller, yet it also illuminates a key American national security concern, which is the scale and scope of Chinese industrial espionage in the United States.
The Scientist and the Spy vividly illustrates that things happening in China today can be stranger and more spellbinding than in a thriller. Mara Hvistendahl’s solid research and science background make it such a convincing and thought-provoking book, which is a must-read in the context of the present trade war between the United States and China.
The Scientist and the Spy is a riveting tale for our times. It addresses some of the most important issues of our era, such as the Chinese drive to innovation in technology and industrial espionage, but does so through all-too-human characters with vulnerabilities, flaws, and often agonizing choices to make. If you enjoyed Bad Blood, you’ll find this fascinating.