The Scientist and the Spy

by Mara Hvistendahl

  COLD WAR’S END: Paul Richter, “Cold War’s End Brings Enemy Gap,” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1991, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-09-30-mn-2212-story.html.

  COSTLY, INEPT, ANACHRONISTIC: Roger Morris, “C.I.A.—Costly, Inept, Anachronistic,” New York Times, June 10, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/10/opinion/cia-costly-inept-anachronistic.html?pagewanted=all.

  “New world out there”: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (New York: Anchor Books, 2008), 500.

  “new program of counterintelligence”: George Lardner, Jr., “CIA Seeks to Define New Role; Economic Espionage Sparks Wide Debate,” Washington Post, November 13, 1990, A1.

  “The law gives the FBI”: Robert Dreyfuss, “The New Espionage Scare: Spy vs. No-Spy,” New Republic, December 23, 1996, 9–10.

  the law’s biggest backers: Sometimes there was overlap with the intelligence community. One particularly vocal enthusiast was Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director who in the early 1990s sat on the board of Monsanto.

  spying on other countries’ firms: Stansfield Turner, “Intelligence for a New World Order,” Foreign Affairs 70, no. 4 (Fall 1991): 150–66. Also see John Hillkirk, “U.S. Move into Corporate Spying Gains Support,” USA Today, June 20, 1990, 1B. Other supporters of this approach included CIA director Gates and Senator David Boren.

  “the United States stole books”: James A. Lewis, “China’s Economic Espionage: Why It Worked in the Past but It Won’t in the Future,” Foreign Affairs, November 13, 2012, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2012-11-13/chinas-economic-espionage. Lewis is now senior vice president of CSIS.

  dedicated Economic Espionage Unit: Interview with FBI special agent Mark Betten and supervisory special agent John Hartnett, acting head of the FBI’s Economic Espionage Unit, June 2017.

  sentenced to seven years: “Chinese National Sentenced to 87 Months in Prison for Economic Espionage and Theft of Trade Secrets,” Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, December 21, 2011, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-87-months-prison-economic-espionage-and-theft-trade-secrets.

  emissaries of the Chinese government: The Economic Espionage Act divided crimes into two types: those that involved foreign government backing and those that did not. Defendants found guilty of stealing secrets with no clear government connection faced up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine. When a foreign government was involved, that rose to fifteen years and a $500,000 fine. A 2013 amendment to the Economic Espionage Act raised the maximum fine for individuals found guilty of spying on behalf of a foreign power to $5 million.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “irritating or ineffective”: This quote is from Ronald William Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 279.

  any other area of food production: Diana Moss, “Competition, Intellectual Property Rights, and Transgenic Seed,” South Dakota Law Review 58, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 548.

  spent on research and development: Research intensity increased from the 1990s to early 2000s, in the early years of genetically modified crops, but it has since dropped back to mid-1990s levels. Keith O. Fuglie et al., “Research Investments and Market Structure in the Food Processing, Agricultural Input, and Biofuel Industries Worldwide,” USDA Economic Research Service (December 2011), 16. Also see Moss, “Competition, Intellectual Property Rights, and Transgenic Seed,” 549–52.

  “most troubling phases”: Diana L. Moss and C. Robert Taylor, “Short Ends of the Stick,” Wisconsin Law Review 337 (2014): 339.

  to make up the difference: The high prices were passed on to consumers. Moss, “Competition, Intellectual Property Rights, and Transgenic Seed,” 552.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Aztecs believed that the world: Arturo Warman, Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance, trans. Nancy L. Westrate (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 35.

  “affixed by nature”: Betty Harper Fussell, The Story of Corn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 17.

  as rapidly as syphilis: C. Wayne Smith, Javier Bertrán, and E. C. A. Runge, eds. Corn: Origin, History, Technology, and Production (New York: Wiley, 2004), 152.

  in a Des Moines basement: John C. Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), 8.

  “self-building food-factory”: Fussell, The Story of Corn, 68.

  “corn in the hands”: Ibid., 67.

  remainder for $7.7 billion: Steven Lipin, Scott Kilman, and Susan Warren, “DuPont Agrees to Purchase of Seed Firm for $7.7 Billion,” Wall Street Journal, March 15, 1999, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB921268716949898331.

  a bubble diagram: This diagram originally appeared in Philip H. Howard, “Visualizing Consolidation in the Global Seed Industry: 1996–2008,” Sustainability 1 (2009): 1266–87. An updated version reflecting recent mergers and acquisitions is available at https://philhoward.net/2018/12/31/global-seed-industry-changes-since-2013/.

  nearly 90 percent: Jorge Fernandez-Cornejo et al., “Genetically Engineered Crops in the United States,” U.S. Department of Agriculture (February 2014), 8, https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45179/43668_err162.pdf.

  controlled 80 percent: Gene Kronberg, “Overview of the Seed Industry,” AgriMarketing 50, no. 8 (October 2012): 35–36.

  Microsoft’s licensing Windows: Testimony of Diana Moss, “Public Workshops Exploring Competition in Agriculture: Des Moines Area Community College,” U.S. Department of Justice/U.S. Department of Agriculture, March 12, 2010, 158.

  80 percent of all corn: Chris Leonard, “Monsanto Seed Business Role Revealed,” December 13, 2009, http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2009/12/13/ap_impact_monsanto_seed_business_role_revealed/?page=full.

  “consumers are harmed”: “Vigorous Antitrust Enforcement in This Challenging Era,” speech by Christine A. Varney, May 12, 2009, https://www.justice.gov/atr/speech/vigorous-antitrust-enforcement-challenging-era.

  “We must change course”: Ibid.

  “Monsanto investigation might have”: Peter Whoriskey, “Monsanto’s Dominance Draws Antitrust Inquiry,” Washington Post, November 29, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/28/AR2009112802471.html.

  “When I started farming”: Testimony of Fred Bower, “Public Workshops,” 132.

  “needed to feed the world”: Testimony of Harvey Howington, “Public Workshops,” 308.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  clueless once they set foot: U.S. v. Mo Hailong, Document 559–1 (December 22, 2015).

  Pekin High School’s teams: Richard B. Stolley, “Pekin Choose,” Sports Illustrated, November 23, 2015, https://www.si.com/vault/issue/1015972/15.

  “If God wants you”: Interview with Robert Mo. I was not able to confirm this with Wang Lei.

  first came to China in 1896: “New ‘Sherlock Holmes’ Translation Gets a Classical Chinese Twist,” Global Times, November 11, 2012.

  Holmes fought the evils: Paul French, “Sherlock Holmes and the Curious Case of Several Million Chinese Fans,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 9, 2014, https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/chinablog/sherlock-holmes-curious-case-several-million-chinese-fans/.

  set aside funding: Cong Cao, GMO China: How Global Debates Transformed China’s Agricultural Biotechnology Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 44–46.

  seeds were biological weapons: Ibid., 185.

  a genetically modified product: Ibid., 152.

  allowed it to fester uncensored: Ibid., 126–27.

  included stealing seed: Chuin-Wei Yap with Li Jie, “Spat over ‘Stolen’ GMO Seeds Touches Nerves in China,” Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2014, https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/05/06/spat-over-stolen-gmo-seeds-touches-nerves-in-china/.

  considered a state secret: Fred Gale, “China’s Agricultural Polici
es: Trade, Investment, Safety, and Innovation,” testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (April 26, 2018).

  same number of acres: U.S. v. Mo Hailong, Document 501–2 (November 20, 2015).

  cut off China’s supply: The trade war started in 2018 effectively did cut off China’s supply of American grain—a topic that is covered in chapter 39.

  critical to raising farmers’ incomes: Peter Wood, “Food Security and Chinese ‘Comprehensive National Security,’” Jamestown China Brief, March 2, 2017, https://jamestown.org/program/food-security-chinese-comprehensive-national-security/.

  China’s $16 billion: “China Updates Seed Law to Encourage Innovation,” Reuters, November 5, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/china-seeds/update-1-china-updates-seed-law-to-encourage-innovation-idUSL3N1301Y620151105?feedType=RSS&feedName=basicMaterialsSector.

  encouraging mergers and acquisitions: Zhou Siyu, “Sowing the Seeds of Doubt,” China Daily, August 3, 2011, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2011-08/03/content_13040950_2.htm.

  dragon head enterprises: Mindi Schneider, “Dragon Head Enterprises and the State of Agribusiness in China,” Journal of Agrarian Change 17, no. 1 (March 2016): 3–21. Also see Thomas A. Hemphill and George O. White II, “China’s National Champions: The Evolution of a National Industrial Policy—or a New Era of Economic Protectionism?,” Thunderbird International Business Review 55, no. 22 (March/April 2013).

  need for a “national hero”: U.S. v. Mo Hailong, Documents 559–4 and 559–5 (December 22, 2015).

  use the foreigners’ technology: U.S. v. Mo Hailong, Document 559–4.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  tilted stone sundial: A photo of this instrument can be found at William A. Joseph, “Sundial at the Forbidden City,” https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb57372037.

  Pianzi Jie, or Crook Street: Cong Cao, “Zhongguancun and China’s High-Tech Parks in Transition,” in Key Papers on Chinese Economic History Since 1949, ed. Michael Dillon (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 984. Also see Qi Zhong, “Zhongguancun zhuanji zuoji de boke,” http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4b78794d0100hit3.html [inactive].

  killed insects found only: Interview with Kevin Montgomery. This is Kevin’s interpretation of DBN’s work.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “contributed my best knowledge”: Harry Sheng to Rep. Milton Robert Carr, September 20, 1975.

  member of the party: Correspondence with Zuoyue Wang (a historian focused on transnational science in the mid- to late-twentieth century); also see interview with Li Yuchang in Weimin Xiong, Duiyu lishi, kexuejia youhuashuo: 20 shiji zhongguo kexuejie de ren yu shi (Beijing: Dongfang Press, 2017), 225–48.

  FBI file as “yellow”: “File No. 65-3265,” FBI, June 6, 1949. (Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI; requested as “copies of all documents related to the individual Hsue-Shen Tsien [Qian Xuesen],” September 2016; received December 2016.)

  putting pressure on their relatives: Iris Chang, Thread of the Silkworm (New York: Perseus, 1995), 152.

  SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL: Ibid., 156.

  contained critical secrets: Ibid., 160–61.

  near-constant FBI surveillance: Ibid., 173.

  allowed him to leave: Ibid., 188–90, 199.

  greeted him as a hero: Ibid., 199.

  testing a nuclear-tipped missile: Tsien also spawned interest in China in systems engineering, an interdisciplinary field focused on controlling physical and societal systems. The field helped shape the one-child policy, the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, and the evolution of the modern surveillance state. For more on this, see Mara Hvistendahl, “How China’s Smart Cities, Social Credit System and Mass Surveillance Were Sparked by Rocket Scientist,” South China Morning Post Magazine, August 5, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2158142/how-chinas-smart-cities-social-credit-system-and.

  “I grew up speaking”: Email correspondence with the author.

  “It was the stupidest thing”: Chang, Thread of the Silkworm, 200.

  “strong ties to the Orient”: J. Edgar Hoover, “How Red China Spies on U.S.,” Nation’s Business 54, no. 6 (June 1966): 6.

  “Western-trained scientists”: Director’s office, FBI, “Letter to SAC, Boston,” June 28, 1967. (Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI; requested as “copies of all documents related to the FBI program ‘Chinese Communist Contacts with Scientists in the U.S.,’ code-named ‘IS-CH,’” in September 2016; received November 2018.)

  cull names of ethnically Chinese researchers: The Department of Defense assembled a similar list in 1955, but the purpose was to address the question of whether ethnic Chinese scientists like Tsien could be allowed to return to China. The list included 5,000 people. The department determined that only 110 had technical knowledge that could endanger national security; 108 of the scientists were permitted to leave. One of the two who wasn’t allowed to leave was Tsien. Chang, Thread of the Silkworm, 188.

  estimated four thousand ethnically Chinese scientists: Further detail is given in R. D. Cotter, FBI, “Letter to Mr. W. C. Sullivan,” September 28, 1967.

  two hundred files: Special agent in charge, New York field office, FBI, “Letter to Director, FBI,” September 18, 1967.

  as many as seventy-five files: Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco Field Office, FBI, “Letter to Director, FBI,” November 24, 1967.

  seventeen years earlier: Director’s office, FBI, “Letter to SAC, Boston,” October 16, 1967.

  two thousand ethnic Chinese students: Special agent in charge, New York field office, FBI, “Letter to Director, FBI,” January 13, 1967.

  file of Tsien Hsue-Shen was reopened: Special agent in charge, Los Angeles field office, FBI, “Letter to Director, FBI,” August 2, 1967.

  relatives of his friends: Special agent in charge, Los Angeles field office, “Letter to Director, FBI,” November 29, 1967.

  returned to visit long-lost friends: Many U.S.-based scientists who visited China at the time used their trips as a way to bring up nuclear arms control, an important strategic goal for the United States. See Zuoyue Wang, “Controlled Exchanges,” in How Knowledge Moves, ed. John Krige (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).

  with “some hostility”: Jay Matthews, “China, Taiwan Woo Nobel Scientists of Chinese Descent,” Washington Post, October 7, 1977, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/10/07/china-taiwan-woo-nobel-scientists-of-chinese-descent/713994b6-ae1c-473f-a634-ca949eb3728e/.

  renounced his American citizenship: “Nobel Laureate Courts Controversy over Decision to Come Back to China,” Global Times, February 2, 2015, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1034613.shtml.

  monitored the phone numbers: Special agent in charge, Baltimore, “Letter to Director, FBI,” December 5, 1973. (Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the FBI; requested as “copies of all documents related to the individual Chih-Kung Jen” in December 2016; received April 2019.)

  Jen recalled that FBI and NSA: C. K. Jen, Recollections of a Chinese Physicist (Los Alamos, N.M.: Signition, 1990), 128–30.

  FBI followed him: FBI, “San Francisco, California: Han T’ang Mural Exhibition in the United States,” April 29, 1977, available at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/490414-chang-lin-tien-fbi-file.html. Also see Soumya Karlamangla, “Tracking UC Berkeley’s Former Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien,” Daily Californian, October 29, 2012, https://www.dailycal.org/2012/10/29/tracking-uc-berkeleys-former-chancellor-chang-lin-tien/.

  encompassed non-Russians: Michael Morisy and Robert Hovden, “The Feynman Files: The Professor’s Invitation Past the Iron Curtain,” Muckrock, June 6, 2012, https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2012/jun/06/feynman-files-professors-invitation-past-iron-curt/.

  “harass Chinese academicians”: FBI, “Chang-Lin Tien HQ 9252,” March 10, 1980, available at https://www.docu
mentcloud.org/documents/490414-chang-lin-tien-fbi-file.html.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “active and persistent perpetrators”: Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, “Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace: Report to Congress on Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage, 2009–2011” (October 2011), https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/20111103_report_fecie.pdf.

  James Bond Wannabes: “The Insider Threat: An Introduction to Detecting and Deterring an Insider Spy,” FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/insider_threat_brochure.pdf/view.

  vulnerable to flattery: Ibid.

  four thousand sensitive documents: “Chinese National Sentenced for Stealing Ford Trade Secrets,” FBI, April 12, 2011, https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/detroit/press-releases/2011/de041211.htm.

  microprocessor design trade secrets: Jordan Robertson, “Former Silicon Valley Engineers Sentenced to 1 Year for Chip-Design Theft,” Mercury News, November 21, 2008, https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/11/21/former-silicon-valley-engineers-sentenced-to-1-year-for-chip-design-theft/.

  what she purported to be: When I called Cheng after the conclusion of the case, she told me that she had no knowledge of any illegal activity. She recalled of Robert, “Whenever he talked to people, he strikes people as someone who is pretty sincere, and he’s always wearing a smile. . . . But we just didn’t know that they were doing all of these illegal activities as they were visiting the United States.” After his arrest, she added, she and her colleagues “were all very shocked.”