About the panel discussion

Competition for leadership in science and technology sits at the heart of U.S.–China relations. In his first term Donald Trump led a very hawkish policy toward China, including initiating new programs to counter economic espionage. The second Trump administration has had a more mixed approach, with advocates of tougher and more cooperative approaches battling it out behind the scenes. In parallel, the administrations attacks on academic research have been met with eager Chinese recruitment efforts. It is worth a close view at the different views and approaches toward tech and science competition with China currently vying to shape US policy.

DGAP is hosting two distinguished journalists who have reported in-depth on this issue. Eileen Guo, an award-winning reporter for MIT Technology Review, compiled a database tracking Department of Justice cases on Chinese espionage. Her report revealed that the DOJ struggled to develop a clear definition of malign behavior. Mara Hvistendahl, an award-winning journalist with The New York Times, will draw on her richly reported book The Scientist and the Spy, which follows one case of industrial espionage. In it she helps readers understand both the real dangers of espionage and the risks of misguided intelligence efforts shaped by racism, ambition, and corporate influence.

Input

Mara Hvistendahl is an investigative correspondent with The New York Times and the author of the book The Scientist and The Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage (Riverhead 2020), on a trade secrets theft case involving a Beijing company. She previously worked as an investigative reporter for The Intercept, the China bureau chief for Science, and a foreign correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Eileen Guo is a senior reporter for features and investigations at MIT Technology Review, where she focuses on how the tech industry shapes our world—often entrenching existing injustices and inequalities in the process. Her stories have sparked an EU antitrust investigation into Amazon's proposed acquisition of iRobot, led to suspensions of contracts and other changes in company policy, and informed ongoing efforts to develop US government standards to reduce bias in AI.

Discussant

Genia Kostka, Professor of Chinese Politics at the Freie Universität Berlin and SCRIPTS Cluster professor. Her research focuses on China’s digital transformation, environmental politics and political economy. 

Moderator

Michael Laha, Senior Fellow for China, DGAP

This is part of the event series Remaking America? Contesting Visions from Trump and Beyond, a cooperation between DGAP and the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (SCRIPTS) at Freie Universität Berlin. The series features leading thinkers, scholars, and policy voices from the United States who assess the emerging ideas and factions reshaping American democracy and foreign policy and their consequences for Germany and Europe.