Science - 31 January 2020

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 31 JANUARY 2020 • VOL 367 ISSUE 6477 517

PHOTO: REUTERS/JIM YOUNG

F

or many of us, the idea of indus-

trial espionage conjures up secreted

factory blueprints, copied chemical

formulas, and hacked computer sys-

tems. It calls to mind the high tech

and highly trained, the stuff of spy

novels and James Bond films. It does not

evoke Iowa cornfields—at least, no more

than a few scattered ears of corn missed

by a mechanical harvester might suggest

vulnerable trade secrets.

Yet some seeds are a source of intense

competition and controversy, and they

feature prominently among the many

purported and confirmed ob-

jects of economic theft. In the

United States, seed companies

have complained about having

their products “stolen” by com-

petitors since the very earliest

days of commercial breeding

and industrial seed produc-

tion. Before governments be-

gan allowing patents on plants,

it was easy—and legal—to re-

produce and profit from oth-

ers’ plant varieties simply by

harvesting and selling their

seeds. Breeders developed vari-

ous strategies for preventing

this, from special pricing to

contracts to trademarks to

producing F1 (first-generation)

hybrids, but it was not until

the advent of state-enforced

protections on a wide range of

agricultural crops in the 1970s that selling

someone else’s seeds became a crime.

In 2016, the conviction of a Florida

physicist on charges of conspiring to steal

trade secrets confirmed that seed theft had

also become, at least to those who influ-

ence U.S. federal policies and procedures, a

national security threat. The scientist, Mo

Hailong (also known as Robert Mo), pled

guilty to having assisted a Chinese com-

pany in acquiring corn seed lines owned

by the transnational seed behemoths

Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer.

The journalist and former Science cor-

respondent Mara Hvistendahl explores

the history of Mo’s strange and, ultimately,

sad career as an industrial operative in her

third book, The Scientist and the Spy. Al-

though Mo could be either the scientist or

the spy alluded to in the title, he is hardly

the real subject of the book. Hvistendahl

convincingly casts Mo as a “pawn in an in-

ternational struggle” between China and

the United States.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI) spared little expense in developing

a case against Mo. A 2-year period saw

73 agents devote time to the effort, 17,000

emails intercepted, hundreds of hours of

audio recorded and transcribed, and more.

All of this was done to defend the intellec-

tual property of two extremely profitable,

world-leading agribusinesses—“American

industry”—against the haphazardly orga-

nized incursions of an expanding Beijing-

based animal feed corporation that did

not even have the expertise in place to

efficiently exploit stolen seeds—“unfair

foreign competition.”

To understand why the U.S. government

devotes a substantial amount of taxpayer

dollars to investigating and litigating on

behalf of Monsanto—a company that not

only is in possession of an aggressive legal

division but also, at the time of Mo’s ac-

tivities, was under investigation by the U.S.

Justice Department for potential violation

of antitrust law—one really needs to appre-

ciate global politics.

Hvistendahl considers factors that range

from the FBI’s post–Cold War refashion-

ing, which contributed to a new narrative

of industrial espionage as a national secu-

rity threat, to the effects that greater meat

consumption in China have had on demand

for feed corn and, therefore, seed corn.

The consolidation of agribusiness features

prominently as well, a factor that both ex-

plains, and is explained by, the dogged

defense of patents on corn and other crop

varieties described above.

If there is a subplot that makes this book

essential reading, especially for those work-

ing in the sciences today, it is

Hvistendahl’s documentation

of the disturbing effects that

the too-vigorous pursuit of in-

dustrial spies has had on Chi-

nese scientists and engineers

in the United States. For nearly

two decades, the FBI and other

U.S. agencies have expounded

an account of China’s espionage

strategy in which the Chinese

government is said to rely on

“a dispersed network of nontra-

ditional collectors” rather than

professional agents. This vision

of a “ ‘human wave’ of students,

scientists, and engineers ... who

gather intelligence ad hoc”

wrongly implicates all ethnic

Chinese working in the United

States as potential spies for the

Communist Party.

Hvistendahl provides evidence that this

characterization, which evokes old racist

fears of “the yellow peril,” not only is funda-

mentally inaccurate with respect to China’s

state-led spy operations but also produces

racially motivated suspicion, hostility, and

harm. Wrongful investigations have ruined

careers and lives.

Is American industry really at risk? Or is it

values such as tolerance, openness, and jus-

tice that are truly in danger? Hvistendahl’s

foray through cornfields and courtrooms es-

chews easy answers to these questions, yet

her vivid observations and incisive analyses

will leave readers well equipped to arrive at

their own conclusions. j

10.1126/science.aba0297

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

ByHelen Anne Curry

Profits, prejudice, and plant patents

A journalist investigates a surprising act of espionage

The Scientist and the Spy:

A True Story of China, the

FBI, and Industrial Espionage

Mara Hvistendahl

Riverhead Books,

2020. 331 pp.

e

INSIGHTS

Iowa cornfields were the target of industrial espionage in 2016.

The reviewer is at the Department of History and Philosophy

of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK,

and is the author of Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding

and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America

(University of Chicago Press, 2016). Email: [email protected]

Published by AAAS