Recorded Future News Announcer (3:11)

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Dena Temple Raston (3:37)

From Recorded Future News. This is. Click here. More than a century ago, China owed the United States millions of dollars. It was the price of defeat reparations after a brief war at the turn of the 20th century, Harvard historian William.

William Kirby (4:00)

Kirby explains the Qing Empire lost the Boxer War and had to pay a huge indemnity to the victorious Western powers who had defeated the Qing.

Dena Temple Raston (4:10)

But the US made an unusual choice. Instead of collecting it invested.

William Kirby (4:15)

The Americans gave a large part of this indemnity back to China. Used to educate young Chinese to study in the United States.

Dena Temple Raston (4:26)

It was a scholarship meant to spread democracy, a program that brought some of China's brightest minds to the US.

Katie Drummond (4:34)

And.

Dena Temple Raston (4:34)

That'S how a young engineering prodigy named Chen Shuishen arrived in the United States on that kind of scholarship.

William Kirby (4:41)

He came from an elite family. He finished at the very top of his class, graduating really at a period of great promise and growing prosperity in China.

Dena Temple Raston (4:52)

In 1934, Chen landed at MIT, then moved west to Caltech. He finished his master's degree in just a year and went on to earn a PhD under one of the most celebrated physicists of the era, Theodore von Karman.

William Kirby (5:08)

Von Karman would later describe him as his most brilliant student. And impressed by his quickness of mind.

Dena Temple Raston (5:18)

Von Karman became more than just a professor to Chen. He became a mentor. And when Chen began thinking about returning to China, it was von Karman who convinced him to stay.

William Kirby (5:28)

They persuaded him to stay at Caltech, stating that doing scientific research in the US will strengthen the anti fascist force for China.

Dena Temple Raston (5:38)

That was in fact the point of the scholarship program. To expose brilliant Chinese students to American values and hope they'd return home ready to fight fascism and steer China toward democracy. Chen seemed convinced. He stayed in Pasadena in and joined a group of engineers doing some early rocket testing.

William Kirby (5:58)

People who became known by friends as the Suicide Squad because a number of their experiments exploded. Not lethally, at least as far as I know.

Dena Temple Raston (6:12)

Those explosions weren't accidents. They were experiments. The spark of what would eventually become NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Then came World War II, and even though the US still hadn't given Chen citizenship, the country trusted him deeply. He was brought into the Manhattan Project, commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force. He was sent to Europe to interrogate Nazi rocket scientists. And in the years that followed, he decided to make the US his permanent home. But his timing couldn't have been worse.

William Kirby (6:45)

He applied for U.S. citizenship to be a naturalized citizen in 1949, the same year that the Chinese Communist Communist Party came to power.

Dena Temple Raston (6:55)

That year changed everything because as the Cold War escalated, suspicion in America shifted. China was no longer seen as a wartime ally. It was suddenly the enemy.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (7:06)

The fall of China to the communists remains a subject for intense debate. How did this happen? America's Warren Austin then accuses the Chinese Communists of open and notorious aggression. Chinese Communist regime by its actions has caused grave doubts to people all over the world.

Dena Temple Raston (7:25)

The fear mongering overtook reason and it's telling just how easily it crowded out the facts. Because not even Chen's decades of scientific breakthroughs could protect him. Not even his top secret wartime service.

Cole McFaul (7:38)

Professor Chan, we're with the U.S. immigration Service.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (7:41)

I'm Agent Emerson.

Dena Temple Raston (7:42)

This is from a mainland Chinese movie about Chen.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (7:44)

We need to have a little talk with you Professor.

Dena Temple Raston (7:46)

And Chen suddenly found himself in the crosshairs.

William Kirby (7:51)

The director of the Czech Propulsion act had come to believe that there were some spies within this the enterprise. And his suspicion fell on anyone Jewish and anyone Chinese.

Dena Temple Raston (8:03)

The FBI placed Chen under house arrest and investigated him for five years. But they found no espionage, no invisible ink, no blueprints smuggled to Beijing. And while he had his defenders, von Karman supported him.

William Kirby (8:19)

Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheime, who had worked with Chen on the Manhattan Project, supported him.

Dena Temple Raston (8:25)

It wasn't enough. In 1955, Chen was deported as part of a larger prisoner exchange. And he was furious.

William Kirby (8:33)

He told reporters at the time that he would never step foot in America again. And he never did.

Dena Temple Raston (8:40)

The United States had exiled one of its greatest scientific minds. And he wasn't alone.

William Kirby (8:45)

Between the years 1949 and 1956, 129 returned Chinese scientists went to work directly for as Chen did, the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Dena Temple Raston (8:57)

It was almost ironic. Just as the US fear of China was reaching its peak, the country handed Beijing a gift. Chen went on to become the father of China's space and missile programs. And many of the other Chinese scientists, they helped build the country's nuclear weapons, its robotics, its energy systems. Together these are the very technologies that today challenge American power. Universities in Congress eventually pushed back and the students came back too. America opened its doors again and the results were staggering.

William Kirby (9:38)

Thirty to 40% of the PhD students in the leading American research universities are internationals coming here for the opportunity.

Dena Temple Raston (9:49)

And most of them stayed. Three quarters of those PhD students built their lives here, starting companies, fueling innovation. Tech firms now make up 60% of all H1B visa sponsorships. More than half of the US's billion dollar startups have at least one immigrant founder. For a while, it looked like America had learned its lesson. But this spring, it all came roaring back when President Trump began questioning why so many foreign students are here in the first place.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (10:19)

We want to know where those students come. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come? And we're not going to.

Dena Temple Raston (10:25)

And here's where the past really grabs the present. By the collar. That voice of paranoia. It didn't just start with Trump. It started with Roy Cohn, who sharpened his teeth alongside Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare and then, decades later, whispered in Donald Trump's ear long before he ever went into politics.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (10:46)

One thing we have to understand at the outset is that the Communist Party is not a political party. It's a criminal conspiracy.

Dena Temple Raston (10:54)

That edge, the sharp defensive fear as strategy still cuts through. And Harvard historian William Kirby says, what it bred then, it's breeding again now.

William Kirby (11:05)

It's a moment which reinforces the sense of. Of mutual paranoia of the 1950s, which is healthy for nobody.

Dena Temple Raston (11:13)

The Trump administration is threatening to revoke student visas. And while the President has gone back and forth on this, the threat hangs over more than 275,000 Chinese students. And the pressure isn't just on them. Research dollars are frozen, deals are being cut. And the cost, that's harder to measure because America's edge in science was never a birthright. It was built brick by brick on openness, on funding, on trust. And now every one of those pillars is under threat.

Steve Blank (11:45)

I'm already trying to run twice as hard to keep up with China. Now. This is a severe body blow to the US national security, let alone our economy.

Dena Temple Raston (11:56)

When we come back, it's not just who we're turning away. It's what we're choosing not to build. Stay with us.

Katie Drummond (12:07)

What the hell is going on right now? And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week, I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun.

Dena Temple Raston (12:34)

I want a shark that.

Katie Drummond (12:35)

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid.

Cole McFaul (12:39)

So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content. That you see online. To the best of my ability.

Katie Drummond (12:48)

Every week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me, one day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the big interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Dena Temple Raston (13:27)

For decades, the US Led the world in innovation.

Cole McFaul (13:30)

But now the narrative is changing. From 10 years ago, China was a mass producer of cheap goods. Today, in more and more fields, China is now becoming the world's chief innovator as well as producer.

Dena Temple Raston (13:45)

This is Cole McFaul. He's a senior research analyst at Georgetown's center for Security and Emerging Technology. He says China has been making a massive bet on science and technology, what he calls S and T. And that bet is paying off by any kind.

Cole McFaul (14:02)

Of S and T metric that you want to pick. China is catching up to and in some cases surpassing the United States. Whether that's kind of number of scientific papers, paper citations, number of patents, China's really catching up.

Dena Temple Raston (14:16)

And here's the twist. This playbook isn't new. China borrowed it from U.S. science and.

Steve Blank (14:22)

Engineering lead started in World War II with federal funding and continued for 80 years until this administration.

Dena Temple Raston (14:30)

That's Steve Blank, a Stanford entrepreneurship professor, and he says America's edge wasn't inevitable. It was built with purpose. Before World War II, federal funding for research barely existed. Then the war changed everything.

Steve Blank (14:47)

They proposed something insane at the time which said, look, we ought to do military research and development, not yet weapons, but military R and D in universities.

Dena Temple Raston (14:57)

That decision birthed the institutions we take for granted now, like NASA, the National Science foundation, the National Institutes of Health. And it laid the groundwork for breakthroughs that rewrote modern Life. Things like GPS turn right and the Internet, MRIs, the flu vaccine, microchips and touchscreens. In China, they saw how successful this approach was and followed suit. Cole McFaul again.

Cole McFaul (15:27)

In 1986, for example, China establishes its National Natural Science foundation of China. And the inspiration of that just comes straight from the US National Science Foundation.

Dena Temple Raston (15:40)

They built their own nih. They created a NASDAQ style exchange to fund homegrown innovation. And they poured money into it, more than a tenfold increase in just two decades. Then they started to bring their scientists back home.

Steve Blank (15:54)

China copied our innovation ecosystem not because they wanted to build commercial technology, but they wanted to replicate our national security kind of Innovation ecosystem.

Cole McFaul (16:05)

And it's working so in 5G photovoltaics, advanced battery technology, commercial drones, and others. China is a global leader, and some would say the top leader in those technologies.

Dena Temple Raston (16:20)

This was never just an economic race. It was always about security. Which is why the Trump administration's downshift feels like more than just a blow to scientific discovery. It feels dangerous. Since April, the National Science foundation has cut more than 1600 research grants. Billions in funding gone at the very moment when innovation has never mattered more to national security.

Steve Blank (16:46)

And we essentially just handed the golden ring to China.

Dena Temple Raston (16:51)

They've read the playbook and now they're writing the next chapter. Given all that, it raises a question, why now? Maybe the answer's in a seating chart at Trump's inauguration. In the second row, next to SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The seating chart wasn't an accident. It was a signal. A signal that the Trump administration didn't see the future of science and technology running through government labs or public institutions anymore. It could well be handed off to them, to the private sector. But Steve Blank says if you stop the story there, you miss the bigger picture.

Steve Blank (17:42)

It's very easy to believe that, you know, all we need are a bunch of entrepreneurs and innovators to move faster than government agencies and, and therefore were done. CEOs seem to think their technology came from the stork and don't understand the seed corn that was planted for years or decades.

Dena Temple Raston (18:01)

Because those same companies that look like self made empires, they were built on government investment. Take Google. It didn't just sprout fully formed out of Silicon Valley. It grew out of a federally funded research program at Stanford. Because the kind of science that leads to real breakthroughs doesn't turn a profit overnight. Governments can afford to wait years, sometimes decades. Most industries can't. And that's the gap Cole McFaul says we should all be worried about.

Cole McFaul (18:34)

I mean, really, the private sector's ability to fund basic research is very concentrated in the biotech sector. And so, like, what about electrical engineering and mechanical engineering and computer science and these other critical technology fields that we know will define US China tech competition for years to come.

Dena Temple Raston (18:53)

And that's the thing. Restrictions made today don't just shape the next quarter, they shape the next generation. The people making those decisions, the ones deciding where America will lead and where it will lag, often know very little about how science actually works.

Steve Blank (19:09)

You have people barely who have probably never run a science lab making long term decisions about who's going to be the leader in science and engineering not tomorrow, but in five or 10 years.

Dena Temple Raston (19:21)

The administration has defended its cuts to research funding and visas, framing them in part as ideological. This time, the Red Scare rhetoric isn't about communism. It's about diversity, equity and inclusion. Which makes this all feel uncomfortably familiar and shows why Chen Shuishen, the brilliant scientist we talked about earlier, who was sent back to China, isn't just a cautionary tale. Here's a warning.

Steve Blank (19:48)

You know, science doesn't discriminate. That's the mistake that's being made here. And confusing ideology with science and engineering consequences, I think, have been played out multiple times when you try to do.

Dena Temple Raston (19:58)

That and when fear trumps reason, the institutions designed to push back. Often during the Red Scare, it took years for Congress, the courts, and even the press to find their footing, to finally say out loud what so many had only whispered. And then a voice broke through.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (20:17)

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

Dena Temple Raston (20:25)

That voice belonged to Edward R. Murrow, one of the most trusted journalists in America and one of the few willing to stand up and say the emperor had no clothes.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (20:34)

The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it.

Dena Temple Raston (20:50)

So Chen Shuishen's story isn't just history. It's a mirror. And if we're not careful, we may see our own reflection looking back.

Joseph McCarthy / Roy Cohn / Donald Trump (archive voices) (20:59)

Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night and good luck.

Dena Temple Raston (21:10)

This is Click here.

Recorded Future News Announcer (21:15)

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.

Dena Temple Raston (21:45)

Here are some of the top cyber and intelligence stories from the past week. It's Tuesday, September 16, and we start in Utah. Charlie Kirk, the right wing activist was fatally shot on the campus of Utah Valley University after a two day manhunt. Officials have A suspect in custody.

Cole McFaul (22:08)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We got him.

Dena Temple Raston (22:11)

That's Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirming that the alleged gunman, 22 year old Tyler Robinson, had been turned in by a family member. Investigators had sifted through hours of security footage and facial recognition software had come up empty. The FBI offered a hundred thousand dollar reward for information leading to the suspect. And that's when the public, not technology, delivered the break. Meanwhile, online, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok, was falsely insisting that Kirk had survived the attack. The truth and a graphic video of the killing was impossible to avoid. But it raises once again old questions about what we see on our screens and whether platforms like X and Instagram should do more to filter their content. Last week, the Trump administration announced that the dual hat arrangement, one commander leading both the NSA and US Cyber Command, will be allowed to continue.

Cole McFaul (23:11)

One one commander could ensure unity of effort between these two organizations.

Dena Temple Raston (23:18)

That's a reversal from Trump's embrace of the Project 2025 plan, which envisioned splitting the post. Trump even fired the last dual hat, General Timothy Hawke, in what seemed like a move to clear the way for a change. But senior officials now say that unraveling a 15 year structure could take years. And it's too costly and too complex, at least for now. So for the moment, Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman will hold both titles. OpenAI has signed a $300 billion deal with Oracle that is one of the largest contracts of its kind. And OpenAI, the scrappy startup that brought you ChatGPT, is now teaming up with a tech giant, Oracle. They've signed a $300 billion deal to work together to build massive AI data centers all over the country over the next five years. The project is called Stargate, and it will demand some 4.5 gigawatts of power. That's about two Hoover dams worth of electricity. Construction is already getting underway in Texas, and the cost astronomical. The scale unlike anything the industry has ever seen. And finally, a story about technology not dividing us, but reuniting us. Every pet owner's worst nightmare involves a cracked window or an open gate. She took off running and she got out of the gate and she was lost. Enter Petco's Love Lost, an AI powered database that allows you to upload a photo. And facial recognition software scans thousands of shelter images and vet records for a match. Her picture was the first one, one that popped up and I was like, that's her, that's her. Since Love Lost launch, there's been more than 100,000 confirmed reunions. A small but powerful reminder that sometimes machines really can bring something home.

Cole McFaul (25:25)

Foreign.

Erica Guida (25:31)

Was written and produced by Dana Temple Raston, Sean Powers, Megan Dietrich, Zach Hirsch and me, Erica Guida. I was the lead producer. The episode was edited by Karen Duffin, Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum, and contains original music by Ben Levingston with some other music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley and our illustrator is Megan Gough. Jesse Niswonger and Jake Cook do our sound design and engineering. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Tune in on Friday for Mic Drop, which features our favorite interview of the week. We'll see you then.

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If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up the day's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to TheRecord Media and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.