What J. Robert Oppenheimer Can Teach Us About China
On December 3, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower issued a memo installing a “blank wall” between J. RobertOppenheimer and any government operations, cutting him off from any future classified research and his atomic project. This communique was the conclusion of a months-long audit filled with anti-communist, fear-mongering rhetoric. Led by Lewis Strauss, commissioner of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the hearings gave Oppenheimer no chance to escape humiliation — ultimately dooming his scientific career. Strauss had both personal and professional vendettas against Oppenheimer and used a routine security clearance renewal to oust Oppenheimer from his position at the AEC. Because the security audit was not an official trial, Strauss installed a biased panel of judges, withheld evidence, and bugged the office of Oppenheimer’s lawyer, successfully weighting the hearing against him. Strauss leaned heavily on interactions Oppenheimer had with known communists, including a 1942 dinner at which his friend, Hakon Chevalier, offered to pass information from Oppenheimer to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer rejected the offer as “treasonous” but elected not to report the incident to protect Chevalier, a decision that would heavily contribute to his political downfall. Despite testimonies in Oppenheimer’s favor from prominent scientists and government officials like Leslie Groves and George Kennan, Strauss stoked fears of Oppenheimer’s communist ties and played into public hysteria about communism to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Unable to access classified research or collaborate with many of his colleagues, Oppenheimer retreated from his public life, spending his time traveling and writing until his death in 1967.
Beginning in the late 1940s, intense fear of communist infiltration spread across the United States. Some alarm was justified. Scientists Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall were exposed as Soviet agents passing intelligence from inside Oppenheimer’s nuclear project, and the USSR made dozens of other attempts to steal state secrets. Yet, it was the reactionary and overblown response, spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy, that defines this era as one of the most shameful in American history. In a 1950 speech, McCarthy claimed to have a list of 205 State Department employees with known communist associations. McCarthy captivated the national conversation, capitalizing on anti-Soviet hysteria, and his accusations grew more outlandish and publicized as his prominence grew. Politicians, academics, celebrities, and other popular figures became targets of McCarthy and his supporters, who subjected them to public humiliation and exile on often
Sixty years after the decline of the Soviet Union, the United States finds itself in an economic and technological competition with another communist rival, and fears of Soviet infiltration have been replaced with concerns about China.
insubstantial evidence. President Truman established a review committee to investigate suspected communists. Hollywood executives created blacklists and employers were quick to fire anyone that came under scrutiny.
In August 2019, the FBI arrested a prominent chemistry professor at the University of Kansas on suspicion of spying for China. Feng “Franklin” Tao was a Chinese international that had been studying, teaching, and publishing in the United States for over a decade. Prior to his arrest, Tao was blackmailed by a vindictive co-author who submitted falsified evidence to the FBI. Despite fake evidence and at best flimsy links between Tao and a concrete security threat, investigators
in Trump’s Department of Justice pushed to indict Tao on espionage charges. Tao was later indicted on wire fraud charges over accepting grants from multiple universities, which universities often turn a blind eye to. Tao was fired from his position at KU and doubts he will ever conduct research again in the United States.
It is easy to see the similarities between these two cases. Both Tao and Oppenheimer were academics targeted by vindictive coworkers, investigated on exaggerated or falsified espionage charges, separated from their research, and shunned by their peers: both victims of public unease about foreign infiltration from a communist power. Sixty years after the decline of the Soviet Union, the United States finds itself in an economic and technological competition with another communist rival, and fears of Soviet infiltration have been replaced with concerns about China.
Anti-Chinese sentiment has been on the rise since Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, during which he accused China of “raping our country.” Crucially, he often failed to distinguish between Chinese nationals and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), equating the two in the eyes of his supporters and antagonizing innocent Chinese Americans. The FBI documented a 77% increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans and 65% of Asian-Americans described Trump as a “major reason” for this uptick in a 2021 Politico poll, perhaps resulting from Trump’s rhetoric describing the Coronavirus as “kungflu” or “China Virus.” Earlier this year, Dominic Ng, a Biden committee appointee, was falsely accused of working for the CCP by the far-right flank of the House, led by Texas Representative Lance Gooden. When Representative Judy Chu stepped in to defend Ng, Gooden accused her of being a foreign agent on Fox News, drawing comparisons to McCarthyism.
Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions founded the China Initiative, a Department of Justice program with the stated goal of preventing Chinese theft of American research and intellectual property. Franklin Tao was one of 148 defendants charged under the China Initiative. The program was plagued with accusations of misconduct and racial profiling. 88% of the defendants in China Initiative cases were Chinese nationals, and the vast majority of investigations did not result in convictions because of insufficient evidence. China Initiative defendants were often reported on innocuous mistakes like misreported visa information and subjected to public trials that did irreparable damage to their careers and social lives. Almost all did not even work on classified research or anything related to national security. Additionally, most notable examples of Chinese espionage in the last few years involved spies that were not ethnically Chinese, such as DIA officer Ron Hansen, CIA officer Kevin Patrick Mallory, or State Department employee Candance Claiborne, all of whom were arrested for passing classified documents to China.
The China Initiative was shut down by the Biden Administration in 2022 over concerns that it disproportionately targeted Chinese academics and failed to deliver on its security goals. The CCP has worked to disrupt and suppress American innovation, yet thus far the US has only resorted to xenophobia and the same ineffective tactics McCarthy championed generations ago under the guise of protecting national interests.
The Manhattan Project raised questions about how to balance national security and scientific progress. The effort at a solution, the China Initiative, was doomed to be politicized, racially biased, and ineffective. Although Chinese espionage poses a real threat to American security and economic preeminence, overreactions like the China Initiative can do more harm than good. Beyond the uptick in xenophobia and violence suffered by the Asian-American community, there are several reasons that an overzealous counterintelligence doctrine could negatively impact the United States’ scientific progress and economic development.
First, if Chinese academics fear persecution in the US, they may choose to remain in China, creating a reverse brain-drain. A “brain-drain” refers to disproportionate emigration by the highly-educated, which has typically benefitted destination countries like the United States. However, if the US mistreats its academics under the pretense of national security, highly educated internationals may choose to remain in their countries of origin, which would give China and other rivals the edge in the race to develop new technologies.
Additionally, punishing collaboration, specifically international collaboration, could significantly hamper scientific progress. Many of the China Initiative defendants were initially investigated over routine coordination with researchers in other countries. If appearing on too many bylines in Chinese papers or taking a position at a Chinese institution opens academics up to invasive FBI investigations, American academics may avoid the collaboration necessary to further their work.
To maintain its edge in discovery and industry, the US must refrain from wasting counterintelligence resources on xenophobic and ineffectual investigations and avoid antagonizing imported academic talent.
When the Biden administration released its national security strategy, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan directly referenced a Reagan-era policy referred to as “small yard, high fence.” The goal of this doctrine is to declassify the vast majority of intelligence and use most of America’s counter-espionage resources to protect the nation’s most vital secrets. For Biden, this means focusing on critical technologies, like superconductors, and keeping them “inside the fence,” while collaborating with a wide coalition of nations on other research. The vast majority of research done in universities across the United States becomes public shortly after it is completed. An even greater proportion is not related to national security. Therefore, to correspond with Biden’s national security doctrine, continuing China Initiative investigations would be a waste of the valuable resources the administration needs for its “high fence.” Indeed, the Justice Department moved to end the program in February 2022, but it is vital that the Biden
administration makes clear that academic collaboration will not be politicized or punished.
Another way the US can combat Chinese espionage is through established diplomatic tactics. Under President Xi Jinping, China has increased the frequency of its high-risk espionage projects, and the US must be vigilant about punishing these efforts in order to deter similar actions in the future. For example, when a Chinese spy balloon was identified in US airspace earlier this year, Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his diplomatic trip to China, leaving Xi scrambling to salvage normal relations, effectively punishing Xi’s reckless espionage policy.
In order to maintain its edge in discovery and industry, the US must refrain from wasting counterintelligence resources on xenophobic and ineffectual investigations and avoid antagonizing imported academic talent. The Biden Administration must adapt to a rapidly modernizing world where intelligence and scientific progress are more important than ever and protect America’s economic preeminence using both modern counterintelligence tactics and established diplomacy practices.
Most importantly, Biden’s counterespionage doctrine must restore the balance between progress and security that was threatened by Trump’s McCarthyist and xenophobic foreign policies — the same policies we should have learned to avoid seven decades earlier.
Toby Zimmerman ‘27 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at t.zimmerman@ wustl.edu.