The Scientist and the Spy

A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage

By: Mara Hvistendahl

Narrated by: James Lurie, Mara Hvistendahl

Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

A riveting true story of industrial espionage in which a Chinese-born scientist is pursued by the US government for trying to steal trade secrets, by a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

In September 2011, sheriff’s deputies in Iowa encountered three ethnic Chinese men near a field where a farmer was growing corn seed under contract with Monsanto. What began as a simple trespassing inquiry mushroomed into a two-year FBI operation in which investigators bugged the men’s rental cars, used a warrant intended for foreign terrorists and spies, and flew surveillance planes over corn country - all in the name of protecting trade secrets of corporate giants Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer. In The Scientist and the Spy, Hvistendahl gives a gripping account of this unusually far-reaching investigation, which pitted a veteran FBI special agent against Florida resident Robert Mo, who after his academic career foundered took a questionable job with the Chinese agricultural company DBN - and became a pawn in a global rivalry.

Industrial espionage by Chinese companies lies beneath the United States’ recent trade war with China, and it is one of the top counterintelligence targets of the FBI. But a decade of efforts to stem the problem have been largely ineffective. Through previously unreleased FBI files and her reporting from across the United States and China, Hvistendahl describes a long history of shoddy counterintelligence on China, much of it tinged with racism, and questions the role that corporate influence plays in trade secrets theft cases brought by the US government. The Scientist and the Spy is both an important exploration of the issues at stake and a compelling, involving listen.

©2020 Mara Hvistendahl (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

“[A] fascinating and well-researched study.... Those looking for insights into the current tensions with China will be rewarded.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) 

“Not since Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest has a cornfield produced so much excitement.... Hvistendahl makes industrial espionage both understandable and riveting.... This is a complex story, but it's presented clearly and vividly, thanks to Hvistendahl’s background as a science journalist here and in China; to her exquisite pacing; and to her narrative skills... Hard to put down and harder to stop thinking about.” (Booklist, starred review)

"You will learn more about China from this thrilling, real-life drama than you will from a whole stack of China-related books by lesser talents. Mara Hvistendahl has given us an utterly original, provocative, and revealing tale of the relationship between China and the United States - and what a tale it is. Intrepid, humane, and always tough-minded, she writes with the lucid precision of a science writer and the flair of a seasoned spy novelist." (Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China)

Extremely Biased

There are two parts to this story. One is based in fact and an accurate portrayal of events. The other, read by the author, is composed of biased opinions and out of context quotes from weak sources and interviews. If your looking for fact based, informative reporting of a well documented event this book gets a 50% or F. If your looking for frothy opinions with extreme pro Chinese bias bordering on propaganda, this book gets 100% or A+.

Should have been a magazine article

Way too many opinions and unsupported opinions. When several chapters are written in the first person narrative you can almost be assured you have come across an author that does not have a firm grasp of the facts. A very weak effort.

Good overall

I enjoyed this book very much. I heard Mara Hvistendahl do an interview on NPR months ago and waited anxiously for this book to come out. The whole premise was very interesting and, overall, it was a great listen. My only complaint is Ms Hvistendahl’s narrated sections. She did great as a whole, but there were a lot of strange pauses in the middle of sentences that, by the end, got to be a big difficult to listen to. I still highly recommend the book, it is a great listen.

excellent. a well-researched character study.

This is a fascinating dive into stories that lie behind the headlines of industrial espionage, China and rural farms in Iowa. From the seed dealer to the charming but flawed scientist Robert Mo there are no knights in shining armor just as there are no thoroughly reprehensible bad guys. Instead we hear stories of people finding themselves accused based on little more than their ethnicity and see real criminals making stupendously ill-advised decisions that change the course of their lives. Those who enjoyed documentaries like the recent "American Factory" that explore the similarities and differences between American and Chinese mindsets will find themselves rewarded by this well-researched character study.

Interesting story ruined by woke politics

Skip the female narrative sections.
To the authors, just tell the story and skip the political narrative. What a shame.

completely misses the point

The book articulates well how trade theft is done, says it could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of lost dollars to the US, and then does an about face and says the $1-2b lost from the current trade war is more serious.

Quite unfortunate misunderstanding if the facts the book lays out. Also, it is incredibly partisan at the end, I'm not sure what happened to the authors.

Nearly perfect Audible but, with VERY minor pronunciation errors

An absolutely addictive book, with a so-strange-it-can-only-be-true, I can’t recommend this enough. In this, the audible version there are just a couple of glaring — yet minor — pronunciation mistakes in some of Mara’s parts as to location names in the US, but otherwise a perfect listen.

Skip woman narrator

Interesting story on Chinese espionage. Unfortunately the author is a China apologist and attempts to contort the story into something about xenophobia. I recommend listening to the book and skipping any chapter narrated by the author.

Interesting but not great.

Struggled to find the protagonist...perhaps that was the point? Robert and the Goverment play both the victim and the criminal and as always the overarching theme of US racism is creeping behind the corner. It's a fitting book for 2020.

Nice story but not as interesting as I had hoped

Really well researched and I liked Mara’s insertion into the story every so often with a macro perspective. However, I just didn’t find the story that interesting or exciting, and I found the second half of the book slow. But, the author did as much as possible to make this a compelling read, all the way to the end.

Slow starter!

This book caught my imagination when purchased, yet when reading the thoroughness of seed plantation did not need to be more or less spoken for 6 hours before the book broke into life. I understand people need a basic knowledge and understanding of the subject to hand, but it felt as though it was a degree I was study for, yet not knowing what examination questions would be at the end so read and learnt anything and everything for a few “meaningful matters”. Last two hours very gripping intense and insightful in what racism still is in our world. The first 6 hours very disappointing with minimal information needed for the conclusion.

An interesting trip in two world i knew little of

A really interesting performance with the story and analysis were split between two narrators.

its about 2 worlds I knew very little about and helps to open your eyes especially around the thought of China stealing IP which you'd assume from the media is a huge problem but perhaps we need to think about this narrative a bit more