The Scientist and the Spy

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

By: Mara Hvistendahl

Narrated by: James Lurie, Mara Hvistendahl

A riveting true story of industrial espionage in which a Chinese-born scientist is pursued by the U.S. 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 herreporting 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 U.S. government. The Scientist and the Spy is both an important exploration of the issues at stake and a compelling, involving read.

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.

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.

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.

Well Written

This is a nicely woven story of both the personal and political sides of the events.

A great story marred slightly by political/cultural biases and wanderings

Overall, I loved the book. As someone involved in agriculture this was right down my alley. The performance was good. There were only a few things to note. First, the author discussed living in China. Those biases were evident. So were the political biases. The author also took time to wander about discussing more of these biases rather than keeping focus on the story at hand. Still, despite our obvious different beliefs, we "mostly" came to the same conclusions. However if the time given to the wandering were spent with more focus on corn breeding, corn breeders, and the main character, Robert, it could have been even better. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would love to listen to even more books about agricultural espionage.