THE SCIENTIST AND THE SPY

A riveting real-life crime story about economic espionage by China, seen through the case of Robert Ho, who tried to steal secrets from U.S. companies - and got caught.

In September 2011, sheriff's deputies in Iowa encountered three neatly dressed Asian men at a cornfield that had been leased by Monsanto to grow corn from patented hybrids. What began as a routine inquiry into potential trespassing blossomed into a federal court case that saw one of the men in the cornfield - Mo Hailong, also known as Robert Mo - plead guilty to conspiracy to steal trade secrets from U.S. agro-giants DuPont Pioneer and Monsanto on behalf of the China-based DBN Group, one of the country's largest seed companies.

The Mo case was part of the U.S. government's efforts to stanch the rising flow of economic espionage by Chinese companies - some with the assistance of the Chinese government itself - on American companies. And it's not an isolated one. Economic espionage costs U.S. companies $300 billion a year in lost revenue. As former Attorney General Eric Holder put it, "There are only two categories of companies affected by trade secret theft: Those that know they've been compromised and those that don't know it yet."

Using the story of Mo and of others involved in the case, journalist Mara Hvistendahl uncovers the fascinating and disquieting phenomenon of economic espionage as China marches toward technological domination. In The Scientist and the Spy, she shines light on U.S. efforts to combat theft of proprietary innovation and technology and delves into the efforts to slow the loss of such secrets. As technology and innovation become more and more valuable, government officials and companies around the world are growing increasingly concerned - and are increasingly outspoken about - the threats posed to Western competitiveness. General Keith Alexander, the ex-director of the National Security Agency, has described Chinese industrial espionage and cyber crimes as "the greatest transfer of wealth in history."

The Scientist and the Spy explains how the easy movement of experts and ideas affects development and the important role that espionage plays in innovation, both for the spies and the spied-upon. She also asks whether the current U.S. counter-espionage strategy helps or harms the greater public good. The result is a nonfiction thriller that is also a call to arms on rethinking how best to safeguard intellectual property.

Mara Hvistendahl covered China's renaissance in science and technology as a correspondent in Shanghai for Science and has written for The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harper's, and other publications. She is the author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. A fluent Mandarin speaker, she lived in China for eight years.