alt Hacker NewsControversial and possibly politically incorrect take, but the People's Republic of China sends many, many, of its citizens to study at top universities and work at top companies all over the world. I'm sure even at sensitive defense related orgs too.
While I am sure that the vast majority of them are just regular people, I'm also pretty sure there are True Believers amongst them whose mission is to go out into the world and enrich themselves with the skills and knowledge to bring back to China and further the CCP's goals. Some of them might even attain citizenship in the country they go to while inwardly retaining full allegiance to the PRC.
Heck, I know people from other, friendly/allied countries who obtain US citizenship who, if you pose the hypothetical question "If your former country and the US got into a shooting war, who would you fight for?", they would pick their former country without hestitation.
And despite public policy and rhetoric sometimes stating how the PRC is becoming a rival or even existential threat to the Liberal Democratic World Order (TM), the Western democracies don't do anything to secure things. And quite frankly, I don't know if there is anything that could be done, short of getting into... highly controversial territory. Which if the situation were reversed, the CCP would probably not bat an eye to do.
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> knowledge to bring back to China and further the CCP's goals
You're forgetting to mention that they're also getting paid a lot of money. Quite a lot of people will sell out, given the right conditions, for that amount of money especially in lower CoL areas. To be honest, I'm sure Western governments and companies could do the same if they wanted to bring in the expertise from China.
Is there any other way to see it than just we are too divided and 50% of our own people just think we are the bad guys? What you describe is so obvious but one political side in the US at least pretends this isn't happening and actively does anything they can to hamper any response to it. I would love to be convinced otherwise because I am also part of the division, I truly don't understand the other side at all.
Controversial take: Democracy and the US are awful at keeping secrets, and are incapable of winning by an information delta, if we followed your strategy we would surely be doomed. Our greatest advantages come when we work in the open, and share knowledge and empower ordinary people and the world with technology. As things stand, we are funneling our brightest minds into creating proprietary (secret) technologies... And it turns out the only people for whom the technology is uncopyable or secret are... American citizens. The "proprietary" technology is trivial to steal, and legal protections don't matter outside of our borders, the legal protections and subsidies afforded to those building proprietary (secret) technologies only deprives Americans of the ability to innovate, while in peer nations like China, individuals and startups are totally free to use and enjoy American technology without any restrictions.
In late 2022 our telco soft eng team got purged and everyone who was even friends with people who might be Chinese were removed from the project. That included the original architect and product owner, both Americans but with Chinese roots. So there that!