Try free for 30 days
-
The Scientist and the Spy
- A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage
- Narrated by: James Lurie, Mara Hvistendahl
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $26.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Chinese Communist Espionage
- An Intelligence Primer
- By: Peter Mattis, Matthew Brazil
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage both past and present, enabling a better understanding of how pervasive and important its influence is, both in China and abroad.
-
Surveillance State
- Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
- By: Josh Chin, Liza Lin
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As a minority separatist movement strains against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI.
-
-
Bias
- By Sean on 29-09-2022
-
How Spies Think
- Ten Lessons in Intelligence
- By: David Omand
- Narrated by: David Omand
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former director of GCHQ, learn the methodology used by the British intelligence agencies to reach judgements, establish the right level of confidence and act decisively. Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.
-
-
Ultra boring mostly
- By Anonymous User on 16-02-2021
-
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms
- The History and Future of American Intelligence
- By: Amy B. Zegart
- Narrated by: Amy B. Zegart
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of US espionage, gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight.
-
-
Very Uninsightful
- By CP on 14-04-2023
-
To Catch a Spy
- The Art of Counterintelligence
- By: James M. Olson
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, offers a wake-up call for the American public and also a guide for how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets. Olson takes the listener into the arcane world of counterintelligence as he lived it during his 30-year career in the CIA.
-
Mossad
- The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service
- By: Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal
- Narrated by: Benjamin Isaac
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.
-
-
best Mossad summary I've heard.
- By Anonymous User on 16-04-2019
-
Chinese Communist Espionage
- An Intelligence Primer
- By: Peter Mattis, Matthew Brazil
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage both past and present, enabling a better understanding of how pervasive and important its influence is, both in China and abroad.
-
Surveillance State
- Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
- By: Josh Chin, Liza Lin
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As a minority separatist movement strains against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI.
-
-
Bias
- By Sean on 29-09-2022
-
How Spies Think
- Ten Lessons in Intelligence
- By: David Omand
- Narrated by: David Omand
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former director of GCHQ, learn the methodology used by the British intelligence agencies to reach judgements, establish the right level of confidence and act decisively. Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.
-
-
Ultra boring mostly
- By Anonymous User on 16-02-2021
-
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms
- The History and Future of American Intelligence
- By: Amy B. Zegart
- Narrated by: Amy B. Zegart
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of US espionage, gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America's intelligence agencies, and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight.
-
-
Very Uninsightful
- By CP on 14-04-2023
-
To Catch a Spy
- The Art of Counterintelligence
- By: James M. Olson
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, offers a wake-up call for the American public and also a guide for how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets. Olson takes the listener into the arcane world of counterintelligence as he lived it during his 30-year career in the CIA.
-
Mossad
- The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service
- By: Michael Bar-Zohar, Nissim Mishal
- Narrated by: Benjamin Isaac
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Mossad, authors MichaelBar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal take us behind the closed curtain with riveting, eye-opening, boots-on-the-ground accounts of the most dangerous, most crucial missions in the agency's 60-year history.
-
-
best Mossad summary I've heard.
- By Anonymous User on 16-04-2019
-
Overreach
- The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine
- By: Owen Matthews
- Narrated by: Saul Reichlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War—and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. Vladimir Putin lurched from a calculating, subtle master of opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime—and Russia itself—at risk of destruction. Why? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience working in Moscow, journalist Owen Matthews provides the answer. He takes us inside the COVID bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information.
-
-
Reads like fantasy
- By Matthew on 04-01-2023
-
The Long Game
- China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order
- By: Rush Doshi
- Narrated by: Kyle Tait
- Length: 18 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Long Game, Rush Doshi draws from a rich base of Chinese primary sources, including decades worth of party documents, leaked materials, memoirs by party leaders, and a careful analysis of China's conduct to provide a history of China's grand strategy since the end of the Cold War.
-
-
Better to read it rather than listened to it
- By Bradley Perrett on 31-12-2022
-
China Hand
- By: Scott Spacek
- Narrated by: Andrew Totolos
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by actual events: When a high-ranking Chinese general wants to defect to the US, the CIA tries to recruit a recent Harvard grad teaching at a Beijing university to exfiltrate the man’s daughter—a treacherous operation that could shape the balance of power for decades. The whole debacle was classified and buried. Until now.
-
The Spy's Son
- The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia
- By: Bryan Denson
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA's top veteran case officers. By day he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997 Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage.
-
Spy Schools
- How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities
- By: Daniel Golden
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.
-
Tractor Wars
- John Deere, Henry Ford, International Harvester, and the Birth of Modern Agriculture
- By: Neil Dahlstrom
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before John Deere, Ford, and International Harvester became icons of American business, they were competitors in a forgotten battle for the farm. By the turn of the 20th century, four million people had left rural America and moved to cities. With the tractor, a shrinking farm population could still feed a growing world. Tractor Wars is the untold story of industry stalwarts and disruptors, inventors, and administrators racing to invent modern agriculture - a power farming revolution that would usher in a whole new world.
-
The New Fire
- War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI
- By: Ben Buchanan, Andrew Imbrie
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous-in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.
-
Cold Rivals
- The New Era of US-China Strategic Competition
- By: Evan S. Medeiros - editor
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 19 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leading authorities analyze growing tensions in US-China relations and what this means for the future.
-
Countdown to Zero Day
- Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
- By: Kim Zetter
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility.
-
-
A Thrilling Eye-Opener
- By Jason on 20-05-2017
-
Private Empire
- ExxonMobil and American Power
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steve Coll investigates the largest and most powerful private corporation in the United States, revealing the true extent of its power. ExxonMobil’s annual revenues are larger than the economic activity in the great majority of countries. In many of the countries where it conducts business, ExxonMobil’s sway over politics and security is greater than that of the United States embassy. In Washington, ExxonMobil spends more money lobbying Congress and the White House than almost any other corporation. Yet despite its outsized influence, it is a black box.
-
The Brethren
- Inside the Supreme Court
- By: Bob Woodward, Scott Armstrong
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Brethren is the first detailed behind-the-scenes account of the Supreme Court in action. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong have pierced its secrecy to give us an unprecedented view of the Chief and Associate Justices - maneuvering, arguing, politicking, compromising, and making decisions that affect every major area of American life.
-
Code Name: Lise
- The True Story of the Woman Who Became WWII's Most Highly Decorated Spy
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1942: World War II is in full swing. Odette Sansom decides to follow in her war hero father’s footsteps by becoming an SOE agent to aid Britain and her beloved homeland, France. Five failed attempts and a plane crash later, she finally lands in occupied France to begin her mission. It is here that she meets her commanding officer, Captain Peter Churchill. As they successfully complete mission after mission, Peter and Odette fall in love. All the while, they are being hunted by the cunning German secret police sergeant, Hugo Bleicher, who finally succeeds in capturing them.
-
-
interesting listen, great story
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-2019
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.
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)
More from the same
What listeners say about The Scientist and the Spy
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Adam Webb
- 05-05-2020
Quite disappointing. Anti USA sentiments
I heard the authors interview on the podcast “Longform” and was immediately interested in the subject of industrial espionage. There are two narrators to this book - James Laurie who is quite good and secondly the author herself. The author is not a good narrator. She can’t maintain the even and consistent voice required to narrate professionally. Fortunately Laurie narrates the bulk of the novel. When the author narrates she has this appalling tendency to end every sentence with an upward inflexion. Just because you wrote the book doesn’t mean you should narrate it. Listening to the author narrate is akin to being forced to listen to a flock of adolescent girls talk. Needless to say I skipped the chapters she narrates after a while.
As to content, the book starts strongly on the topic of industrial espionage and was quite to my liking. But after some time, the subject strays to prosecutorial over reach of the FBI and the US Federal Government. The book becomes somewhat dull at this point and frankly, laborious. As the book progresses, an anti-USA sentiment rears its head and there is even a bit of Trump bashing in there which really diminishes the book.
Invariably, the author almost takes the side of the primary offender and sympathises with him. At the end of the day, he committed a crime and was convicted. The author cannot help but import systemic racism as a topic.
The book touches upon some interesting topics such as the ethical dilemma created by the FBI prosecuting intellectual property theft crimes on behalf of Monsanto and Pioneer given that much is made of Chinese government support for Chinese companies. This is a really interesting theme that goes unexplored.
Ultimately the book fails to thoroughly cover industrial espionage. It is at times poorly narrated and is a missed opportunity on the part of the writer.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful