>> I believe this will continue and I fully expect that at some point the United States will deem those born in mainland China, regardless of current citizenshi

>> I believe this will continue and I fully expect that at some point the United States will deem those born in mainland China, regardless of current citizenship, to be a security risk and they won't be allowed to work in areas of national security or national interest. For top secret programs, maybe that makes sense, but if you’re thinking it should apply to any science/engineering areas with broad national interest/security applicability, it’s not a good idea at all. First, besides the moral implications (handled by others), there’s the fact that it preemptively disarms the US of one of its greatest strengths: the ability to brain drain other countries of their top talent and add it to its own. How did we do the Manhattan Project? By taking in all the scientists fleeing Germany and about-to-be-occupied mainland Europe (and after that, Operation Paperclip gave us a leg up in the Cold War). This would be a massive self-own, and it’s not worth it just because it might somewhat reduce industrial espionage a bit. What we should do is give every STEM graduate school graduate in good standing from other countries full status and ideally a job. Having a Chinese grad student as an asset on a science project is practically a meme, and China is indeed a huge labor pool from which we can cherry pick the best and the brightest. It makes no sense for us to educate their elites and then force them to go home even when they want to stay and become Americans. And if blackmailing families back home becomes an issue or real fear, then the State Department should do something about it. We’re not powerless here. Having seen how the actions driven by fear of industrial/national espionage can often be far worse than the industrial/national espionage ever would’ve been, I’m wary of taking measures that would directly mitigate our greatest strengths. Let’s lean into the whole “Statue of Liberty” Nation of Immigrants mythology, and build on it. It is our strength and it’d be foolish to give it up due to fear that China will copy our stuff. I mean, they’re going to do that anyway, even if we put Chinese background people in internment camps. Our only chance is winning based on speed of innovation (which can’t happen if we spend all our resources on paranoia… paranoia has a MASSIVE overhead and slows innovation to a crawl… no one can steal our inventions if we stop inventing stuff!) and the cultural victory of acting like the good guys and being the city on the hill. Remember, this is a game we now have to play by convincing people to like us and be our allies. We are no longer the unchallenged hegemon like in the 90s; we need our allies.