This week, The Wire’s cover story was an excerpt of Pulitzer Prize finalist Mara Hvistendahl’s new book, The Scientist and the Spy, about the FBI’s investigation into a Chinese agricultural company’s efforts to steal American seed technology. The case, Operation Purple Maze, became one of the most notorious prosecutions of Chinese economic espionage in the United States. In this interview, The Wire’s David Barboza talks with Hvistendahl about the case, and her reflections on its implications for U.S.-China relations. What follows is a lightly edited audio recording of their conversation.
Mara Hvistendahl is an investigative journalist and the author of the book The Scientist and The Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage. Mara’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Popular Science, Scientific American, WIRED, and other publications.
David Barboza is the co-founder and a staff writer at The Wire. Previously, he was a longtime business reporter and foreign correspondent at The New York Times. @DavidBarboza2
