Trump Administration's Visa Crackdown on Chinese Students Threatens U.S. AI Research and Innovation

Trump's Crackdown on Foreign Student Visas Could Derail Critical AI Research

The US says it will "aggressively revoke" Chinese student visas and has paused interviews for all student visa applicants. Experts warn the moves could weaken American leadership in STEM. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the US plans to "aggressively revoke" the visas of Chinese students, including those working in critical fields or with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Experts warn the move -- along with the Trump administration's broader crackdown on international students -- could drain American scientific labs of top STEM talent and upend cutting edge research in areas like artificial intelligence. "If you were aiming to help China beat the US at AI, the first thing you would do is disrupt the flow of top talent from all around the world into the US," says Helen Toner, director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. While it has a population only about a quarter the size of China, "the US has had a huge asymmetric advantage in attracting the cream of the global crop," she adds. Several close Trump allies, including Elon Musk, have argued that attracting the best engineers from around the world is essential for the US to maintain its technological dominance. But more populist figures in the White House, like top policy chief Stephen Miller, have long advocated for reducing immigration levels -- seemingly at any cost. "It is almost funny, because the White House has said that artificial intelligence is one of the top priorities for this country, but now they are trying to send the people who are doing this kind of research home," says Zilin Ma, a PhD student from China studying AI computer interfaces at Harvard University, which has been at the center of the Trump administration's crusade against US colleges. Rubio's announcement came the day after the State Department sent a cable to US embassies ordering them to temporarily suspend scheduling interviews for all prospective international students, regardless of their country of origin. The cable, which was leaked to Politico, said the pause would allow the Trump administration time to consider potentially expanding social media screening procedures for visa applicants. The State Department declined to answer questions from WIRED about changes to its student visa policies. In an unsigned email, the department's press office said it doesn't comment on internal communications and noted that the US government has required visa applicants to share information about their social media accounts since 2019. Vincent Conitzer, a computer scientist specializing in AI at Carnegie Mellon University, says America's ability to attract top talent has been an important and longstanding asset for its domestic tech industry, which is already facing growing international competition. "The rest of the world has for a long time envied the US for being able to attract the world's best students," Conitzer says. "That's not to say that we shouldn't screen students who want to come into this country, but they need to understand that they'll be treated fairly, or none of them are going to come in the first place, and that will hit the US hard -- the economy, the technology base, and more." More than 880,000 international students, mostly from India and China, were enrolled at US colleges and universities in the 2023-24 academic year. Foreigners make up particularly large shares of STEM graduate programs: Over 36 percent of STEM master's degrees and 46 percent of STEM PhDs in the US were awarded to international students in the 2021-2022 academic year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Trump administration claims Chinese students 'exploit' U.S. universities

Beijing wants talented Chinese studying overseas to return home. But are Chinese students in the United States really a national security threat? A State Department pledge to revoke a record number of Chinese student visas has jolted U.S. higher education, reigniting debate over whether the country can remain a top international academic destination as the Trump administration's hardening national security stance -- and "America First" doctrine -- grow increasingly at odds with the 277,000 Chinese students on U.S. campuses. Late Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a brief statement saying that the United States will "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields." It will also "revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications" for people from China and Hong Kong. The State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to see the action through, Rubio said. In recent decades, Beijing has pushed to recruit highly talented students back to China, aiming to harness foreign expertise for its own development -- including in defense, cyber and artificial intelligence fields. But the broad scope of that effort risks casting suspicion on a much wider pool of students who are vital to research and funding at many top American institutions. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce on Thursday said the United States "will not tolerate the [Chinese Communist Party's] exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition." Asked how exactly the revocations might work in practice, she said, "we don't give details about what our methods are regarding visas." The move comes as a fragile truce between Washington and Beijing shows signs of unraveling. On Friday, President Donald Trump accused China of having "totally violated" a 90-day agreement reached in May, which had temporarily reduced U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods from a peak of 145 percent to 30 percent. The visa policy also comes as the State Department steps up enforcement against protesters on college campuses, with Rubio saying some 300 visas, including some student and visitor visas, have been revoked. The administration has targeted Harvard University in particular, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem on May 22 ordering her department to cut off the university's ability to admit international students. Noem blamed Harvard for allegedly allowing "anti-American, pro-terrorist" foreigners and working with the Chinese Communist Party by hosting and training members of its paramilitary group. Harvard has responded by mounting a legal challenge to the ban on international students, prompting a Massachusetts judge to temporarily block the Trump administration's move. International students make up more than a quarter of Harvard's student body -- the largest share of whom are Chinese. Unlike some high-profile cases where students have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and ushered into deportation proceedings, visa revocations do not necessarily trigger immediate removal -- but they bar individuals from returning to the United States if they leave. Beijing's embassy in Washington condemned the State Department's move as "politically motivated and discriminatory." Chinese social media has erupted with anxious debate over whether students should continue applying to U.S. universities, as visa uncertainty deepens. "I think now there's a real question about whether the U.S. border policies are stable enough," said Erin, a 20-year-old from Shanghai who was planning to matriculate at Harvard this fall. She declined to give her full name, citing her ongoing visa process. In a group chat of incoming Harvard students, she said, many are panicked and hoping the issue resolves before the semester begins. A few have already dropped out, exploring options in the United Kingdom instead. "The problem now is no one knows what will happen." While the State Department and Rubio have framed the visa revocations as a national security measure, senior Trump allies -- including Vice President JD Vance -- have also cited a desire to curb competition for American students. In a gathering with reporters on Friday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller further hinted that the motivations for the policy went beyond national security concerns. He said the policy shift was also about downgrading the status of foreign students compared to U.S. counterparts, in the interest of promoting "American genius." "We cannot have a policy in America where every citizen of this country, whether looking for a job, whether they're looking for housing, whether they're looking for a government benefit in a time of need, has to compete with all of planet Earth," Miller said. Analysts say the widening rift with Beijing over technology and trade likely is a driving force for the student visa revocations. "I'd read it as symptomatic of a larger toxic relationship," said Jake Werner, China program director at the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "Every major country spies ... but that doesn't mean every Chinese person is a spy." Over the past two decades, China has ramped up efforts to lure home students and scholars educated abroad. Known as haigui, or "sea turtles," these returnees are prized as vital assets in Beijing's push for industrial and technological dominance. Beijing and provincial governments have poured billions of dollars into luring overseas Chinese talent home -- building databases of high value Chinese talents abroad and staging targeted recruitment drives with housing and pay incentives. Across China, talent-focused industrial zones with names like the "European Semiconductor Returnee Talent Entrepreneurship Park" and the "Overseas Chinese Student Pioneer Park" have sprung up. Perhaps the most controversial of these initiatives is the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), launched in 2008 to financially incentivize top scientific, academic and entrepreneurial talent across primarily overseas Chinese. While not officially a national security program, it has become a lightning rod for U.S. lawmakers, who argue it has enabled Beijing to siphon off U.S.-funded research. Receiving money from the TTP isn't inherently illegal, but prosecutors have charged recipients with fraud and tax crimes for violating grant rules and failing to disclose their ties to Chinese programs while also receiving U.S. research funding. In 2020, Ohio State University rheumatologist Song Guo Zheng pleaded guilty to making false statements on National Institutes of Health grant applications by failing to disclose his affiliation with the Thousand Talents Plan. He was sentenced to 37 months in prison. Separately, Emory University neuroscience professor Xiao-Jiang Li was convicted of filing a false tax return after failing to report his involvement with the program. Part of the challenge in ramping up U.S. vetting is the strain it places on resources. In 2020, during his first term, Trump introduced rules barring Chinese students who had studied at or received funding from universities tied to Beijing's "civil-military fusion" strategy -- China's effort to integrate private-sector innovation with military development. Screening hundreds of thousands of Chinese students presents steep challenges -- and binary judgments based on university or party affiliations often fail to capture the nuance of individual backgrounds. The murky ties between universities and the state, along with the vague, often expansive definition of civil-military affiliations, make it difficult to assess individual risk. Political status is equally hard to parse: some 100 million people belong to the Communist Party, often as a practical route to career advancement rather than a sign of ideological commitment. Hundreds of millions more have familial or professional links to the party. As a result, the rules are applied opaquely and -- in some instances -- indiscriminately. Some students, including long-term U.S. residents, have been denied reentry without explanation, and many say they have no connection to the Chinese military or affiliated institutions. "From my sense, the [new] administration is taking a much more expansive definition," said Tai Ming Cheung, director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, adding that he's yet to see a precise definition of how the administration intends to identify students in "critical fields" or with "connections to the Chinese Communist Party." Kitsch Liao, associate director of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, noted both the broad threat of Chinese students researching sensitive areas such as aerospace, and the narrower but more pointed concern of spying. "China like many other countries does engage students to assist in stealing IPs and other espionage and influence operations," he said. "The issue is whether this is the right way to tackle this problem," Liao said, referring to the Trump administration's expansive visa restrictions. "There are a lot of downsides if this approach is done incorrectly." He cited the so-called father of China's ballistic missile program, Qian Xuesen. Born in China, he went on study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was on the founding team of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Eisenhower administration deported him back to China in 1955 amid Cold War Red Scare fears. "So he went back and helped them build their missile program," Liao said. "You don't want that to happen." The U.S. crackdown on Chinese visas follows mounting Republican pressure, including calls to revive the controversial China Initiative, which expanded legal scrutiny of Chinese scholars in Trump's first term. More recently in March, GOP lawmakers introduced a bill that, while unlikely to pass, would explicitly ban all visas for Chinese nationals seeking to study in the United States. On Friday, Democrats on the typically hawkish House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party condemned the move, urging an evidence-based approach. "Turning away all Chinese students through an untargeted, discriminatory policy undermines our values, spreads a culture of fear, fuels anti-Asian hate, weakens our institutions, and plays into the hands of our adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party itself," the group said in a statement.

Rubio's move to revoke Chinese students' visas sparks condemnation

Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears before the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Tuesday in Washington. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images hide caption News that the U.S. will "aggressively" begin revoking visas held by Chinese students reverberated through China as well as U.S. education institutions relying on Chinese talent this week, drawing wide condemnation. Education groups and academics argue the overall benefits of welcoming students from China have created a net positive for American innovation and economic growth. "The chilling effect on potential students will be enormous," warns Rosie Levine, the executive director of the U.S.-China Education Trust, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. "By turning away Chinese students, the U.S. will lose a critical reserve of soft power and talent that directly contributes to our competitiveness." Trump administration officials argue Chinese students are a national security risk because they return to China with American know-how and can help facilitate intellectual property theft while in the U.S. Members of Congress have alleged that some Chinese students could be used in state espionage campaigns and pose security risks to universities that receive federal funding. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that affected students will include "those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," adding that "we will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong." "We will not tolerate the CCP's exploitation of U.S. universities or theft of U.S. research," said Tammy Bruce, a State Department spokesperson, on Thursday, in response to a journalist's request to clarify Rubio's announcement. Until last year, China was the biggest source of foreign students in the U.S., but it has been overtaken by India as China's tensions with the U.S. accumulate. There are nearly 280,000 Chinese students currently in the U.S. In 2020, to stop intellectual property theft, the United States started to screen Chinese graduate students who wished to do research in the U.S. for potential military ties. Nicholas Burns, who served as the American ambassador to China during the Biden administration, says if a Chinese citizen has connections to the military or the intelligence services, "Certainly we don't want those people in our country." But Burns calls it "not rational" to revoke visas from such a broad category of Chinese students: "To essentially say to those people, largest country in the world, along with India, 'you are hereby excluded from the United States if you have any connection whatsoever with the Communist Party,' I think that's shortsighted." For decades, the allure of a prestigious American education has endured among Chinese families and students, even when U.S.-China relations have soured. "I would say that Chinese parents, they believe that the U.S. News and World Report ranking [of colleges and universities] is the Bible, and they want to attend the very best school," says Brian Taylor, a managing partner at Ivy Coach, an admissions counseling company that says about one-tenth of its clientele comes from China. Yingyi Ma, a sociology professor at Syracuse University, has termed the craze in China for elite American universities an education "gospel" that appeals to Chinese parents seeking alternatives to the ultra-competitive and rigid Chinese education system. Books like Harvard Girl, detailing how the author gained admission to the elite university, became bestsellers and students who gained entry to Ivy League schools were catapulted to celebrity status in China, going on talk shows and becoming speakers. "The whole soft power of American education and the U.S. culture is still very palpably felt," says Ma. So strong is the allure of a prestigious American education that even China's political elite send their progeny to the United States to study. Chinese leader Xi Jinping sent his daughter to Harvard for her undergraduate education. The son of his political rival, the jailed politician Bo Xilai, also went to Harvard for a master's degree and later earned a law degree from Columbia University. Many middle-class Chinese parents see higher education and a chance to work abroad as pathways to professional success. "We call that the China dream. It's so similar, ironically, to the American dream," says Tomer Rothschild, one of the founders of U.S.-based Elite Scholars of China, a consulting company that counsels mainly Chinese students as they apply to top-ranked U.S. universities and colleges. A 2022 study by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology found around 90% of Chinese nationals who came to the U.S. to study in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields between 2000 and 2015 stayed and worked in the U.S. after graduating, contributing to scientific fields in the U.S. "That's a really important force multiplier for the United States," says Cole McFaul, a research analyst who monitors U.S.-China tech competition at CSET. A tally by the Institute of Progress think tank of 25 leading American artificial intelligence companies found a majority were founded by entrepreneurs born in China and India. As demand for science and technology research has grown in the U.S., universities have expanded the number of graduate and postdoctoral students they employ. About half of those working in STEM fields are now are foreign-born, according to the National Science Foundation. "I see that as America's No. 1 advantage in our kind of tech competition with China. That's something that China is not able to do, right? They aren't a big draw for foreign students, and so this kind of free and open research ecosystem that we've nurtured over the last 75-plus years is a tremendous strength for the U.S.," says McFaul. Now that strength is at risk, says Levine of the U.S.-China Education Trust. "These overly broad policies will undermine these benefits in pursuit of narrow national security goals," she says, referring to Rubio's announcement on visa revocations. In 2018, Trump White House aide Stephen Miller advocated banning all students from China in the U.S. Later, the Trump administration reportedly floated but did not ultimately pursue the idea of a travel ban for Communist Party members and their families. This week, the U.S. also said it was pausing any new interview slots for all student visa applications, sending waves of anxiety through Chinese students in the process of applying for visas to begin their fall semester in the U.S. "Many of them are losing their minds," says Rothschild, the college counselor, of anxious Chinese families he is in touch with over the new policy developments. Earlier this year, the Trump administration also tried and failed to terminate the immigration status of at least 1,800 foreign students, many of whom are Chinese citizens. Even before Rubio's announcement, the number of Chinese students opting to come to the U.S. was falling. Some are choosing to stay at home; China has been pouring funding into its own public universities, which are now globally competitive in medicine and engineering and hope to retain Chinese students who would otherwise opt to study abroad. Other Chinese students are choosing other Anglophone countries like the United Kingdom and Canada. "Overall, the cachet is going down," says Ma of American universities. "Really, you only have the most motivated students and the most motivated families that are sending their children abroad."

Rubio says U.S. will "aggressively" revoke visas for many Chinese students

In the latest and most drastic move yet to curtail the numbers of international students studying in the U.S. the federal government will "aggressively" revoke visas from Chinese students and enhance scrutiny for future applicants, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "Under President Trump's leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," Rubio said in a statement. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong." Depending on how broadly the State Department and Department of Homeland Security define these criteria, the edict could affect many of the 280,000 or so Chinese high school, university, and graduate level students currently in the U.S. Rubio did not define what he meant by "critical fields," but he likely means students working in areas like semiconductor engineer or aerospace where the U.S. and China are technological rivals. During the first Trump administration, thousands of mostly graduate-level Chinese students had their visas revoked, particularly if their research was in cutting-edge engineering fields that may have dual-use applications. The newest move to pare back the numbers of Chinese students in the U.S. will likely further strain a bilateral relationship that has been imperiled by another trade war and serious technological competition over artificial intelligence and semiconductor chips. Revoking visas from Chinese students is also yet another blow to the American higher education system, from which the Trump administration has cut billions of dollars of funding. Some smaller, private colleges and boarding schools have come to rely financially on foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. For decades, prestigious research universities have also been able to recruit from vast pools of talented and highly-educated students from China. Earlier this spring, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the records of about 1,800 international students, including some Chinese citizens, from a national database, a move that jeopardized their student visas and which was challenged by dozens of lawsuits nationwide. The termination of those records in what is called the SEVIS database was ultimately reversed by a federal judge, but immigration officials said they would still pursue more restrictive policies for foreign students. This week, the State Department said in a cable it was pausing interview signups for student visa applicants in order to adequately screen their social media profiles, prompting waves of anxiety among Chinese students in the process of finalizing their student visas to the U.S. for the upcoming fall semester. China's foreign ministry this week called on the U.S. to "protect the legitimate rights and interests of international students, including those of Chinese students." For decades, China was the biggest source of international students to the U.S., but those figures have declined steadily after tensions with the U.S. worsened and a global coronavirus pandemic temporarily closed borders. Last year, the volume of students hailing from India eclipsed China.

Don't Close the Door on Chinese Talent. Ending Visas Will Hurt America More Than It Hurts China.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio's announcement last week that the Trump administration will "aggressively revoke" visas of Chinese students in the U.S. is the diplomatic equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. In the last 25 years, more than 50,000 Chinese visa-holders who earned doctorates at American universities in science, technology, engineering and math have remained in the U.S. after graduation, according to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. That brain drain from China has dramatically benefited our nation, with Chinese graduate students leading cutting-edge research in nanotechnology and batteries for next-generation drones, and creating startups collectively valued at $100 billion, according to the National Foundation of American Policy, a nonprofit research group focused on immigration. Evicting talent like this from the United States would severely undermine America's global edge in scientific research, particularly at a time when the Chinese Communist Party is focusing on a major push at home to promote world-leading innovation in artificial intelligence, drones and electric vehicles. Rubio's vow that the U.S. will tightly scrutinize all future visa applications for people from China and Hong Kong is likely not just a question of potential national security threats posed by the 277,000 Chinese students currently here, who represent one-fourth of all foreign students in the U.S. It also appears to be part of a larger pressure campaign by the Trump administration to punish China over stalled trade and tariff talks and delays in resuming the export of rare earth minerals to the U.S. While the scope of this policy change remains unclear, it signals a step towards more extreme measures, such as a separate bill proposed by anti-China hardliners in Congress that would ban all Chinese nationals from entering the U.S. on student or research visas, regardless of their field of academic study. If this dangerously isolationist tendency prevails, such restrictions will effectively end a 50-year history of scholarly exchange that has greatly favored the U.S. Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping embraced his nation's tech sector by publicly reconciling with China's highest-profile e-commerce founder, billionaire Jack Ma, who was on the outs with the communist leadership for criticizing China's financial regulators in 2020. On March 6, China's Communist Party announced the creation of a $138 billion fund to capitalize on Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek's recent breakthroughs. Tech advances in China have even begun to buttress the country's global soft power. Western social media influencers are increasingly traveling in China and flooding TikTok with stories about the country's dancing robots, drones that deliver fast food and flying taxis. Rubio said last week that the State Department would work with the Department of Homeland Security to scrutinize students with suspected ties to the Chinese Communist Party and those studying "critical fields" that could pose a risk to U.S. national security. In Trump's first term, he passed a proclamation that led to the cancellation of some 3,600 visas held by Chinese students between 2020 and 2022. The order, which was left in place by the Biden Administration, primarily targets eight Chinese universities with overt ties to the Chinese military. The Trump administration's latest move to expand its scrutiny to anyone with membership in the Chinese Communist Party could affect as many as 20% of all visa applicants from China. That's because many urban middle-class Chinese become party members not out of ideology, but to advance their careers, since party membership opens the door to better jobs if they work in China. A ban on visas for Chinese students studying in critical scientific fields could have an even broader impact. In areas such as AI, Chinese nationals make up 27% of researchers at U.S. universities. Congress is considering an even more drastic approach through the "Stop CCP Visas Act," which proposes banning visas for all Chinese nationals studying at American universities. One of the bill's sponsors, Rep. Riley Moore, a Republican of West Virginia, has relied on three incidents involving Chinese graduate students over the last few years to portray all students as spies and agents of the communist party. The reality is that senior U.S. counter-intelligence officials have in the past assessed that the overwhelming majority of Chinese students pose no threat. Chinese researchers are an integral part of our nation's scientific pipeline. Chinese nationals, many of them from China's top universities, represent 16% of all doctoral students in scientific fields at U.S. universities. Chinese Ph.D. graduates overwhelmingly choose to stay in the U.S., with some 90% remaining here at least ten years, according to a report by Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, attracted by better economic opportunities. Given China's high youth unemployment and economic stagnation, this trend is likely to continue if the U.S. remains welcoming. Policymakers eager to keep Chinese nationals out of this country forget that Chinese students in the U.S. provide invaluable insights into research developments and societal trends in China. This is especially important given government education exchange programs, such as those funded by the Fulbright program and USAID, have been defunded, at least for now. With U.S.-China diplomatic exchanges also on the decline, maintaining openness toward Chinese scholars is increasingly vital. This is not to say that Rubio's concerns about Chinese Communist Party influence on U.S. campuses are baseless. A 2023 House Select Committee report highlights that China's so-called United Front Work Department exerts covert pressure on the diaspora, often pressuring them into espionage by blackmailing them or their families. Chinese authorities have sought to obtain sensitive academic research from students abroad by targeting their families back home. According to reporting by the Stanford Review, a student publication, police in mainland China often visit a student's relatives and issue threats, pressuring the student to surrender technical details of their research. But given the tremendous benefits the United States reaps from having Chinese graduate students here - and the fact that very few of the students have been proven to actually pose risks to the U.S. security - a precise, surgical response would be preferable to sledgehammer tactics. So how should the U.S. do this? First, the State Department should implement more rigorous visa background checks and disclosure requirements, but not a total ban. Historically, security breaches typically involve mid-career researchers with military backgrounds who do not have U.S. academic credentials, suggesting they deserve heightened scrutiny. Second, the Trump administration should build upon reforms undertaken by the last administration's Department of Justice to counter Chinese Communist Party influence on campuses. That means prioritizing espionage investigations based on evidence and improving on partnerships between academia and government to detect and eliminate threats. That would include tight scrutiny of organizations like the Chinese Student and Scholars Association, which suppresses free speech and enforces pro-communist party policies. Lastly, the U.S. should offer legal permanent residence and green cards to Chinese graduates with U.S. doctorates in STEM fields, prioritizing those in critical technology sectors like AI, to encourage them to stay in the U.S. Given that green card holders are allowed to sponsor immediate family members to join them in the U.S., this could reduce the pressure that Chinese Communist Party officials can exert on graduates via their families at home. By adopting pragmatic policies rather than sweeping bans, the U.S. can counteract Chinese threats without sacrificing our vital economic and national security interests. Attracting top international talent to U.S. universities, scientific research institutions and our technology sector remains America's strategic advantage in our technological competition with China. Throwing that away would be a terrible mistake. Ryan P. Kellogg is an adjunct assistant professor of finance and economics at the University of Maryland Global Campus and is a director of engineering at an energy company. He is also the host of "Kellogg's Global Politics" podcast.