America's fear of China goes way beyond TikTok
Tech companies like OpenAI are in the grip of a new Red Scare — and talented immigrants are getting caught in the crossfire.
Getty Images; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
It was a chilly night in Berkeley, California this past November when Sarah decided to stop by a buzzy after-party for an AI conference called The Curve. A year and a half ago, the 27-year-old had left her lucrative job as a trader in London to look for work in AI safety, which she considers the most important issue in the world, and she was eager to connect with others who felt the same. She certainly didn't expect to end the evening vilified as a Chinese spy.
At the party, the topic du jour was a recent article in The Economist, provocatively titled, "Is Xi Jinping an AI doomer?" Sarah, who was born in China a few hours from Shanghai, discussed the question with various AI researchers and policy analysts. Then one exchange turned sour.
"There's been rumors of espionage in Silicon Valley," Sarah recalled one person saying, "Like people preying on young, male, impressionable software engineers." The guy looked at Sarah. Uncomfortable, she excused herself from the conversation.
"I'm a Chinese national, but it's not like I'm a spy," she later recounted to another attendee.
Her comment was overheard by Samuel Hammond, an economist at the Foundation for American Innovation and an AI policy advisor for Project 2025. He posted it to X, where it attracted millions of views.
I was at an AI thing in SF this weekend when a young woman walked up. The first thing she said, almost verbatim: "I'm a Chinese national but it's not like I'm a spy or anything" *nervous laughter.*
I asked her if she thought Xi was an AI doomer and she suddenly excused herself. https://t.co/1mepDH6LRc— Samuel Hammond
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