LOS ANGELES — It might almost seem like a game of geopolitical chicken: How far can we go in creating monstrous new fears about China?
We only have to turn the clock back to realize what is happening. The year was 1999, when the Cox Report on Chinese Espionage made red-letter headlines in the United States. The Chinese allegedly were spying everywhere, stealing U.S. technology for warheads and nuclear weapons. That China-born (or maybe just Chinese) lab assistant is probably working for Beijing intelligence. Better get an FBI man on him!
It was a pretty good gig for the U.S. news media. It took longer than I expected for cooler heads to prevail. Today, thankfully, even some of the marquee members of the Cox Commission sadly realize that they were being used for crass political purposes and that the whole deal was the hype of all hypes.