A recent poll showed that 88 percent of American voters worry that the rapid pace of Beijing’s technological advancements will give China military superiority over the U.S. One way to make sure that this dire prediction comes true is to ban Chinese and other foreign students and researchers from studying here.
Try to imagine the Manhattan Project without German refugee scientists like Hans Bethe, or another refugee from an Axis power, Enrico Fermi. Or try to imagine America’s ballistic missile program, including the moonshot, without German scientists like Wernher von Braun. There are times when scientists and researchers from other countries, even nominally hostile ones, can be crucial to the development and maintenance of America’s technological edge.
There are plenty of reasons for America to be concerned about China, including its command-and-control government, its technology theft and its inequitable trading practices. The arrest in June of two Chinese student researchers from the University of Michigan, for allegedly smuggling biological pathogens into the U.S., underlines the importance of making sure that Chinese students and scientists aren’t getting into our country in order to do us harm.
Some in the Trump administration have pushed for blanket revocations of Chinese student visas. Fortunately, President Trump has held off on such a draconian policy. The truth is that being too stringent in limiting the work of foreign students and scientists — even Chinese ones — poses as much of a national security threat as being too lax.
For example, almost half of the artificial intelligence researchers currently in the U.S. are Chinese immigrants. The situation is even more critical with regard to quantum science, and specifically quantum computing, which is arguably the Manhattan Project of our time.
One of the authors of this essay has shown through quantitative research that whichever country first develops a large-scale quantum computer able to decrypt almost all known public and private encryption systems will hold the kind of global strategic edge that building the first atomic bomb once guaranteed the U.S.
Meanwhile, the other author’s academic laboratory at the Duke Quantum Center and IonQ, a leading quantum computing company he founded, employ many talented and indispensable Chinese physicists and engineers.
Replacing those Chinese students with domestic students would require decades or more. By then, the quantum computer race would be clearly lost to China, and the race to dominate AI would see a similar setback. To remain competitive in these and other critical emerging technologies, the U.S. must find a way to manage the risks of talent coming from China.
One way to do this is to let talented Chinese and other foreign students work and innovate in areas of fundamental research that are freely and openly published, then encourage and welcome them to stay in America. Most Chinese students in the U.S. already choose to stay after graduation, where they enter our workforce and catalyze future-facing companies.
Why not take advantage of the attraction America offers to build our intellectual and scientific knowledge base? Operation Paperclip after World War II brought over hundreds of German scientists who made our ballistic missile and moonshot programs a reality. It is time to look into developing a modern-day Operation Paperclip to draw in Chinese and other foreign scientific talent.
Under such a program, properly vetted students could stay in the U.S. and spend their careers making discoveries and contributing to our country — even helping to train future generations of American scientists.
As the University of Michigan case reveals, proper vetting is key. It is important to remember that among the German scientists working at Los Alamos was Klaus Fuchs, the Communist spy who passed atomic secrets to Moscow. We will have to be careful about the vetting for such important and potentially sensitive work in order to avoid serious security mistakes. That’s not just true for Chinese scientists but for everyone who might be a weak link in our existing security apparatus.
History shows that attracting and retaining international students is a U.S. competitive advantage. 44 percent of American Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant. Encouraging talented international scientists to stay here provides an economic and innovation boost to the nation.
Trump recognizes this, as he pointed in 2024 to “stories where people graduated from a top college … and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company,” but “they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places. And they become multibillionaires.” So long as the students are appropriately vetted, Trump proposed that “you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card.”
An appropriately curated student visa policy in vital research fields like AI and quantum can combine careful risk management with common sense. The benefits to the U.S. will last for generations. The damage done by choosing a bureaucratically easy answer could last even longer.
Christopher Monroe is professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. He is co-founder and chief science advisor of IonQ Inc., the first public quantum computing company. Arthur Herman is senior fellow at the Civitas Institute and former director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative.
