Molson Hart

Want to win a cold war with China? Do the opposite. Start handing out visas to everyone with a stem degree. Oh, are you smart and hardworking (almost all Chinese are hardworking in my experience)? Welcome to America!

That sounds like a quick way to turn all our intellectual institutions into cloistered ethnic in-groups in exchange for the opportunity to "evangelize" free-market principles to imported communists.

I think your first point has merit, but I don't think your second point does. Communist party members don't believe in communism. It's a nationalist organization that believes in the superiority of Communist leadership and Chinese people.

I understand that's the general idea, but I don't think we can assume that most working immigrants we bring in based on merit won't bring with them the ideology of their home countries. If the communist party really contained no true believers, it would collapse on it's own.

All immigrants bring the ideology of their home country in varying proportions. The Communist party is today a misnomer. No one believes in communism in the party. It's not practiced whatsoever. Trust me, I have a member of the communist party asking me to send him money now.

My sticking point is opening up STEM-related institutions to a deluge of a certain ideology (even if it isn't communism, per se), specifically from a country that is our ideological enemy. I understand you're proposing a non-violent solution, my contention is the risk is too high

IMHO, address the problem you fear head on. If we fear leaking or espionage of our prized research criminalize and enforce that. The solution is not to deny admission of those likely to leak or commit espionage.

Mmm. Just a profound disagreement. Criminalizing bad behavior in America works the best in areas where people are less likely to behave badly, which tend to be ideologically monolithic. Perhaps I'm simply more risk adverse.