Spy Schools, by Daniel Golden

Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities (2017)

Covers the early securitization of the American academic sector when Chinese spies started abusing research access. Laid the groundwork for later efforts to ban students from the Seven Sons. Narrower than the rest of this section, and useful precisely because it shows how early the ratchet started turning.

Read it asking: Is it better to keep out potential strategic rivals, or to hold them close? Does securitizing higher education actually serve long term strategic interests?