America's Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment and Repatriation of Qian Xuesen
By
danieltanfh95
Crackling crust, pillowy middle. The kind of bagel that earns a second cup of coffee.
Summary
The article argues that the United States' decision to imprison and then trade Chinese rocket scientist Qian Xuesen (co-founder of JPL) back to China in 1955 was America's greatest strategic blunder. Qian, who had contributed to U.S. airpower dominance after WWII, was accused of being a communist, detained for five years, and eventually exchanged for eleven U.S. airmen. Upon returning to China, he became the father of China's missile and space program, fundamentally altering the global balance of power.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledEisenhower formally approved the trade on August 4 with the stated reasoning that whatever classified information Qian possessed in 1950 'is by now outdated by later research and is common knowledge in the Soviet Bloc'.
Dan Kimball, the Navy Under Secretary who had spent five years trying to keep Qian in the United States, would later call the whole thing 'the stupidest thing this country ever did'.
the principal author-editor of the 1945 report that the U.S. Air Force's own institutional history credits with 'leading to America's postwar airpower dominance'
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