John Bedbrook
Appearances
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
My name is John Bedbrook, and I was formerly head of biotechnology at DuPont.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
We went to China to form this venture because, you know, rice was not a big crop of what was then Pioneer Hybrid Seed, which was owned by DuPont. It was largely a corn seed company. You know, we thought it would be smart to go where the market was.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
You know, all of the geneticists and breeders had had to go off in the Cultural Revolution to work on farms and so on and so forth, and were no longer available to provide breeding expertise to the seed companies. Plant genetics and plant varietal development was in very poor shape in China. And so that was the reason that they were so open to having plants
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
The major players in the United States invest, obviously, in germplasm development in China.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
We had to be minority holders and we decided to work on rice and develop ways of creating male sterols that were very efficient and would lead to a broader germplasm input into hybrid rice in China.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
In China, it's kind of a permit per experiment. So you design an experiment and you apply to the government for a permit to do that experiment. And we proceeded along this sort of line for several years and then suddenly they just ghosted us. They no longer were providing us with permits and not explaining why they were not giving them.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
When the permits stopped coming in, we had to lay everybody off. So, and that was the end of the company. And, you know, I spent quite a considerable amount of my time visiting members of the National Chinese Agricultural Academy, trying to seek an explanation for what was going on. I sort of bothered them for months and finally they just said, we're sorry, We can't help you.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
And that was that was basically the end of the story. Yeah.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
No, they were very cautious about what they said. They just said they couldn't help me.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Well, first of all, it feels devastating. Second of all, it feels unbelievably wasteful.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Obviously, technology comes with patents and it becomes generic. But this was far from generic technology. It was proprietary technology. And, you know, it's hard to estimate... the cost of that build-up, but the total investment in developing genetic engineering for crops was billions of dollars.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
You know, I was totally miserable about the whole affair. I mean, obviously it wasn't the most important thing that we were managing, but it was just the way it was sort of ended. It seemed terribly unfair and inexplicable. And I guess to take a cynical point of view, they got to a point where they said, OK, we've had enough of their help, let's just do it ourselves from here on out.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
It's not just a specific example where our particular methodology was adopted and then mysteriously disappeared. It was multiple cases. I mean, I visited companies that were... Their mission was simply to reproduce the work of Monsanto and other U.S.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
agricultural enterprises that had invested in developing the technology of genetic engineering, and then they were building the same insect-resistant and herbicide-resistant plants. It was just blatant. I mean, I guess the sort of attitude is that, you know, this is for China, so, you know... It's okay.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
But clearly, you know, if you want global intellectual property to be meaningful, it's clearly not okay.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
China is a major investor, probably the major national investor in agricultural technology now.