McGregor raises a tradeoff concern: while data decoupling from China may be justified on security grounds, decoupling also prevents cooperation on shared challenges like cancer research and climate change—making the security calculus more complex.

China is good at taking advantage of Western openness, as seen in the rapid piracy of American movies in Beijing (Indiana Jones released Thursday, DVD available Friday), and this pattern continues in sophisticated systems of data openness exploitation.

McGregor observes that China's National Data Bureau was created to coordinate data policy, but there is evidence of implementation gaps—provincial systems don't communicate seamlessly and major data breaches (like the Shanghai police records leak) indicate China's data systems are imperfect.

China's paranoia and restrictions on data and technology may be hamstringing its own economic growth, as evidenced by issues like the stalled Didi IPO and cases of scientists accused of leaking genetic data despite doing innovative biotech work.