About Isaac Stone Fish
Isaac Stone Fish is the founder and CEO of Strategy Risks.
He is also a Washington Post Global Opinions contributing columnist, a contributor to CBSN, an adjunct at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, a visiting fellow at the Atlantic Council, a columnist on China risk at Barron’s, and a frequent speaker at events around the United States and the world.
Previously he served as Foreign Policy Magazine’s Asia Editor: he managed coverage of the region, and wrote about the politics, economics, and international affairs of China, Japan, and North Korea.
A fluent Mandarin speaker and formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China prior to joining Foreign Policy. He has traveled widely in the region and in the country, visiting every Chinese province, autonomous region, and municipality. He was also formerly a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund and a senior fellow at the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations.
His book, America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger, details the deep web of Beijing’s influence in America — and how to push back without being McCarthyist or racist (Knopf, February 2022).
Where to find Isaac Stone Fish
America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger
A timely, provocative exposé of American political and business leadership’s deep ties to China: a network of people who believe they are doing the right thing—at a profound and often hidden cost to U.S. interests.
The past few years have seen relations between China and the United States shift, from enthusiastic economic partners, to wary frenemies, to open rivals. Americans have been slow to wake up to the challenges posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Why did this happen? And what can we do about it?
In America Second, Isaac Stone Fish traces the evolution of the Party’s influence in America. He shows how America’s leaders initially welcomed China’s entry into the U.S. economy, believing that trade and engagement would lead to a more democratic China. And he explains how—although this belief has proved misguided–many of our businesspeople and politicians have become too dependent on China to challenge it.
America Second exposes a deep network of Beijing’s influence in America, built quietly over the years through prominent figures like former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, Disney chairman Bob Iger, and members of the Bush family. And it shows how to fight that influence–without being paranoid, xenophobic, or racist. This is an authoritative and important story of corruption and good intentions gone wrong, with serious implications not only for the future of the United States, but for the world at large.