Tim Cook Did Wonders for Apple. He Also Did a Lot for Xi Jinping.

Tim Cook is ending his illustrious stint as chief executive of Apple. The soft-spoken operator accomplished the near impossible, filling the shoes of the visionary co-founder Steve Jobs, turning the iPhone from a cultural phenomenon into a financial juggernaut and transforming his company into a $4 trillion goliath — growing its market value by $682 million per day, on average, for 15 years. By the metrics investors care about, Mr. Cook is nothing short of a rock star. But when one considers his role in the sweep of American history,…

The Sunday Read: ‘The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign to Steal American Secrets’

In March 2017, an engineer at G.E. Aviation in Cincinnati received a request on LinkedIn. The engineer, Hua, is in his 40s, tall and athletic, with a boyish face that makes him look a decade younger. He moved to the United States from China in 2003 for graduate studies in structural engineering. The LinkedIn request came from Chen Feng, a school official at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in eastern China. Days later, Chen sent him an email inviting him to the university to give a research presentation.…