But the internet presents threats, with states in an "an intellectual arms race to defend themselves from cyber attacks".
In China, however, American companies are making a much larger bet that they can stay ahead in the intellectual property race.
An unsuspecting reader who picks up this book expecting a buttoned-down, blue-blazered examination of our nuclear present, a Tom Clancy kind of nonfiction volume, is in for an intellectual drag race.
But he began to notice that one animal seemed to be winning the intellectual arms race, at least based on the claims the papers were making: Dogs.
"We're in an intellectual arms race, so we can't stand still," said Scott Larson, a former FBI cybercrime investigator who runs a cybersecurity company in Minnesota.
Working in his preferred contrapuntal mode — shifting between characters and time periods as well as themes — Powers unfolds the saga of two generations of the musical, intellectual, mixed-race Strom family.
That, one could say, is what China's humanists, whether intellectuals, blogging race-car drivers or ordinary people, are struggling to do today.
The one asking the questions said, "Brother, why did you educate yourself so far beyond your people?" Gates emphasizes that African-American students must overcome such negative intellectual expectations, because race "doesn't preclude them from being intellectually excellent".
Clients choose from a menu of handsome men corresponding to different types, including "little brother," "tough guy," "intellectual," "swordsman," "mixed race," and, puzzlingly, "dentist".
To be a black intellectual in the race debate is to have an audience with expectations, even demands; an audience anxious to know which side you're on.
