To increase its visibility, McKinsey set up the Center for U.S. Health System Reform “to track and model the impact of regulatory change on market and consumer dynamics.” The center is unambiguous about its target audience. “We support investors—including strategic buyers and private equity—to understand opportunities emerging from the latest legislative and regulatory reform trends [and] identify attractive investment areas and assets across the healthcare value chain.”

Reading the article, Elfenbein knew that McKinsey was in conflict with what was until then the defining arc of his life. His fiancée—Elfenbein was days away from his wedding—was blunt. “If you don’t quit right now, you don’t stand for anything,” she said.

He laid out his recommendations in bullet points. Among them: a demand that McKinsey make a public apology for working for ICE and “stop saying we would do this work again.” Another: “Stop using legality as the barometer for ethicality.” On this, he was particularly biting, adding a parenthetical phrase: “If we helped southern states ‘improve agricultural asset yield’ in the 1850s would we still stand behind that? Our guidance so far would indicate the answer is ‘maybe.’ ”

A few days later, D’Emidio, the partner in charge of the ICE project, sent a mass email of his own. Subject: “Call for reconciliation and healing.”

In bullet points, he wrote of his deep sympathy “for those of you whose families and friends live in fear of my client,” as well as guilt “for having been the cause of so much angst, shame, mistrust, and anger for so many of you.”

But then his email took a turn as he described how hurt he was “by the stinging words of some emails accusing me of having no sense of ethics, purpose, or values,” anger at the “vilification” of his colleagues on the ICE project, plus “frustration” over what he said were “inaccurate portrayals” of the team’s work. He then said he was proud of the “impact” his team had. D’Emidio called for dialogue “with the hope that we can heal each other’s wounds.”

It was an electrifying time to be in China. The economy was opening up to Western businesses, and Chinese students flew off by the hundreds of thousands to get a first-class education in the United States. China’s burgeoning and largely uncontrolled internet was bursting with entrepreneurial talent. Despite the political pall that descended over the country after the 1989 crackdown, on a personal level Chinese people enjoyed freedoms unimaginable just a few years earlier. They were no longer tied to an assigned work unit and could instead work and shop where they wanted and marry whom they chose. Soon the country would join the World Trade Organization, and many hoped the economic liberalization would lead to demands for more political rights.

While McKinsey and its global clients expanded in China, the country’s human rights record drew international condemnation. China threw activists like the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo in jail, where he died. The Communist Party cracked down on any group that might pose a challenge to its rule. But people still hoped, as Clinton did in 2000, that China’s economic boom would eventually bleed over into the political sphere. In 2008, China hosted the Olympic Games. Tens of millions of young Chinese were discovering that they could voice their opinions on the country’s dynamic social media platforms. Relations between the United States and China, though often testy, were at times cordial.

One such program was the Belt and Road Initiative. Invoking the Silk Road, the caravan route of centuries past, the trillion-dollar plan sought to extend China’s influence by building ports, roads, bridges, railroads, and other projects across Asia, Africa, and beyond.

The plan quickly raised alarms in Washington and other Western capitals. Leaders feared China’s government would use the initiative as a stealth plan to expand its own military influence, to entrap poor nations by lending them money that they couldn’t repay, and to bind those nations in a Beijing-dominated sphere of influence. “These roads cannot be those of a new hegemony, which would transform those that they cross into vassals,” France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said on a visit to China.

In an authoritarian state like China, where police have few constraints and there is no rule of law, that sentence takes on a very different meaning than it would in London, Tokyo, or New York City. A report issued by a U.S. congressional panel on China said that Chinese security officials are using smart cities technology to “expand, improve, and automate information collection and analysis for mass surveillance.”

Murray H. Bring, a senior Philip Morris lawyer, said the industry had nothing to apologize for. “We know that we are manufacturing a lawful product,” Bring said. “We also know that we are honorable and honest people.” Geoffrey Bible, a senior Philip Morris executive, cautioned against banning cigarettes, using words not likely to end up in a McKinsey slide:

What do you think smokers would do if they didn’t smoke? You get some pleasure from it, and you get some other beneficial things, such as stress relief. Nobody knows what you’d turn to if you didn’t smoke. Maybe you’d beat your wife. Maybe you’d drive cars fast. Who knows what the hell you’d do.

McKinsey also consulted for a group widely viewed as a tobacco industry front group—the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. Founded in September 2017, the nonprofit organization asserted that its goal was to reduce deaths and disease from smoking while assuring potential donors that its board was independent with no ties to the tobacco industry. That statement was noteworthy for what it did not say—that Philip Morris International started the group with donations of $8.4 million. Of that, more than $400,000 went to McKinsey. PMI was the group’s sole donor, and McKinsey was the sole consultant.