In yet another case of a Chinese national up to no good in the United States, a dual citizen of this nation and China pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing secret anti-missile technology.
Gong Chenguang, 59, is apparently loyal to China, and not the United States.
He swiped “secret technologies developed for use by the United States government to detect nuclear missile launches, track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and to allow U.S. fighter planes to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles,” Justice Department prosecutors in California’s Central District announced.
Gong isn’t the only Chinese national to have landed in trouble lately. In June, two Chinese nationals — one of them a researcher at the University of Michigan — were charged with bringing a “potential agroterrorism weapon” into the United States.
In the plea deal, the dual citizen confessed to transferring “more than 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development company where he worked … to personal storage devices during his brief tenure with the company last year,” DOJ reported:
The files Gong transferred include blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, as well as blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. military aircraft to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and take countermeasures, including by jamming the missiles’ infrared tracking ability. Some of these files were later found on storage devices seized from Gong’s temporary residence in Thousand Oaks.
Like so many immigrants, Gong was apparently here to do the jobs Americans won’t do — like stealing trade secrets.
The company hired him in January 2023 as an “an application-specific integrated circuit design manager responsible for the design, development and verification of its infrared sensors.”
But that wasn’t all the tech thief did.
“Beginning on approximately March 30, 2023, and continuing until his termination on April 26, 2023, Gong transferred thousands of files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices, including more than 1,800 files after he had accepted a job at one of the victim company’s main competitors,” DOJ reported.
The purloined files were loaded with “proprietary and trade trade secret information related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments.”
Gong also ripped off trade secrets regarding “‘next generation’ sensors” that can detect “low observable targets while demonstrating increased survivability in space.” As well, Gong made off with the blueprints for machines that “house and cryogenically cool the victim company’s sensors.” That theft was no small matter, DOJ continued:
This information was among the victim company’s most important trade secrets that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of the files had been marked “[VICTIM COMPANY] PROPRIETARY,” “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” “PROPRIETARY INFORMATION,” and “EXPORT CONTROLLED.”
While Gong was employed at tech companies between 2014 and 2022, he applied to Communist China’s “Talent Programs,” which spot people “who have expert skills, abilities, and knowledge of advanced sciences and technologies in order to access and utilize those skills and knowledge in transforming the PRC’s economy, including its military capabilities.”
Despite being a U.S. citizen, Gong clearly considered himself more loyal to China. In 2014, when he worked for an information tech company in Dallas, Texas, he offered a high-tech Chinese research institute, which “focused on both military and civilian products … a plan to produce high-performance analog-to-digital converters like those produced by his employer,” DOJ explained.
After working for a defense, aerospace, and security company from 2015 to 2019, Gong proposed another plan to Red China’s Talent program. He “proposed to develop ‘low light/night vision’ image sensors for use in military night vision goggles and civilian applications. Gong’s proposal included a video presentation that contained the model number of a sensor” that the company developed.
Gong travelled to China several times to seek Talent Program funding in order to develop sophisticated analog-to-digital converters. In his Talent Program applications, Gong underscored that the high-performance analog-to-digital converters he proposed to develop in China had military applications, explaining that they “directly determine the accuracy and range of radar systems” and that “[m]issile navigation systems also often use radar front-end systems.” In a 2019 email, translated from Chinese, Gong remarked that he “took a risk” by traveling to China to participate in the Talent Programs “because [he] worked for … an American military industry company” and thought he could “do something” to contribute to China’s “high-end military integrated circuits.”
Gong’s thievery cost $3.5 million.
Gong’s brazen activities lasted through 2024. Authorities arrested him on February 6 for violating 18 U.S. Code 1832, theft of trade secrets.
Gong pleaded guilty to one count of the crime. For some reason he was freed on a $1.75 million bond. U.S. District Judge John F. Walter set a sentencing for September 29. He could land 10 years in federal prison.
The criminal complaint against Gong says he entered the United States 1993 and became a citizen in 2011.
In June, the FBI collared two other slippery Chinese nationals.
Jian Yunqing and her boyfriend, Liu Zunyong, smuggled a dangerous mycopathogen Fusarium graminearum into the United States, authorities allege.
At the time of her arrest, Jian was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, DOJ reported.
Had the fungus escaped the lab at the university, the consequences for U.S. agriculture could have been devastating.
Fusarium graminearum causes fusarium head blight in wheat, which “is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year,” Wikipedia says. The fungus infects the grain with mycotoxins. As of now, scientists have not found a means to combat the fungus.