Chinese espionage

9-17-20 WASHINGTON (AP) The Justice Department has charged five Chinese citizens with hacks targeting more than 100 companies and institutions in the United States and abroad…one of the five defendants told a colleague that he was very close to the Chinese Ministry of State Security and would be protected “unless something very big happens” and also agreed not to go after domestic targets in China, said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen said. “Unfortunately the record of recent years tells us that the Chinese Communist Party has a demonstrated history of choosing a different path, that of making China safe for their own cyber criminals, so long as they help with its goals of stealing intellectual property and stifling freedom.” https://apnews.com/abe63876eedc5a95c90a37ca88024809 ……………….............................… 9-3-20 Tang had been a visiting researcher at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, Davis, since January. DoJ officials claim Tang denied serving in the military on her visa application--but that she is a “uniformed officer” in the PLA Air Force, a claim based in part on photographs of her in a military uniform that they submitted alongside the charges. The agency also claimed that the other researchers whose arrests were announced in July--Xin Wang, a postdoctoral researcher studying obesity and metabolism at the University of California San Francisco; Chen Song, a neurobiologist visiting Stanford University; and Kaikai Zhao, a graduate student researching machine learning and artificial intelligence at Indiana University Bloomington — had past or current appointments in the Chinese military that they misrepresented on their visa applications…. Nature found more than 12,000 publications from 2015–19 co-authored by scientists in the United States and at one of the Seven Sons. Among those, 499 authors had a dual affiliation with a US institution and a Seven Sons university and were listed on papers declaring grant funding from the NIH or the US National Science Foundation (NSF)…. The Trump administration announcement in May barring scientists and students affiliated with military-linked Chinese institutions from coming to the United States was criticized as too broad. The order is expected to affect up to 5,000 potential new students from China, according to Farnsworth. One-third of foreign students studying in the United States — about 370,000 students as of 2019--are from China. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02515-x ………..................................... 9-18-20 Prosecutors have video and audio proving

Yuk Ma provided classified information including CIA sources and methods, communication systems and secret writing, Sorenson said. Prosecutors say he remained in touch with the Chinese intelligence officers after he joined the FBI as a contract linguist in 2004, at which point he used his work computer to copy images of documents related to missiles and weapon system technology research. Two weeks ago Ma again confirmed to an undercover agent during a video recorded meeting that he gave U.S. information to China’s Ministry of State Security and he again accepted cash from someone he thought was representing the ministry, prosecutors said. Authorities searching his Honolulu home found marked classified documents, Sorenson said. Prosecutors say he remained in touch with the Chinese intelligence officers after he joined the FBI as a contract linguist in 2004, at which point he used his work computer to copy images of documents related to missiles and weapon system technology research. Two weeks ago Ma again confirmed to an undercover agent during a video recorded meeting that he gave U.S. information to China’s Ministry of State Security and he again accepted cash from someone he thought was representing the ministry, prosecutors said. https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2020/08/28/hawaii-news/judge-orders-ex-cia-officer-detained-in-china-spy-case/ …………......................................…… October 20, 2014 Sherry Chen, a hydrologist for the National Weather Service, is arrested for allegedly stealing secrets about US dams and hiding contacts with Chinese government officials. Five months later all charges are dropped against Chen, who was born in China but became an American citizen. Chen had met with a Chinese government official to help a friend in China with his business, and had sent a few emails to the same official answering a question about how dams were funded in the US.

Xi Xiaoxing and Sherry Chen at a press conference in Washington, DC, on September 16, 2015. XINHUA/ALAMY May 21 2015 FBI agents raid the house of Xi Xiaoxing, chair of Temple University’s physics department, for allegedly sending to China schematics of a pocket heater, a key piece of technology used in superconductor research. By September, the Justice Department drops all charges after it is revealed that the schematics were of an entirely different device that Xi had invented. Xi is now suing the lead FBI agent. June 4, 2015 The Office of Personnel Management announces a massive security breach that eventually is shown to affect over 20 million people who had undergone background checks for federal jobs since 2000. These records included sensitive information like psychiatric history, as well as over 5 million sets of fingerprints. Chinese military unit 61938 is suspected of conducting the hack. The records are highly valuable to the Chinese as a database of government employees to target as informants, aided by the sensitive information on those employees. June 2017 Ex-CIA officer Kevin Mallory is arrested for passing classified materials to Chinese intelligence agents using a cell phone given to him during a trip to Shanghai. Mallory, who volunteered some information to FBI and CIA agents before being arrested, had claimed to be a double agent helping the US government, but after the FBI cracked his phone, he was shown to have hidden information. Behind on his mortgage and in debt, he had received $25,000 from the Chinese. In June 2018 a jury finds him guilty of espionage, and he is later sentenced to 20 years in prison. January 2018 Ex-CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee is arrested at JFK Airport and charged with giving Chinese agents classified information from his days at the CIA, including the real names and locations of assets in China. In May 2019 Lee pleads guilty to receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for information and is sentenced to 19 years in prison. According to prosecutors, Lee’s information helped dismantle the CIA’s China network in 2010. June 2018 Ron Rockwell Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, is arrested at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport carrying classified information about military readiness plans. In March 2019 Hansen pleads guilty and admits to agreeing to pass military secrets to Chinese agents in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He is later sentenced to a reduced 10 years in prison because he cooperated with the FBI after his arrest. October 10, 2018 Yanjun Xu, an intelligence officer for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, is arrested in Belgium and extradited to the United States for attempting to steal jet fan blade designs from GE. The FBI had lured him to Belgium to pick up the information. February 14, 2019 You Xiaorong, a naturalized US citizen, is charged with stealing research on BPA-free coatings for bottles from her employer, Coca-Cola. The Justice Department alleges You was intending to set up a competing firm in China to replicate the materials. The case is ongoing. April 2019 MD Anderson Cancer Center fires three senior researchers after the National Institutes of Health flags them for failing to disclose foreign ties. All the researchers flagged are Asian, again raising concerns the FBI is targeting Asian-Americans. January 28, 2020 Charles Lieber, head of Harvard University's chemistry department, is charged with lying about accepting money from the Chinese government while receiving $15 million in grants from US agencies. A pioneer in nanotechnology, Lieber is the highest-profile academic to be arrested in connection with Chinese-American technological rivalry . July 24, 2020 The Trump administration orders the closure of China's consulate in Houston, “in order to protect American intellectual property and American's (sic) private information,” alleging that the consulate is being used to coordinate industrial espionage against the US. China closes the American consulate in Chengdu in retaliation.https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/03/1007609/trade-secrets-china-us-espionage-timeline/ .......................................