A Bay Area man has admitted to stealing missile-detecting technology for the benefit of China.
San Jose resident Chenguang Gong, 59, pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
Gong, a former engineer who is a dual citizen of the United States and China, “transferred more than 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development company” during his “brief tenure” with the company last year, the release explained.
The stolen files included “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,” prosecutors said.
As for what Gong would do with the files, the DOJ noted that he downloaded “more than 1,800 files after he had accepted a job at one of the victim company’s main competitors.”
He’d also previously made overtures to “talent programs” run by the Chinese government that are used “to identify individuals 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 [Chinese] economy, including its military capabilities.”
“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,'” the release added.
With this guilty plea, Gong faces a sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.
He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29 and is free in lieu of $1.75 million bond in the meantime.