The Justice Department has charged two men for their alleged roles in separate schemes to steal and reproduce 3D modeling and autonomous vehicle technology for communist China.
The two cases were announced with three others on May 16, as part of a tranche of prosecutions aimed at squashing crimes related to export violations, smuggling, and thefts of trade secrets.
Each of the cases was brought by the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, a joint program led by the Commerce and Justice departments and intended to counter efforts by hostile nations to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technologies.
“Protecting sensitive American technology like source code for ‘smart’ automotive manufacturing equipment or items used to develop quantum cryptography from being illegally acquired by our adversaries is why we stood up the Disruptive Technology Strike Force,” Commerce Department Assistant Secretary Matthew Axelrod said in a statement.
Tech for Nuclear Submarines, Aircraft
From 1996 to 2019, Liming Li worked in various engineering, management, and software development roles for two companies in southern California. The U.S. companies weren’t identified.During that time, it’s alleged he systematically stole key secrets and source code for proprietary software from both companies in order to build his own competing company in China.
The software programs he allegedly stole and tried to reproduce involved high-precision measurement technologies often used in the creation of 3D models for sensitive manufacturing projects—including the building of parts for nuclear submarines and military aircraft.
Because of that military application, the software is subject to U.S. export controls and federal law mandates that it can’t be exported to China without a license.
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what prosecutors say Li did.
“Li stole thousands of files of sensitive technology that did not belong to him and used it to help foreign companies build competing technology, technology that could be used in the manufacture of nuclear submarines and military aircraft,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said.
Stealing for the CCP
Li was arrested after arriving in Ontario via Taiwan on May 6 and is currently in custody awaiting a May 22 hearing.Perhaps more concerning than Li’s alleged theft of trade secrets, however, is his apparent desire to ensure those secrets benefited China’s communist regime, prosecutors said.
After the second company that Li worked for in California fired him, its security department discovered that he had been using a company-issued laptop to attempt to download files from the organization’s root directory onto a personal hard drive.
Company security subsequently searched the laptop and soon found a folder labeled simply “ChinaGovernment.”
That folder allegedly contained documents demonstrating Li’s efforts to participate in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which is used by Beijing’s communist leaders to send workers throughout the world to access critical research and return with it.
Former Apple Engineer
Like Li, Weibao Wang is facing charges related to his alleged theft of trade secrets from his former employer.For two years, Wang worked for Apple—where he was assigned to a team designing and developing hardware and software for autonomous systems for use in self-driving cars and other products.
The tech giant hired Wang as a software engineer in 2016, at which point, he signed a confidentiality agreement with Apple and received in-person secrecy training on how to handle the company’s confidential materials, including rules prohibiting the transfer of the company’s intellectual property without consent.
Yet, in November 2017, Wang signed a letter accepting a full-time job as a staff engineer with the U.S.-based subsidiary of a company headquartered in China, where he would also be working to develop self-driving cars.
Four months after accepting the position, the charging documents say, Wang notified Apple that he intended to resign.
After Wang’s last day at Apple, company representatives reviewed computer logs documenting historical activity on the company’s network and identified Wang as having accessed large amounts of sensitive proprietary and confidential information in the days leading up to his departure.
In mid-2018, law enforcement searched Wang’s California residence looking for evidence of a scheme to access, download, and steal Apple technology related to autonomous systems and discovered large quantities of data taken from Apple.
Wang was present at the time, and assured agents that he had no plans to travel and would cooperate fully.
That night, after security services had left, Wang purchased a one-way ticket for a flight to Guangzhou, China, where he remains at large, from San Francisco.
Also charged was a Chinese man who is accused of seeking to provide Iran with materials used to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Other criminal cases involved the dismantling of alleged procurement networks that helped Russia’s intelligence services obtain sensitive U.S. military technology and aircraft parts, U.S. officials said.
