Spy cases raise concern on China’s intentions

Jun 18, 2008
Chinese engineer jailed for theft of US military technology:

LOS ANGELES - A Chinese engineer who stole sensitive military technology from US firms and tried to sell it to China, Thailand and Malaysia was jailed for two years, justice officials said Wednesday.

Meng Xiaodong, 44, a former Chinese national now living in California, was arrested in 2006 on allegations he stole trade secrets from San Jose-based firm Quantum 3D throughout 2003 and 2004 with the aim of selling them overseas ...

Meng was accused of attempting to sell Quantum's technology after leaving the firm to work for a rival company ...

March 26, 2008
US hands Chinese 'sub spy' Chi Mak 24 years in jail:

A CHINESE-BORN US engineer convicted of conspiring to smuggle secret technology about US navy submarines to China has been jailed for 24 years.

Chi Mak, who worked for a US company with navy contracts, was convicted last May of trying to export intelligence on silent submarines in a plot involving four members of his family ...

In a statement read to the court, Mak said he "never intended to violate any law at all".

"I never intended to hurt this country," he said. "I love this country. I still hope for justice."

Yeah, we believe you.

July 10, 2008
Spy Cases Raise Concern on China’s Intentions:

WASHINGTON — Gregg W. Bergersen was a Navy veteran who liked to gamble on occasion but spent far more time worrying about how to earn some serious money after he left his career as an analyst at the Defense Department.

At 51 and supporting a wife and a child in the Virginia suburbs ...

Mr. Bergersen believed he had found what he was seeking when he was introduced to Tai Shen Kuo, a native of Taiwan, who had lived in New Orleans for more than 30 years. Mr. Kuo, an entrepreneur who imported furniture from China, was active enough in civic affairs to have been named to a state advisory board on international trade. He told Mr. Bergersen that he was developing a defense consulting company ...

... Mr. Kuo and his Chinese handlers ran what intelligence professionals call a “false flag” operation on Mr. Bergersen, a weapons systems analyst, making him believe that the information he was providing was going to Taiwan, an American ally, not Beijing ...

While sitting in a rental car on July 10, 2007, Mr. Bergersen pleaded with Mr. Kuo not to tell anyone that he was the source of the information he was providing, which included anticipated American arms sales to Taiwan. “I’d get fired for sure on that,” he said. “Well, not even get fired, go to [expletive] jail.”

... Mr. Kuo regularly dangled a promise that he would eventually take him in as a partner in a defense consulting firm after he retired from the Pentagon and pay him $300,000 to $400,000 a year. In the meanwhile, Mr. Kuo gave him small gifts and took him to Las Vegas, where he treated him to expensive shows and paid for his wagering, all of which were observed by F.B.I. agents.

Beyond the case of Mr. Bergersen, prosecutors in the last year have brought about a dozen cases involving China’s efforts to obtain military-grade accelerometers (used to make smart bombs), defense information about Taiwan, American warship technology, night-vision technology and refinements to make missiles more difficult to detect.

In interviews, current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials demonstrated uncertainty as to the precise scope of the problem of Chinese espionage. But many officials offered a similar description of the pattern of the cases: Chinese government and state-sponsored industries have relied on the Chinese diaspora — using immigrants, students and people of second- and third-generation Chinese heritage — and regular commercial relations to operate a system in which some people wittingly or unwittingly participate.

One senior law enforcement official involved in prosecuting such cases said the Chinese had “a game plan of sending out lots of tiny feelers in hopes of getting back small bits of seemingly unrelated information in hopes of creating a larger picture.” ...

Mr. Mak and PRC official A also figure in a third major case, the one involving Dongfan Chung. Mr. Chung, a former Boeing engineer known as Greg, has been indicted on economic espionage charges — which he denies — for providing China with company trade secrets related to several aerospace programs, including the space shuttle.

The documents say Mr. Chung decided to spy for China partly out of patriotic sentiment. A letter from a Chinese official to Mr. Chung read in part, “It is your honor and China’s fortune that you are able to realize your wish of dedicating yourself to the service of your country.” ...

Bergerson has been jailed for 5 years.

June 19, 2008
China’s Secret War:

Cyber warfare officially arrived on Capitol Hill last week. Two Republican congressmen ... went public last Wednesday with the news that in 2006 and 2007 their office computer networks had been breached by Chinese hackers.

The cyber raiders were not looking for sensitive military or economic data. Instead, they apparently tried to steal political information about Chinese dissidents. “My suspicion is that I was targeted by Chinese sources because of my long history of speaking out about China’s abysmal human rights record,” ...

This is not the first time that Chinese government hackers have gotten their hands on sensitive American documents. Chinese hackers’ long march through American computer networks is believed to have started in 2000. Since then, the attacks have increased in both their frequency and their sophistication ...

China’s largest cyber-raid in the United States occurred in 2004. The assault was so massive that American security authorities gave it a code name, “Titan Rain.” Computers in several defense and space installations were targeted and thousands of unclassified documents, both military and industrial, were stolen. Fortunately, classified military information is not directly connected to the internet; but data found in those unclassified networks can also be of a sensitive nature.

Equally brazen was a 2007 cyber attack on Pentagon computers. That attack saw Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ computer system compromised. The perpetrator in this case was believed to have been the People’s Liberation Army ...

It is known as the “thousand grains of sand” strategy. In this approach, the agents are all amateurs. They consist of Chinese who are either going overseas, such as students, or those who already live abroad. Appealing to their shared ancestry, Chinese intelligence asks them to bring or send home any military, technological or economic information, no matter how low level. The goal is that such information, when put together, will lead to something big. “Chinese do not hit homeruns,” John Pike, a security expert, has remarked. “Their theory is that if you do enough of it, eventually it will amount to something.”

By some estimates, the “thousand grains of sand” program involves 100,000 people – a testament both to the importance that China attaches to the program as well as to its extent. And it has been going on for a long time. “For nearly two decades, Beijing has mobilized the Chinese-American community to penetrate US military corporations that are working on defense contracts,” writes commentator Sreeram Chaulia.

Nor is the U.S. China’s only target. In an interview with Canadian television, a former Chinese diplomat has revealed that Canada and Australia, which also have large ethnic Chinese communities, have hundreds of Chinese government agents in their midst.

Dec, 2006
Spy drive to tackle Chinese:

ASIO has stepped up espionage against Chinese spies and Muslim extremists by more than doubling in only two years the number of intelligence officers from non-English-speaking backgrounds.

The domestic spy agency, dominated by white Anglo-Saxon males during the Cold War, has recruited an unprecedented 88 foreign-language-speaking spies since late 2004 as part of the Government's plan to fast-track ASIO's expansion.

The Australian understands many of the new recruits are fluent Chinese speakers who have been assigned to a new ASIO counter-espionage unit specifically to combat the increased number of Chinese spies in Australia ...

Yes, we feed China with minerals, and then admit that they may be a growing military threat to us, so we must increase our defence spending. Yes, we increase Asian immigration and then bemoan the spies among us, so we go and recruit Asians into ASIO. A pair of two wrongs does not make a pair of two rights. Barking barking mad mad.

And not only that, Chairman Rudd wants an Asian union which is a one-way ticket to the free movement of labour. Lunatics.