A Chinese national has been sentenced to almost six years in prison by a New Jersey court for handing defense secrets to China. Sixing Liu maintains his innocence, however, and insists that he has been the victim of a politically motivated prosecution. His sentencing follows two recent arrests in other cases of suspected Chinese espionage: one of a U.S. citizen accused of feeding information to his Chinese girlfriend, and another of a Chinese former NASA researcher. The latter has prompted a security review at the space agency and the temporary closure of a major online research database. From Peter Finn at The Washington Post:
Measured in millimeters, the tiny device was designed to allow drones, missiles and rockets to hit targets without satellite guidance. An advanced version was being developed secretly for the U.S. military by a small company and L-3 Communications, a major defense contractor.
On Monday, Sixing Liu, a Chinese citizen who worked at L-3’s space and navigation division, was sentenced in federal court here to five years and 10 months for taking thousands of files about the device, called a disk resonator gyroscope, and other defense systems to China in violation of a U.S. arms embargo.
[…] In the past four years, nearly 100 individual or corporate defendants have been charged by the Justice Department with stealing trade secrets or classified information for Chinese entities or exporting military or dual-use technology to China, according to court records. A number of other cases involving China remain under seal, according to the Justice Department.
