October 2, 2007: Chinese
espionage in the United States was recently revealed to be more ambitious than
previously thought. This came about with the prosecution of a Chinese engineer
(Yuefei Ge) and a Chinese American one (Lan Lee), who had stolen military laser
and communications technology, and then sought backing from a company owned by
the Chinese military, to finance the development of military equipment, based
on the stolen technology. The two are being tried for economic espionage, based
on the 1996 Economic Espionage Act. Only three people have been convicted of
economic espionage, as defined by this Act,
so far.
What was clever about Ge and
Lee was that they were not stealing technology for a foreign power, but for the
purpose of developing militarily useful applications of the technology. These
items would then be sold to China, particularly if the Chinese came through
with the research and development money. China has thus mobilized the power of
venture capital to encourage their spies.
