CNN
,
A former graduate student was sentenced in Chicago eight years in prison Wednesday for spying for the Chinese government by gathering information about engineers and scientists in the United States.
Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese national who came to the US in 2013 to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology and later enlisted in the US Army Reserve, was arrested in 2018.
was 31 convicted last September of illegally acting as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and making a material false statement to the US military.
According to the Justice Department, Ji was tasked with providing an intelligence officer with biographical information on individuals for possible recruitment as Chinese spies. The individuals included Chinese nationals working in the US as engineers and scientists, some of whom worked for US defense contractors.
The Justice Department said in a statement that Ji’s spying was part of an effort by Chinese intelligence to gain access to advanced aerospace and satellite technologies being developed by American companies.
In 2016, a year after graduation, Ji enlisted in the US Army Reserve under a program that allows foreign nationals to be recruited if their skills are deemed “critical to the national interest”.
In his application to join the program, Ji made a false statement that he had had no contact with any foreign government within the past seven years. He also failed to disclose his ties and contacts with Chinese intelligence officers in a subsequent interview with a US military officer, according to the Justice Department.
In 2018, Ji had several meetings with an undercover US law enforcement agent posing as a representative of China’s MSS. During these meetings, Ji said that with his military identification, he could approach and take pictures of the “Roosevelt-class” aircraft carriers. The Justice Department cited evidence at the trial that Gee also stated that once he received his US citizenship and security clearance through the Army Reserve Program, he would seek a job at the CIA, FBI or NASA. .
Gee intended to work in cyber security at one of those agencies so he would have access to the database, which contains scientific research, the Justice Department said in the statement.
The statement said Ji was working under the direction of Xu Yanjun, deputy division director at the Jiangsu provincial branch of the MMS.
Xu, a career intelligence officer Sentenced Last year he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from several US aviation and aerospace companies. Xu was also the first Chinese spy extradited to the US for trial after being detained in Belgium in 2018 following an FBI investigation.
The senator asked the Twitter whistleblower about the alleged Chinese spying. see her reaction