Four Charged with Stealing US Military Secrets, Spying for China

kashifshahzad

Banned Member
Four Charged with Stealing US Military Secrets, Spying for China

LOS ANGELES: A judge in California has ordered two Chinese nationals held without bail on charges of stealing U.S. warship technology. Authorities say the suspects are part of a scheme involving two brothers and their wives, and all four face criminal charges.

Prosecutors say Tai Wang Mak, a broadcast and engineering director for the Phoenix North American television channel, and his wife, Fuk Heung Li, were carrying encrypted disks with information on U.S. submarine technology when they were arrested. They were taken into custody October 28 at Los Angeles International Airport, en route to Guangzhou, China.

The two were charged with theft of government property, conspiracy, and transporting stolen goods. Mr. Mak's brother, Chi Mak, and his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, face similar charges. Chi Mak, an electrical engineer for the U.S. defense contractor Power Paragon, appeared in court last week and was also denied bail. Bond for his wife was at 300-thousand dollars. She will be subject to house arrest with electronic monitoring pending the outcome of the case.

Authorities say Chi Mak headed a research project on quiet propulsion systems for warships, and that he e-mailed documents and photographs from work to his home computer. He allegedly copied sensitive information onto CDs with the help of his wife, then passed the information to his brother who, prosecutors say, encrypted it.

Chi Mak is a naturalized U.S. citizen and his wife is American of Chinese descent. Tai Wang Mak and his wife are Chinese nationals who have been U.S. residents since 2001. U.S. authorities describe them as foreign intelligence officers, and say Chi Mak has been sending sensitive information to China since the 1980s, on topics that include the Aegis weapon system used on U.S. warships.

None of the four will face charges of spying, however.

At Monday's hearing, Tai Wang Mak's defense attorney said no one has shown that the information on the disks was classified.

Investigators have seized documents and computer data from Chi Mak's home in the Los Angeles community of Downey, and officials say the investigation is ongoing.
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I have heard a lot of stories that someone spend this and that much time in that country and he was spying but i didnt seen any one who is spying in our country but after reading this news i can now understand to which extent spying is done there can be danger any where no one can decide whehter its spying or not but in this case four of them were chineese and should have been some persons after them to collect information and to see what they were doing.
 
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gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
kashifshahzad said:
I have heard a lot of stories that someone spend this and that much time in that country and he was spying but i didnt seen any one who is spying in our country but after reading this news i can now understand to which extent spying is done there can be danger any where no one can decide whehter its spying or not but in this case four of them were chineese and should have been some persons after them to collect information and to see what they were doing.
you really need to slow down when you type your responses.

just a few hints.

break them down into more sentences
use paragraphs in your own comments
read the response before submitting

you stand a much better chance of getting responses if people can read and digest your comments properly. otherwise it can become tedious. human nature dictates that if something is too hard to read or comprehend what message is being delivered, that they will bypass it and move on to somewhere else very quickly.

just pause a little and re-edit before posting.

thanks.
 

Snayke

New Member
I thought their exfiltration was a bit amuteurish really. All 4 of them grouped together, would draw some suspicion eh? Especially leaving from an American air port. Why not try from a Mexican or a Canadian air port?

It just seems a little off to me.
 

Hussain

New Member
Well it appears that there are Chinese spies here there and everywhere. What must be of concern to the US is the fact the Chinese spies have been actually Chinese in origin. Does this mean that a lot of Chinese defectors aren't really defector's but spies? The Chinese now have so much money at their disposal that they can send their spies all over the Western world to seek industrial technology that they can actually further develop and produce in China. It's ( stealing technology) is much cheaper than the billions the US spends on research and development isn't it? I am sure some of the Chinese spies are driven by ideology rather than the pursuit of capital, which makes them more cost effective to the Chinese and dangerous for the West.

Othrer countries seem to look more the other way than the US as they know that they are no match for China even today, let alone in the future.
 

Snayke

New Member
Well, Chinese spies of Chinese origin aren't exactly startling. :p It would be what you expect most of them to be.

I'm not exactly sure if China have been conducting espionage in other countries as to steal technology, so you shouldn't just assume countries are looking the other way. :p
 

Hussain

New Member
No you wouldn't expect most of the spies for China to be Chinese in appearance would you? Wouldn't that be a bit too obvious?

There must be Caucasians spying for China too and not necessarily members of the Chinese intelligence services.

In any case why have the Chinese agents been able to get away with so much intelligence gathering in the past without getting caught? Recently a defecting Chinese diplomat in Austrralisa claimed that there was a massive Chinese spy network operating in Australia. It appeared to have shocked the Australians. Maybe the Western world thinks Asians are too stupid to spy?
 

Snayke

New Member
Excuse me, but I said Chinese in origin. Do not change my words please. =) And yes, I would expect most Chinese spies to be Chinese. Unless you are saying the majority of Chinese spies are Westerners, which I find hard to believe.
 

gf0012-aust

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
Hussain said:
Maybe the Western world thinks Asians are too stupid to spy?
I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion when any number of "Western" Intelligence Services have publicly stated that China's HUMINT is regarded as possibly the best in the world.
 

kashifshahzad

Banned Member
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #9
gf0012-aust said:
I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion when any number of "Western" Intelligence Services have publicly stated that China's HUMINT is regarded as possibly the best in the world.
This is why i think chinees make things after copying and reverse engneering westren products this shows that their intelegence is good but their research isnat good enough as that west has
 

Snayke

New Member
I think it's more to do with the fact that Chinese graduates in the specified areas of expertise have more reason to work for foreign companies rather than Chinese companies. But with the Lunar Program up, maybe they will be more interested in working for their own country now which could see an improvement in Chinese indigenous R&D?
 

tonbo

New Member
maybe this will serve to enlighten a few :

- my Original Windows XP SP2 was made in China (costs as much as the US ver , i gather)

- it is a virtue that the Chinese seek to be Unobstrusive , just hope they don't overdo it
 

KGB

New Member
During the cold war, the KGB was able to steal many significant US military/intelligence secrets - sub propellers and atom bombs among a few. No one would be surprised if China would attempt the same thing; espionage can yield huge results.

I agree that the accused spies seemed amateurish - using email for example. No dead drops, no communications with a controller mentioned. Had they been 'planted' these 4 would have been regarded as highly valuable assets and would have been employing more precautions. Unless of course, the chinese intelligence officers operating in the US have so many assets that they can't keep up with all of them.

Also, some of the most valuable soviet spies in the US were American, and many of the highest placed soviet moles in the UK were English. So if there's a chineese mole in the US he could be of any descent, although it would be expected that the chinese intelligence would more likely make approaches to people of chinese descent because they'd more likely be sympathetic. A lot of the spies (now known) weren't in it for the money.
 

mach

New Member
I steal tech from you,you steal from him,he steal from me,it is vicious circle and everyone takes part in it. Is there anything strange or odd?
Nations steal tech from each other,spies are everywhere from every nation.
 

Snayke

New Member
That doesn't make it acceptable. I wouldn't want other nations trying to steal my military secrets. =)
 

KGB

New Member
It definitely isn't a friendly thing to do. And it make's China's neighbors uneasy to see a growing power aggressively improving its military. Orders from asia are going to keep the defence industry busy.
 

mach

New Member
KGB said:
It definitely isn't a friendly thing to do. And it make's China's neighbors uneasy to see a growing power aggressively improving its military. Orders from asia are going to keep the defence industry busy.
China's neighbors feel uneasy no matter what China does.Is it really PRC's fault to develop her military? She needs advanced weapons to defend herself like other nations do.

On the Sep 6th 1976,a soviet pilot betrayed his nation with a MIG-25 which was the most powerful figher plane and landed in Japan,then scientists of both Japan and America stolen USSA's technology of MIG-25 regardless of soviet's remonstration.

Stealing may cost much less time than researching that drives nations to steal from each other.
 
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