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October 24, 2021 Updated: October 24, 2021
The entrance to the General Electric Aviation in Lynn, Massachusetts, on March 31, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
A historic federal espionage trial against a Chinese intelligence agent started in Cincinnati, Ohio on Oct. 18. The agent, named Yanjun Xu, has been charged with recruiting spies to steal tech from U.S. aviation and aerospace firms.
According to the prosecutors, the Chinese regime was attempting to steal know-how from American aircraft companies, particularly from Evendale-based GE Aviation, with the intent of replicating turbine engines, reported local news channel WCPO.
The Chinese Communist Party has the goal of developing the “aircraft and aircraft components” industry—along with nine others—within its “Made in China 2025” a 10-year economic plan that aims to turn the country into a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse.
Yanjun Xu is a deputy division director from China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the intelligence, security, and secret police agency of the communist regime. He is the first MSS operative extradited to the United States, which makes the trial a first of its kind.
Since December 2013, Xu had been contacting experts from aviation companies in the United States and other countries, including GE Aviation, according to his indictment. He started recruiting people to travel to China, all expenses covered, usually masquerading as academic trips. This went on until his arrest in Brussels on April 1, 2018, by the Belgian federal police. He was then extradited to the United States.
FBI agent Todd Vokas testified on Oct. 20 about content found on devices seized during the investigation. “I put a USB drive in the eyeglass box in the middle of the bookcase, and it contains some encrypted documents,” Vokas said Xu wrote. “If something happens, someone will come to you and tell you the password.”
When Xu was arrested, his colleague, Heng Xu, had a black pack that contained four cellphones, memory cards, hard drives, magnetic keys, card readers, SIM card holders, and other devices, testified a Belgian federal police agent in the trial. They also found $7,000 and 7,700 euros ($8,960), as well as plane and train tickets, passports, and credit cards.
Vokas conducted a forensic analysis on the four cellphones and determined that one of them had been erased remotely, the day after Xu’s arrest.
One of the other cellphones had a note stating materials and size of a fan blade, which prosecutors believe is linked to GE Aviation tech that China was aiming at replicating, Vokas said. The phone also contained family pictures from a GE engineer that, according to the prosecutors, Xu targeted for recruitment.
James Mulvenon, an expert on Chinese cyber and espionage issues and Chinese military specialist, testified on Oct. 19 that aircraft have given the regime difficulty.
“Aviation has actively been a key priority for decades, and a key source of frustration,” Mulvenon said. He added China has been buying Boeing and Airbus planes, as they do not have the capacity to build them.
David DeVillers, who supervised the case as former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio said, “We have a real situation where somebody in the intelligence community of the Chinese government is recruiting spies and got extradited for doing it.”
“This is espionage. This is real espionage,” he said.
“This particular trial will have the biggest impact on our relationship with China of any … criminal case that’s gone to trial of any individual. There’s no doubt about that,” DeVillers said.
Jim Lewis, former member of the U.S. Foreign Service and Senior Executive Service, emphasized the historic nature of the case. “We’ve never been able to extradite … a Ministry of State Security intelligence agent from another country to the United States,” he said. “Getting them on trial is really an important step toward making the Chinese rethink the cost of espionage.”
“There’s already several hundred Chinese intelligence officers operating in the U.S.,” Lewis said. “We aren’t going to be able to deter them, so we’re just going to have to catch more of them.”
If convicted, Xu could face 15 years in prison
(The Epoch Times)
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