https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/en ... ile-launch
LOS ANGELES – A Santa Clara County man and former engineer at a Southern California company pleaded guilty today to stealing trade secret technologies developed for use by the United States government to detect nuclear missile launches, track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and to allow U.S. fighter planes to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles.
Chenguang Gong, 59, of San Jose, pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets. He remains free on $1.75 million bond.
According to his plea agreement, Gong – a dual citizen of the United States and China – transferred more than 3,600 files from a Los Angeles-area research and development company where he worked – identified in court documents as the victim company – to personal storage devices during his brief tenure with the company last year.
The files Gong transferred include blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, as well as blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. military aircraft to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and take countermeasures, including by jamming the missiles’ infrared tracking ability. Some of these files were later found on storage devices seized from Gong’s temporary residence in Thousand Oaks.
