Quote:When Wei Sun, a 48-year-old engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems, left for an overseas trip last year, he told the company he planned to bring his company-issued HP EliteBook 840 laptop along.

Sun, a Chinese-born American citizen, had been working at Raytheon, the fourth-largest US defense contractor, for a decade. He held a secret-level security clearance and worked on highly sensitive missile programs used by the US military.

Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of restricted data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.



Sun didn’t listen, according to US prosecutors. While he was out of the country, Sun connected to Raytheon’s internal network on the laptop. He sent an email suddenly announcing he was quitting his job after 10 years in order to study and work overseas.

When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop.

A Raytheon lawyer examined the machine, and confirmed it contained technical specifications prohibited from export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in addition to security software that is itself export-controlled and requires a special license to take outside the United States.

Sun was arrested by FBI agents the next day. His attorney, Cameron Morgan, did not respond to a request for comment. Raytheon said only that the company “cooperated with this investigation,” declining to elaborate further.

Court documents reviewed by Quartz refer to Sun possessing classified files related to several different air defense systems designed by Raytheon for the US military and sold to American allies and proxies around the world.

The case, which has not been reported until now, is yet another example of China’s increasing efforts to acquire American military technology. The country’s security services have already compromised dozens of crucial US weapons systems, such as the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system, and the Aegis ballistic missile defense system used by the Navy. In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile being developed by the Navy known as Sea Dragon. The intruders reportedly managed to get massive amounts of sensitive signals and sensor data, in addition to the Navy’s entire electronic warfare library.

The weapons with which Sun worked are “pretty much top-of-the-line American systems,” according to Dean Cheng, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who studies China’s military capabilities.

The AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile, is used on US fighter jets like the F-16 and F-22 to destroy other aircraft before they can be seen by anything but radar. It has also been converted into a ground-based air defense system, which may have been Sun’s focus, since prosecutors describe his work as centered on ballistic missile defense.

The documents also say Raytheon employees will provide testimony about the Stinger missile, a “man-portable” air-defense missile that can be fired by troops on the ground, made most famous when the US supplied it to Afghan warlords fighting against occupying Soviet troops.

Perhaps most significant is Sun’s involvement with the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program, an effort to replace the interceptor used by US air defense systems to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.

The Pentagon cancelled the program last year because of technical problems, but information about the project would still be useful to China to understand what the US might do to defend from conventional or nuclear missiles. Missile technology has become central to Beijing’s strategy to deter US power (Quartz member exclusive) in the Pacific, making up for deficiencies and a lack of experience with weapons systems like jet fighters.

China would be eager to learn how to defeat the missiles by understanding the technical details of how they find their targets with radar and other sensors, and how they respond to attempts to jam or distract them, Cheng told Quartz.

China already has its own equivalents of these weapons, so it’s not necessarily seeking to copy US technology. However, as one example, China’s advanced air-to-air missile has never been used in combat, while the AMRAAM has, so its design may offer lessons that China’s defense industrial base has yet to learn.

Cheng said this is “one piece of the larger Chinese espionage picture…we tend to focus on Chinese cyber [but] they have human intelligence, they have people trying to steal examples of it in other countries as well.”

None of the documents shed any light on Sun’s co-conspirators, if any, and it’s not clear if Sun was acting at the behest of Chinese intelligence.

“I can assume that Chinese government agencies are keeping their eye on former citizens who are working in big US companies [like Raytheon],” said Janosh Neumann, a former counterintelligence officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service who now lives in the United States.

Regardless, William Mackie, the lead prosecutor on the Sun case, said someone like Sun can do damage without directly cooperating with anyone. The files Sun allegedly took out of the country could have just as easily been purloined by an adversarial spy service without the engineer’s knowledge.

“If your computer gets left in a hotel room, somebody could image the whole thing and you’d never know it,” Mackie told Quartz. “There’s always the risk of something like that—no different than if somebody took pictures or copies of blueprints or a paper file.”

A grand jury in Arizona last week returned a superseding indictment charging Sun with additional counts of violating ITAR. Legal filings suggest that Sun, who initially pleaded not guilty, is preparing to change his plea to guilty as part of an agreement with the Department of Justice. He is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 14.

Link

For once do your job, a firing squad will send a good message to spies and idiots.

(02-04-2020 01:58 PM)CrimsonPhantom Wrote:  

Quote:When Wei Sun, a 48-year-old engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems, left for an overseas trip last year, he told the company he planned to bring his company-issued HP EliteBook 840 laptop along.

Sun, a Chinese-born American citizen, had been working at Raytheon, the fourth-largest US defense contractor, for a decade. He held a secret-level security clearance and worked on highly sensitive missile programs used by the US military.

Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of restricted data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.



Sun didn’t listen, according to US prosecutors. While he was out of the country, Sun connected to Raytheon’s internal network on the laptop. He sent an email suddenly announcing he was quitting his job after 10 years in order to study and work overseas.

When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop.

A Raytheon lawyer examined the machine, and confirmed it contained technical specifications prohibited from export by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), in addition to security software that is itself export-controlled and requires a special license to take outside the United States.

Sun was arrested by FBI agents the next day. His attorney, Cameron Morgan, did not respond to a request for comment. Raytheon said only that the company “cooperated with this investigation,” declining to elaborate further.

Court documents reviewed by Quartz refer to Sun possessing classified files related to several different air defense systems designed by Raytheon for the US military and sold to American allies and proxies around the world.

The case, which has not been reported until now, is yet another example of China’s increasing efforts to acquire American military technology. The country’s security services have already compromised dozens of crucial US weapons systems, such as the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system, and the Aegis ballistic missile defense system used by the Navy. In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile being developed by the Navy known as Sea Dragon. The intruders reportedly managed to get massive amounts of sensitive signals and sensor data, in addition to the Navy’s entire electronic warfare library.

The weapons with which Sun worked are “pretty much top-of-the-line American systems,” according to Dean Cheng, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who studies China’s military capabilities.

The AMRAAM, or Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile, is used on US fighter jets like the F-16 and F-22 to destroy other aircraft before they can be seen by anything but radar. It has also been converted into a ground-based air defense system, which may have been Sun’s focus, since prosecutors describe his work as centered on ballistic missile defense.

The documents also say Raytheon employees will provide testimony about the Stinger missile, a “man-portable” air-defense missile that can be fired by troops on the ground, made most famous when the US supplied it to Afghan warlords fighting against occupying Soviet troops.

Perhaps most significant is Sun’s involvement with the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program, an effort to replace the interceptor used by US air defense systems to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.

The Pentagon cancelled the program last year because of technical problems, but information about the project would still be useful to China to understand what the US might do to defend from conventional or nuclear missiles. Missile technology has become central to Beijing’s strategy to deter US power (Quartz member exclusive) in the Pacific, making up for deficiencies and a lack of experience with weapons systems like jet fighters.

China would be eager to learn how to defeat the missiles by understanding the technical details of how they find their targets with radar and other sensors, and how they respond to attempts to jam or distract them, Cheng told Quartz.

China already has its own equivalents of these weapons, so it’s not necessarily seeking to copy US technology. However, as one example, China’s advanced air-to-air missile has never been used in combat, while the AMRAAM has, so its design may offer lessons that China’s defense industrial base has yet to learn.

Cheng said this is “one piece of the larger Chinese espionage picture…we tend to focus on Chinese cyber [but] they have human intelligence, they have people trying to steal examples of it in other countries as well.”

None of the documents shed any light on Sun’s co-conspirators, if any, and it’s not clear if Sun was acting at the behest of Chinese intelligence.

“I can assume that Chinese government agencies are keeping their eye on former citizens who are working in big US companies [like Raytheon],” said Janosh Neumann, a former counterintelligence officer with Russia’s Federal Security Service who now lives in the United States.

Regardless, William Mackie, the lead prosecutor on the Sun case, said someone like Sun can do damage without directly cooperating with anyone. The files Sun allegedly took out of the country could have just as easily been purloined by an adversarial spy service without the engineer’s knowledge.

“If your computer gets left in a hotel room, somebody could image the whole thing and you’d never know it,” Mackie told Quartz. “There’s always the risk of something like that—no different than if somebody took pictures or copies of blueprints or a paper file.”

A grand jury in Arizona last week returned a superseding indictment charging Sun with additional counts of violating ITAR. Legal filings suggest that Sun, who initially pleaded not guilty, is preparing to change his plea to guilty as part of an agreement with the Department of Justice. He is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 14.

Link

For once do your job, a firing squad will send a good message to spies and idiots.

He should be executed.

Iran is going to execute an Iranian "spy" soon but I don't think this guy will. He'll get a slap on the wrist and sent back as an unwanted immigrant, or whatever terminology they use. The ones that let him take his computer should also be held accountable. "Bola de pendejos."

Been a problem for a long time with Chinese. Did Clinton transfer US missile technology to China for 10 Million?

Dude was an idiot for returning to the the US.

(02-04-2020 02:29 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Dude was an idiot for returning to the the US.

You are assuming he had a choice in the matter.

How many is this in a matter of weeks? Dude smuggling vials out of the Country and bagging 10k a month?

That’s approaching where’s Hunter money! All traitorous grifters. Sad

(02-04-2020 02:39 PM)Claw Wrote:  

(02-04-2020 02:29 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Dude was an idiot for returning to the the US.

You are assuming he had a choice in the matter.

My guess is he was offered money to get more info.

I worked with Raytheon Missile Systems a lot when I worked in Blacksburg VA. They seemed to run a pretty tight ship. I worked on the AMRAAM program (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile), mostly.

(02-04-2020 02:39 PM)Claw Wrote:  

(02-04-2020 02:29 PM)VA49er Wrote:  Dude was an idiot for returning to the the US.

You are assuming he had a choice in the matter.

Good point. May have been family involved as well.

(02-04-2020 02:44 PM)ECUGrad07 Wrote:  I worked with Raytheon Missile Systems a lot when I worked in Blacksburg VA. They seemed to run a pretty tight ship. I worked on the AMRAAM program (Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile), mostly.

It seems Raytheon did what it was supposed to do. Raytheon told him NOT to carry the laptop and then jumped all over it when he returnd to the US. Other than physically taking the laptop away from him not sure what else they could have done. I don't think they had reason to suspect anything prior to his leaving.

The arrest of Wei Sun: good news, I guess.

But what he has done or hasn’t done, or is now prevented from doing, is honestly beside the point. For the last 4-5 decades — in the context of military/industrial espionage, intellectual property, etc. — the PRC has bent America over and taken us any way they please. Arresting some dude at Raytheon just doesn’t make a lot of difference anymore.

(02-04-2020 03:10 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  The arrest of Wei Sun: good news, I guess.

But what he has done or hasn’t done, or is now prevented from doing, is honestly beside the point. For the last 4-5 decades — in the context of military/industrial espionage, intellectual property, etc. — the PRC has bent America over and taken us any way they please. Arresting some dude at Raytheon just doesn’t make a hell of difference anymore.

Start executing them.

And then ones like the woman who was stealing technology secrets from Coke and Eastman Kodak, just throw in jail for a long time. She was stealing BPA technology from Coke-systems for sealing cans.

(02-04-2020 02:27 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  Been a problem for a long time with Chinese. Did Clinton transfer US missile technology to China for 10 Million?

The problems started when defense research was no longer confined to work on military installations where MP's searched vehicles and persons going in and out of the facility.

the issue here is the Corporate America being allowed to play fast and loose with projects for the DoD that they are working on in their facilities where security is minimal.

The sheer stupidity is ours, but our elected officials permit it because that's what the corporations want.

Even military sites suffered espionage, but not nearly to the degree that corporations permit today.

All laptops, zip drives, etc, should never leave the site, and if they do it should result in immediate arrest of the individual carrying them.

I was in the DOD contracting business a decade or so ago. We had to let all non-citizens go. I don't recall where the directive initiated, but I remember sending an employee packing.

(02-04-2020 03:11 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-04-2020 03:10 PM)Native Georgian Wrote:  The arrest of Wei Sun: good news, I guess.

But what he has done or hasn’t done, or is now prevented from doing, is honestly beside the point. For the last 4-5 decades — in the context of military/industrial espionage, intellectual property, etc. — the PRC has bent America over and taken us any way they please. Arresting some dude at Raytheon just doesn’t make a hell of difference anymore.

Start executing them.

And then ones like the woman who was stealing technology secrets from Coke and Eastman Kodak, just throw in jail for a long time. She was stealing BPA technology from Coke-systems for sealing cans.

The real life issue here is getting advance rocketing research in the hands of a regime which will pass it on to North Korea so their lap dog can attack our interests or our nation without giving us reason by international law to retaliate against their masters in China. It's a similar problem with Islamic fundamentalists. If you can't tie it directly to a a state it makes it harder to take out politically, not impossible, just harder.

And to Claw, there should be no foreign nationals working on any defense projects period. Even the low security projects usually gives them access to a base or building where higher security matters are contained.

This is simply 100% the responsibility of our Government and is yet another area where those who permitted this will go unpunished also and will likely continue to allow practices that keep us from maintaining the edge we need to make attacking the U.S. unthinkable. That one facet is what has given us relative world peace for 70 plus years and damned multi-national corporations are only interested in a buck and naively think they are somehow above destruction when the enemy strikes.

To put just how ridiculous this all is when we sent troops into Baghdad the first time it was because we couldn't simply level the buildings where their forces were hiding because they chose to hide in the corporate buildings of the American petroleum corporations and other related sites. We weren't going to target corporate assets of American corporations even if the enemy was taking refuge in their buildings. This policy cost American lives for the sake of shareholders. Business, any business, has to take a back seat to the well being of the nation.

Someone said those companies shouldn't hire non-Americans. While that would be a very good practical idea it would never fly with our Libturd population. They'd be crying to high heaven that it was unfair. As it is they biatch and moan when Trump puts restrictions on certain countries coming here.

(02-04-2020 07:04 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  Someone said those companies shouldn't hire non-Americans. While that would be a very good practical idea it would never fly with our Libturd population. They'd be crying to high heaven that it was unfair. As it is they biatch and moan when Trump puts restrictions on certain countries coming here.

There are US citizenship requirements for lots of jobs. I've had one of those.

(02-05-2020 10:36 AM)VA49er Wrote:  

(02-04-2020 07:04 PM)olliebaba Wrote:  Someone said those companies shouldn't hire non-Americans. While that would be a very good practical idea it would never fly with our Libturd population. They'd be crying to high heaven that it was unfair. As it is they biatch and moan when Trump puts restrictions on certain countries coming here.

There are US citizenship requirements for lots of jobs. I've had one of those.

He was a US citizen

(02-04-2020 03:15 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(02-04-2020 02:27 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  Been a problem for a long time with Chinese. Did Clinton transfer US missile technology to China for 10 Million?

The problems started when defense research was no longer confined to work on military installations where MP's searched vehicles and persons going in and out of the facility.

the issue here is the Corporate America being allowed to play fast and loose with projects for the DoD that they are working on in their facilities where security is minimal.

The sheer stupidity is ours, but our elected officials permit it because that's what the corporations want.

Even military sites suffered espionage, but not nearly to the degree that corporations permit today.

All laptops, zip drives, etc, should never leave the site, and if they do it should result in immediate arrest of the individual carrying them.