Engineer pleads guilty to stealing 3,000 secret files about US nuclear missile detection technology for China

A California man working on behalf of the Chinese government pleaded guilty on Tuesday to stealing US defense trade secret technologies that help the US military detect and track nuclear, ballistic, and hypersonic missile launches, and allow military aircraft to evade them.

FBI officials say 59-year-old Chenguang Gong, a dual citizen of the US and China, admitted to transferring more than 3,600 files to three personal storage devices while working as an engineer at a Los Angeles-area research and development company in 2023.

The US government had commissioned the unnamed company to develop the secret sensor technologies “to detect nuclear missile launches, track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and to allow US fighter planes to detect and evade heat-seeking missiles.”

The files contained blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based missile detection and tracking systems, as well as sensors that allow the military aircraft to take specific countermeasures once a heat-seeking missile is detected, such as jamming the missile’s infrared tracking ability.

Although Gong had only worked for the LA company briefly from January 2023 to April 2023, the former engineer was able to steal the victim company’s most important trade secrets, which the FBI says were worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

US counterintelligence said some of the information was “related to the development and design of a readout integrated circuit that allows space-based systems to detect missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and a readout integrated circuit that allows aircraft to track incoming threats in low visibility environments.”

“Other trade secrets were related to the development of 'next generation' sensors capable of detecting low observable targets while demonstrating increased survivability in space, as well as the blueprints for the mechanical assemblies used to house and cryogenically cool the victim company’s sensors,” the FBI said.

At least 1800 files – many of them marked “[VICTIM COMPANY] PROPRIETARY,” “FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” “PROPRIETARY INFORMATION,” and “EXPORT CONTROLLED” – were found on storage devices seized from Gong’s temporary residence in Thousand Oaks, California.

Working for China since 2014

Gong, who had accepted a job at one of the victim company’s main competitors that April, had been hired as an application-specific integrated circuit design manager who was ultimately responsible for designing, developing, and verifying its infrared sensors.

Authorities discovered the engineer had been working on the sensitive technologies at various US companies, including one American military industry company in Dallas, Texas, from at least 2014 through 2020 – all with a long-term goal to deliver his developments directly to Beijing.

Throughout the years, Gong travelled to China multiple times to apply to the government's Talent Program, proposing to contribute to “high-end military integrated circuits” and develop various sensor technologies, such as a “low light/night vision” image sensors for use in military night vision goggles.”

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) sponsors these "Talent Programs" to identify individuals who have expert skills, abilities, and knowledge of advanced sciences and technologies to advance China’s economy and military capabilities.

Another of Gong’s proposals included sophisticated analog-to-digital converters that could be applied to “directly determine the accuracy and range of radar systems.”

He also sent a business proposal to a high-tech research institute in China, which even included a video presentation containing the model number of a sensor developed by an international defense, aerospace, and security company where Gong worked from 2015 to 2019.

Gong pleaded guilty to one count of theft of trade secrets in the Southern California District Court and was released on $1.75 million bond. Sentencing is set for September 29th.