China is stealing everything from nuclear weapons secrets to genetically-modified seeds as part of $600BN theft of US technology

China is stealing everything from nuclear weapons secrets to genetically-modified seeds as part of an estimated $600billion-a-year theft of US technology, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Analysis of Department of Justice cases shows rampant and brazen plundering of US companies by Chinese spies who send trade secrets back home.

In at least two cases, Beijing has plotted to steal technology related to the production and detection of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

But shameless spooks have also pilfered medical secrets from a children's hospital in Ohio, as well as stealing seed technology from a farm in Iowa.

The results can be financially devastating, with one US energy company losing a whopping $550million after a Chinese firm stole its intellectual property.

FBI director Christopher Wray warned last week that Chinese spies were becoming 'more aggressive' than ever in its efforts to steal US trade secrets

In March, former Google software engineer Linwei Ding was indicted on charges of stealing AI trade secrets from the tech giant and passing them on to Chinese companies

Mo Hailong was convicted of digging up genetically-modified corn seeds in Iowa in a plot to send them back to China

The cases also reveal the ease with which Beijing is able to poach American technology, with one Chinese national downloading reams of documents from his US company-issued laptop onto his personal hard drive before saving it under a folder named 'ChinaGovernment'.

It comes as FBI director Christopher Wray warned last week that China was 'the defining threat of our generation' and is 'becoming more aggressive in their efforts to steal our secrets'.

DailyMail.com has found more than a dozen cases in which the US Government has charged Chinese entities or individuals with conspiring to steal American intellectual property on behalf of Beijing since 2018.

Our audit reveals:

• The People's Republic of China has orchestrated attempts to steal billions of dollars worth of trade secrets from some of the biggest companies in the US, including Tesla, Google, Apple, and Coca-Cola

• But the shameless thievery filters through all levels of society, from Wall Street to Main Street, with small businesses and start ups also targeted

• No sector of society is safe, with agriculture, tech, manufacturing, medical and military fields all subject to Chinese espionage

• US-based Chinese nationals are often paid large sums by CCP-backed entities or provided grant funding in exchange for passing on company secrets

These findings are likely to be just the tip of the iceberg, with the FBI revealing last year that it had around 2,000 active investigations related to China's efforts to 'steal information'.

Meanwhile, there have been more than 1,200 cases of IP (intellectual property) theft lawsuits brought by US companies against Chinese entities since the turn of the century.

Military

The most immediately disturbing cases involve the attempted theft of US military and defense secrets, including nuclear weapons technology.

As recently as February, Chenguang Gong, of San Jose, was arrested for allegedly stealing codes that could detect missile launches from space.

The 57-year-old Chinese native, who moved to the US around 1993 and became a citizen in 2011, 'sought to provide the People's Republic of China with information to aid its military', according to the US Attorney for the Central District of California.

Gong was released on a $2.5million bond following a hearing in San Jose and is facing 10 years in federal prison if convicted.

His prosecution came after the growing threat of Chinese espionage sparked the establishment of the Distruptive Technology Strike Force, co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce, to counter efforts by hostile nations to illicitly acquire sensitive US technology.

In May last year, it announced a slew of charges against alleged hostile actors, three of whom were Chinese nationals.

This included Liming Li, 64, of Rancho Cucamonga, California, who allegedly stole technological secrets belonging to two former US employers that could be used in the manufacturing of nuclear submarines and military aircraft, according to an indictment.

Li, who worked in various engineering and software development roles for Southern California companies, is accused of stealing software that was subject to US export controls for national security, nuclear nonproliferation and anti-terrorism reasons.

Court documents allege that Li tried to use the stolen technology to boost his own business and provide services to government entities and businesses in China.

The case, which was one of the first filed by the unified task force, also revealed the outlandish audacity of alleged malicious actors such as Li, who downloaded tranches of files onto a company-issued laptop named 'ChinaGovernment'.

Genetically-modified seeds to medical secrets 

Li Chen was jailed for 30 months for illegally seizing research relating to the treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions from Nationwide Children's Hospital's Research Institute

Chinese firms own 346,915 acres of American agricultural land as of December 2022

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The US agricultural sector has also been on high alert to the threat of Chinese espionage since Mo Hailong was convicted in 2016 of digging up genetically-modified corn seeds in Iowa in a plot to send them back to China. 

The FBI and the US Justice Department say cases of agricultural IP theft have been growing since Hailong was first discovered foraging in fields in 2011.

It comes amid concerns that Chinese firms now own 346,915 acres of American agricultural land as of December 2022.  

But perhaps one of the most shameless examples of state-sponsored thievery came in the 2021 sentencing of Li Chen for conspiring to steal trade secrets from a children's hospital in Ohio.

Chen, once of Dublin, Ohio, was jailed for 30 months for playing a leading part in a scheme, funded by the Chinese government, in which she sought to illegally seize research relating to the treatment of a range of pediatric medical conditions from Nationwide Children's Hospital's Research Institute.

Court documents revealed that the 49-year-old conspired to steal and then monetize the sale of exosome 'isolation kits', which play a key role in the treatment of conditions including liver fibrosis and liver cancer.

Following the sentencing, Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division slammed the callous scheme.

'A hospital's most important mission is to help people live longer and healthier lives. The defendant's mission, however, was to steal trade secrets and create a company in China to make money off those stolen trade secrets,' he said.

State-sponsored thievery  

Chen received benefits from the Chinese government to carry out her work, including the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers of the National Security Division compared these institutions to the notorious Thousand Talents program, a national grant scheme that Western counterintelligence officials have long warned is used to tap up Chinese scientists and engineers who have moved abroad.

It is thought that Liming Li was also seeking enrolment in the program, as was Xiaorong You, aka Shannon You, of Lansing, Michigan, who was involved in one of the more mundane yet extraordinary attempts to steal the most valuable of American trade secrets - a Coca-Cola can.

You was made redundant by the soda supremo as part of a company restructure in August 2017, but in the weeks before her final day she downloaded highly-classified formulas relating to the liner of the iconic Coke can onto her personal devices, evading the company's sophisticated security systems.

Xiaorong You, of Lansing, Michigan, (left) who was convicted of attempting to steal trade secrets relating to the manufacture of Coca-Cola cans, shakes hands with a businessman in China, Xu Dongguo, whom US prosecutors say would have benefited from her theft 

You is interviewed by the FBI in Grand Rapids before she was sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to commit economic espionage, possession of stolen trade secrets, economic espionage and wire fraud

This formula, of which You was one of only two people at Coke to have the details, was crucial to the company's success, as without it the drinks famously sweet, acidic recipe would burn through the can.

A little over a week before You downloaded this most valuable of trade secrets, she had traveled to China to apply for millions of dollars of government money to set up her own coatings company, before applying for the Thousand Talents program.

The funding, she wrote in her application, would help her company break the 'international monopoly' in the global food container coatings industry - and the files from her Coke computer were central to her plan.

In May 2022, You was sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to commit economic espionage, possession of stolen trade secrets, economic espionage and wire fraud.

The formula that she attempted to steal, which belonged to Coke's partner companies who devised it, cost nearly $120million to develop.

Huge losses for American companies 

It is these eye-watering sums that have led the FBI to estimate that the estimated theft of American trade secrets by China costs the US anywhere from $300billion to $600billion a year.

As far back as 2018, a US court found that American energy firm AMSC, lost more than $550million after Sinovel Wind Group LLC, a wind turbine company based in China, stole its trade secrets.

That same year, Taiwan's UMC was fined $60million after it pled guilty to stealing trade secrets from US firm Micron Technology Inc in a bid to help a Chinese state-owned chipmaker.

UMC acted to help China achieve 'self-sufficiency in computer memory production without spending its own time or money to earn it,' Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said at the time.

But Beijing has also gone after the biggest names in US business. In the last 12 months, prosecutors have filed charges against Chinese individuals and entities for conspiring to steal trade secrets from Tesla, Apple and Google.

Wray again warned a conference in Nashville on Thursday that China considers every sector of the US economy as 'fair game' for espionage and IP theft

In March, former Google software engineer Linwei Ding was indicted on charges of stealing AI trade secrets from the tech giant and passing them on to Chinese companies.

The stolen information related to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models through machine learning, according to the indictment. 

The Chinese national, 38, was arrested in Newark, California on Wednesday and faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count if convicted.

Ding's case marked the first significant enforcement since Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced that the Justice Department's disruptive technology strike force would focus on AI-related violations last month. 

It is no wonder that in remarks delivered to the Vanderbilt Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats in Nashville on Thursday, Wray again warned that China considers 'every sector that makes our society run as fair game'. 

The threat is partially 'driven by the CCP's aspirations to wealth and power,' the FBI director said, adding that China wants to 'seize economic development in the areas most critical to tomorrow's economy,' even if doing so requires theft.