Xiaoqing Zheng[1] worked at General Electric (GE) for 10 years from 2008 to 2018 serving as an engineer specializing in sealing technology. During his tenure at GE, Mr. Zheng had conspired with Zahoxi Zhang, a business partner from the PRC, to steal GE’s turbine technology and reproduce said technology in China for profit.
Insiders
Xiang Haitao[1] was an imaging scientist working for The Climate Corporation in St. Louis. The Climate Corporation is a subsidiary of Monsanto. In his work as an imaging scientist, Xiang developed software that would analyze field data to make predictions and increase farmers' productivity.
Wei Sun had been an employee of Raytheon Missile and Defense for 10 years before attempting to illegally transport proprietary technical information out of the country and into China. In 2018, ahead of international travel Sun had requested to take a company laptop on his travels. Raytheon denied the request.
Cheng Bo, a.k.a. Joe Cheng, a US-based former employee of Avnet Asia Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based company specializing in electronic components and software, allegedly falsified documents in order to ship export-controlled power amplifiers to the PRC, and previously Iran.
Chinese national, Hao Zhang, was convicted of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets for his operations involving American companies Avago and Skyworks. From 2010 to 2015 he coordinated with co-conspirators from Tianjin University in China to take the IP from Avago and Skyworks and recreate the optoelectronics equipment for his own company domestically in China.
The semiconductor market is quite competitive and any advancement in technology could set you ahead of peers. This incentive drove employees from United Microelectronics Corporation, Inc. (UMC), a Taiwanese foundry company, to steal trade secrets from the American company Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron). In 2018, the FBI linked the representatives at UMC to the PRC’s state-owned semiconductor firm Fujian Jinhua.