Over the past half-century, Chinese spies have targeted a wide range of California targets.
They worked like Boeing Aerospace Engineer and a naval engineer at defense contractor Power Paragon to obtain highly classified information on Space Shuttle and U.S. Navy projects. They assumed the roles of professor of electrical engineering at UCLA And software engineer at Google and even worked as driver and aide to the late U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein when she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Intelligence experts say China continues to strengthen its network of spies and assets across California, as highlighted this week after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted he was involved in an extramarital affair when allegations surfaced that he was in a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. On Thursday morning, Huang announced his resignation.
“For years, the FBI has been sounding the alarm about China’s ambitious efforts to gain technological, economic and geopolitical superiority,” said former Deputy Chief Horace Frank of the Los Angeles Police Department, who oversaw intelligence. “Their activities pose a long-term strategic threat, not just to the United States, but to the entire world. Their counterintelligence strategy is not just about stealing secrets today; it is also about securing strategic advantages tomorrow. They recognize that human vulnerabilities (sex, money, ego, and ambition) can be crucial when it comes to achieving this quest for global domination.”
For China, California is a key espionage hub because it combines three attractive targets: cutting-edge technology industries, major research universities and a high concentration of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, according to William Hannas, a senior analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown. China’s main goals are to accelerate its technological development, reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers and achieve leadership in strategically important areas, including artificial intelligence, Hannas said.
“Silicon Valley is particularly important,” he said, “because it provides access not only to existing technologies, but also to innovations at their earliest stages. »
Some experts say California is also a focal point for China’s espionage efforts because it has the largest number of Chinese residents in the continental United States.
“It’s easier for spies and agents of influence to hide in plain sight because they can more easily integrate into their communities than in places where the proportion of Asian Americans and Chinese residing overseas is lower,” said Victor Shih, director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of San Diego’s School of Global Politics and Strategy.
Walk a fine line
For the United States, Shih said, guarding against Chinese spies involves a delicate balance.
Officials should avoid politicizing the issue in such a way that they cast suspicion on Chinese scientists or Asian Americans on the basis of their race and ethnicity.
Already, many Chinese working for California companies feel targeted, he said, and some are complaining about the situation.
suspicion means they are not considered for promotions. And there have been high-profile cases of Asian Americans unfairly accused of espionage.
“Companies need to have many race and nationality neutral policies in place to ensure their ownership rights,” Shih said. “Before, things were far too lax, but now we run the risk of a witch hunt. The worst thing that could happen, and is happening now, is that a witch hunt in the United States pushes many otherwise completely innocent scientists to China and ends up helping China develop technologies that will one day replace American technology or even challenge American military superiority.”
A race for technological leadership
Beijing’s leaders are seeking to catch up – and eventually overtake – the United States in the frontier areas of defense, aerospace and technology. Increasingly, China is also positioning assets in California to launch cyberhacking attacks, seek political influence and spread propaganda, intelligence experts said.
“They will try anything,” retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent James Gaylord said of China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s main civilian intelligence and security agency.
Gaylord, who has led several counterintelligence operations in California, said Chinese spies and agents are everywhere in the state, infiltrating private businesses and even government offices.
“Unlike the Russians, the Chinese favor a shotgun approach,” he said. “‘A thousand grains of sand,’ that’s what they call it.”
In addition to cultivating relationships with California tech CEOs to gain first-hand insight into U.S. artificial intelligence policies, Chinese spies are also taking to social media to attempt to cultivate relationships with students at top research institutions such as Stanford University.
While some spies embrace the old practice of honey spying, using sexual or romantic allure to extract sensitive information, Gaylord frequently delivers a stark warning to California tech bosses.
“If you have access to technology, if you’re a billionaire and a 50-year-old bald man, and a 25-year-old woman thinks you’re hilarious and the most interesting thing, it’s not you,” he tells them. “This is what you have access to.”
Chinese spies have engaged in relationships with high-level California politicians. Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell told investigators in 2015 that he had sex on multiple occasions with Christine Fang, an alleged Chinese spy, according to declassified FBI interviews.
They also compromised American counterintelligence. In 2001, the FBI began an investigation after receiving credible information that Katrina Leung, a San Marino businesswoman recruited as an informant in the early 1980s, was actively working as a double agent for China. He discovered that Leung, whose code name was “Parlor Maid,” was having a sexual relationship with her agency operative of 18 years, FBI Supervisory Special Agent James J. Smith, and was having an affair with William Cleveland, another FBI agent. He also revealed that over the years, FBI officials became aware of several incidents indicating that Leung had provided classified U.S. government information to China.
Leung was charged in 2003 with obtaining, copying and retaining national security documents, but the U.S. government ultimately blocked the defense from speaking to a key witness: her former FBI supervisor, Smith. After pleading guilty to lesser charges, Leung avoided a lengthy prison sentence. She and Smith now live together, according to public records, in a $1.4 million San Leandro home in Alameda County.
A long history of espionage
According to Hannas, China’s foreign technology acquisition program dates back to the 1950s. Initially, the focus was on obtaining specific military technologies and components. Then it expanded to manufacturing processes, advanced business technologies, and ultimately the underlying science from which new technologies emerge.
“Methods have expanded accordingly, from conventional espionage and technology purchases to cyber operations, academic collaborations, talent recruitment, overseas investments and the systematic exploitation of publicly available research,” Hannas said. “The focus has shifted from acquiring particular products to acquiring the ability to innovate.”
One of the first documented cases of Chinese espionage in California occurred in 1979, the year Beijing and Washington put aside their differences and established full diplomatic relations.
According to the Justice Department, Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a Chinese-born aerospace engineer who worked on NASA’s space shuttle program at Downey, sent three sets of classified documents to a technology professor in China via ocean freight. He then wrote to the professor asking what else he could do for his country.
About 27 years later, FBI agents searching Chung’s home discovered more than 250,000 pages of documents containing decades of sensitive trade secrets that Chung had shared with China, including stress analysis reports and design information for the Space Shuttle, B-1 bomber engineering manuals, and plans for the fueling system of a Delta IV rocket.
Chung was convicted of economic espionage and being an agent of China in 2009. The following year, he was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison.
Investigators discovered Chung when they were investigating Chi Mak, a Chinese-born electrical engineer who orchestrated one of the most notorious family spy rings.
A devout Maoist who worked for Power Paragon, Mak led China to 20 years of technological advancement, said Gaylord, who led the landmark counterintelligence investigation. Mak gave China the silent electric drive system to dampen the noise of submarine propulsion, the advanced combat system called AEGIS and the electromagnetic aircraft launch system allowing jets to carry heavier payloads on the aircraft carriers that are now part of China’s fleet. In 2008, he was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.
Chung’s convictions did not stop China.
In 2020, Hao Zhang, a former USC professor, was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for conspiring to steal smartphone signal technology. In 2024, Wenheng Zhao, a former US Navy sailor, was sentenced to 27 months in prison for providing details of a military operation to a Chinese intelligence officer. In January, Jinchao Wei, a former sailor on the USS Essex in San Diego, was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for espionage after accepting bribes in exchange for photos and documents.
China tends to have a different relationship with its spies compared to countries like Russia.
In addition to using highly trained agents from the Ministry of State Security, Shih said, the system relies on much larger numbers of amateurs and ordinary Chinese to help with technology acquisition, political influence and harassment of dissidents — and it doesn’t care what happens to them.
“During the Cold War, they said, ‘I have one of your men, you have one of my men, we’ll trade,'” Shih said. “The Chinese government never tried to get these people back. It’s like if you get caught, you go to jail. That’s it. Too bad.”
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