UCLA professor faces 219-year prison sentence for sending missile data to China

Yi-Chi Shih, a  professor in electrical engineering and adjunct professor at UCLA, was found guilty last month by a Los Angeles jury of smuggling data chips with military applications to China.

He was convicted on 18 counts, including making an illegal export and multiple fraud charges.

Shih and another Chinese defendant, Kiet Ahn Mai, worked together to defraud an American semiconductor chip manufacturer. According to prosecutors, Mai posed as a potential customer to obtain chip designs from the unnamed company, then illegally sent the products to China.

In a statement, prosecutors said the chips were sent to a Chinese company where Shih was president. He paid for the scheme through a US-based bank account, which was funded through another company based in China.

The chips stolen in the scheme “are used in missiles, missile guidance systems, fighter jets, electronic warfare, electronic warfare countermeasures and radar applications,” according to the statement.

Shih was hoping the state of California would offer him sanctuary in the case, but that was not the case. The spy is going to for a long time, if not the rest of his life.

Industrial espionage is a key point of dispute between the US and China, an issue that has recently intensified as trade negotiations heat up between the two countries. In the past, the US has accused prominent Chinese companies, including Huawei, of stealing technology from American businesses.

Shih’s sentence will be determined at a later date, but it doesn't look good for him.

The UCLA electrical engineering program will miss Shih greatly. "All this over a bag of chips," a school spokesperson said.


If you enjoyed this post, please consider following my blog, but even if you choose not to do so, please check out the sponsors on this page.





Tweet

China warns Canada of 'grave consequences' if Huawei's exec isn't released

Meng Wanzhou, Executive Board Director of Huawei, a giant Chinese tech company specializing in spying on other countries with implanted devices in their devices faces extradition to the U.S. after she was arrested in Vancouver, Canada last week. A bail hearing is set to resume on Monday.

China warned our neighbors to the north of "grave consequences" if she isn't released.

Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng told the Communist state media outlet Xinhua News Agency on Saturday that he had summoned Canadian Ambassador John McCallum to protest the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer.

Le said he warned that Canada will face consequences for violating her rights and ignoring the law, calling the arrest "unreasonable, unconscionable, and vile in nature." He did not specify what China would do, but it sounded scary, eh.

The executive's arrest came at a time when U.S.-China trade tensions showed signs of easing, whereby President Trump and Chinese President for Life Xi Jinping agreed to hold off on new tariffs to give more time for officials to reach an agreement.

But the arrest, which happened on the same day as the Trump-Xi meeting, caused markets to nose-dive and fears of a drawn out trade war were rekindled.

On Sunday, the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily said that while China would not "cause trouble," it also did not fear trouble and that nobody should underestimate China's determination on this case. After all, they have nukes and ways to get them to "melt the snow," if you get their drift.

"Only if the Canadian side corrects its mistake and immediately stops infringing upon the lawful, legitimate rights of a Chinese citizen and gives a proper accounting to the Chinese people can it avoid paying a heavy price for this," it said in an editorial.

Justin Trudeau in India

So it's all Canada's fault, not President Trump's.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denied in that boyish way he has, that there were any political motivations or interference in Meng's arrest at a press conference last week. "We respect the independence of our judicial processes," he stammered.

Meng first appeared in a Vancouver court Friday for a bail hearing.

The court heard that the U.S. believes she lied about her ties to a Hong Kong company that tried to circumvent trade sanctions against the world's number one terror-funding nation, Iran.

An attorney for the Canadian Justice Department told a Vancouver judge that Meng misled U.S. banks into believing that her company had no ties to Skycom Tech, a company which tried to sell American computer equipment to an Iranian mobile phone company.

American investigators believe Skycom works as a subsidiary of Huawei, Canadian authorities said.

Meng faces up to 30 years in prison in the United States, making her an extreme flight risk, according to the Canadian government lawyer. And if she returns to China, well, it's "Where's Wanda?"

Meng's attorney David Martin said she would submit to electronic monitoring and wouldn't skip bail but c'mon, her father owns Huawei and they can likely figure out how to defeat the monitoring device while making dinner.

The hearing is expected to continue Monday to determine whether Meng will remain in custody.

Huawei, which recently passed Apple as the second-biggest maker of cellphones after Samsung Electronics, has been the target of deepening U.S. security concerns. Under Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, Washington has pressured European countries and other allies to limit use of its technology.

Huawei's founder and Meng's father, Ren Zhengfei, is a former Chinese army engineer and one of the China's political elite. It is also believed that he knows karate.

The U.S. views Huawei and smaller Chinese tech suppliers as possible fronts for Chinese spying and as commercial competitors. The Trump administration says they benefit from improper subsidies and market barriers.

Trump's tariff hikes this year on Chinese imports stemmed from complaints Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. But the real worry by U.S. tech companies is that China may steal their business.

And tariffs have a way of raising prices on everyone, including the country that imposes them on others.

Hello fellow conservatives. At this time of year when everyone has a hand out for a hand out, I don't. I simply want you to follow Brain Flushings and check out the ads on this page. It's free, I'm free and you're free to follow me or not. I hope you do. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.


Tweet