They argued that the theft was “consistent with a broader strategy that is being employed by the Chinese government” and “a plot to get technology for the Chinese government”.
However, Yu fled to China when a warrant for his arrest was issued.Īccording to legal filings uncovered by Bloomberg, throughout the case, ASML lawyers alluded to the complicity of the Chinese state in the theft, linking the firms with China’s ambition in technology. Zhongchang Yu, a former employee of ASML, founded both XTAL and Dongfang in 2014, two years after he left ASML.ĪSML referred the case to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s office in California, which filed criminal charges against Yu and two other former employees of ASML, Wanyu Li and Song Lan, who had also joined XTAL.Ĭonsequently, Li and Lan pleaded guilty for taking computer data. The OPC is integral to lithography machines producing the circuits for semiconductor circuits.
#American espionage in china software
The IP at the centre of the case was the source code for a software called optical proximity correction (OPC). They had previously sued the latter for intellectual property (IP) theft. Significantly, in its 2022 annual report from February, Dutch semiconductor manufacturer ASML said that Beijing-based firm Dongfang Jingyuan Electron Ltd. Not the first case of Chinese economic espionageĬurrently, the US has thousands of counter-intelligence cases against China, and they open multiple new cases against China daily.įBI director Wray declared China’s espionage as “the greatest long-term threat” to America’s “information and intellectual property” and “economic vitality”.Īccording to data accessed by Bloomberg, since the 1990s, American prosecutors have charged over 700 people with dubious Chinese links for espionage, intellectual property theft, and illegally exporting military technology. based think tank Hudson Institute, in July 2020.Īlso Read: Russian spy honey-trapped NATO staff in Naples, sold cheap knock-offs as jewellery: Report “…instead of engaging in the hard slog of innovation, China often steals American intellectual property and then uses it to compete against the very American companies it victimised - in effect, cheating twice over,” the FBI’s director Christopher Wray had said at an event hosted by Washington D.C. It gives a glimpse into the expansive and murky economic intelligence-gathering apparatus that the Chinese state has built, which not only relies on its personnel, but also engineers, scientists, and coders at western technology firms. Significantly, the data from the phone reflected the vast methods and tactics being used by Xu to steal technology. Xu’s digital footprint also revealed that for years, he had been stealing defence and aviation technology information from western companies like General Electric (GE).
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