US jails Chinese engineer for taking files on missile guidance system to China

Measured in millimetres, the tiny device was designed to allow drones, missiles and rockets to hit targets without satellite guidance. An advanced version was being developed secretly for the United States military by a small firm and L-3 Communications, a major defence contractor.

On Monday, Liu Sixing, a Chinese citizen who worked at L-3's space and navigation division, was given a jail term of five years and 10 months by a US federal court for taking thousands of files about the device, called a disk resonator gyroscope, and other defence systems to China in violation of a US arms embargo.

The case illustrates what the FBI calls a growing "insider threat" that has not drawn as much attention as Chinese cyber operations. But US authorities warn that this type of espionage can be just as damaging to national security and US business.

"The reason this technology is on the State Department munitions list, and controlled … is it can navigate, control and position missiles, aircraft, drones, bombs, lasers and targets very accurately," said David Smukowski, president of Sensors in Motion, the small firm developing the technology with L-3. "While it saves lives, it can also be very strategic. It is rocket science."

In the past four years, nearly 100 individual or corporate defendants have been charged by the US Justice Department with stealing trade secrets or classified information for Chinese entities or exporting military or dual-use technology to China, according to court records.

"America is a global leader in the development of military technologies and, as such, it has become a leading target for the theft and illicit transfer of such technologies," said John Carlin, acting assistant attorney general for national security. "These schemes represent a threat to our national security. The intelligence community has assessed China to be among the most aggressive collectors of sensitive US information and technologies."

Earlier this month, a Chinese citizen who worked as a contractor at Nasa's Langley Research Centre was arrested at Dulles Airport in the state of Virginia and charged with making false statements to federal agents about the laptop and phone memory card he was carrying. According to an FBI affidavit, the suspect, Bo Jiang, 31, had taken a Nasa laptop that contained sensitive information on a previous trip to China.