Topline
The Justice Department charged a former Apple employee with stealing information about the company’s autonomous vehicle technology before leaving for a China-based competitor, one of several cases announced Tuesday against people accused of illegally diverting American technology and materials for China, Russia and Iran.
Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod of the U.S. Commerce Department, at a … [+]
Key Facts
Two of the five cases announced Tuesday accuse former software engineers of stealing materials from U.S. tech companies “in order to market it to Chinese competitors,” the Justice Department said.
One of those cases was against a Chinese citizen and former Apple engineer who allegedly stole “thousands of documents containing the source code for software and hardware pertaining to Apple’s autonomous vehicle technology,” and is now working for an unnamed China-based autonomous vehicle competitor.
The former Apple engineer, 35-year-old Weibao Wang, allegedly overlapped his time at Apple with a stint working a U.S. based job with a Chinese company, and after his last day with Apple, the company discovered he had accessed large amounts of “sensitive proprietary and confidential information,” the Justice Department said.
Two of the other cases involved an effort to help the Russian military and intelligence services gain sensitive technology, including one that allegedly supplied multiple Russian commercial airline companies with banned technological components, the Justice Department said.
In the fifth case, an individual is accused of establishing a Chinese procurement network to supply Iran with materials used in weapons of mass destruction, but the Justice Department has yet to make an arrest in this case, the department said.
Four of the defendants have been arrested, but others, including Wang, are still at large, according to the Justice Department’s announcement.
Key Background
The cases are the first from the DOJ’s recently launched Disruptive Technology Strike Force, which aims to “counter efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S. technology to advance their authoritarian regimes and facilitate human rights abuses,” the department said. The announcement comes as the U.S. attempts to prevent other countries from acquiring information that is of national security interest, but also of economic value. Last year, the Commerce Department imposed new limits on exporting advanced computing and semiconductor components to China. In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. joined a coalition of 37 countries to impose export controls on Russia last year.
Further Reading
U.S. Charges Apple Ex-Employee For Trying To Steal Technology, Fleeing To China (Reuters)
The Daring Ruse That Exposed China’s Campaign To Steal American Secrets (New York Times)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2023/05/16/ex-apple-employee-stole-self-driving-car-tech-for-chinese-competitor-doj-alleges/