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Feds: TVA Executive Traded Nuclear Information For Cash In Chinese Espionage Case (knoxnews.com)
mdsolar quotes a report from Knoxville News Sentinel: An East Tennessean who served as a senior manager in the Tennessee Valley Authority's nuclear program swapped information with one of China's top nuclear power companies in exchange for cash, according to federal court records unsealed Thursday. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Knoxville on Thursday announced an espionage conspiracy indictment against China General Nuclear Power, Chinese nuclear engineer Szuhsiung 'Allen' Ho, and Ho's firm, Energy Technology International. Prosecutors said Ho conspired with the companies to lure nuclear experts in the U.S. into providing information to allow China to develop and produce nuclear material based on American technology and under the radar of the U.S. government. Ho was taken into custody in Atlanta on Thursday afternoon and will be returned to U.S. District Court in Knoxville to face the two-count indictment. The indictment consists of one count of conspiracy to illegally engage and participate in the production and development of special nuclear material outside the U.S. and one count of conspiracy to act in the U.S. as an agent of a foreign government.
I am curious: what information did he get in return?
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
To clarify this is from TFA:
Among the six unidentified American co-conspirators listed in the indictment is a person labeled "U.S. Person 1," described as the TVA senior manager for the probabilistic risk assessment in the Nuclear Power Group from April 2010 to September 2014. The TVA executive was born in Taiwan and became a naturalized citizen in 1990, according to the indictment. A payment by Ho to the TVA executive was sent to Chattanooga, according to the indictment.
Silence is a state of mime.
Truth is pretty much every nation with ambitions is spying on US and other western military, industrial, technological secrets and stealing intellectual property. Key culprits include (but, of course, are not limited to) Russia, China, Israel, India, S.Korea. It is a long and time honored tradition.
Spying is an important business and there is competition, career, and money to be made. Spying is so prevailing, that, believe it or not,there are established MBA style, super competitive, high intensity, spying academies. Infiltration, psychology, strategic decision making, communication, surveillance evasion, recruiting are taught among many other skills. Profession is considered as highly competitive, prestigious and lucrative, plus the security of the government job, military rank, early pension and opportunity for additional high powered career after the service. Stolen technology is considered as one of the best investments, for thieving nation spends zero dollars in time, research and development, while the spy is considered more valuable with more experience under the belt. There are multiple known iconic examples, and multiple, literally, incalculable number of secrets that are being siphoned every day.
Countering such activities and catching spies is the direct function of NSA, CIA and other organizations. However spying on US is so prevailing, so ingrained, that I am sure that our intelligence officers are disillusioned and neutered, as they think they are "allowed" to work only on certain type spying which is perceived as direct threat to national security: nuclear, bio-weapons.
Somewhere in the time, focus of attention turned from surveillance of the spies and the agents of the spies, to terrorism, which is an easy hanging fruit, never ending, cheap way to ensure budgets are approved to fight terrorism. Few generations ago it was called banditism and was dealt by local sheriffs.
America is not winning anymore.
I love how the sympathy oozes for the poor Chinese, while at the same time our intrepid AC launches a counter-attack against the investigator. And throwing in a reference to global warming was a nice touch. Gosh, if we really cared about the planet, maybe we should share all our nuclear technology with them. Oh, and yes, *not sharing* our nuclear tech obviously means we want all the Chinese to die of cancer. CANCER, I tell you!
This is really some first-class shilling here. *golf clap*
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Except there's been a long history of bogus espionage cases against Chinese scientists, going all the way back to Quan Xuesen, one of the founders of the JPL. We suspected that he was sharing his knowledge with China, so we exiled him to China, where he became the father of the Chinese missile and space programs.
There's only two forces in this world that produce behavior that fatuous: love and hate. And it comes to China we've got it bad both ways. It's like our relationship with Russia would be if we had a Russian restaurant in every town and we flocked to see movies with Russian action stars.
I don't automatically assume anything Americans do about China makes any sense. We're like a guy who keeps having massive breakups with the same girl but then somehow always end up back with her. China just makes us do crazy shit.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Bogus industrial espionage cases? Oh, please. There have been dozens of fairly high-profile Chinese industrial espionage cases over the last few decades, and the notion that these are all trumped up charges seems pretty damned unlikely. I mean, what exactly would the point of that be? What's the motive? It gains the US nothing to make false charges against Chinese nationals.
We certainly do have a schizophrenic relationship with China. It's not hard to figure out, though. Culturally and politically, they're certainly not our friends, if not exactly outright enemies. However, we're so invested with them economically that they can pretty much get away with anything, so long as the damage is only economic in nature and it doesn't actually outweigh the benefits of that economic relationship.
The economic ties we have are probably a good thing, as it prevents political tensions from ever really escalating too far, but it's a bit infuriating to see how much they can also get away with with few repercussions.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Because TVA is an electric utility, not a military organization, the nuclear information it possesses is purely for civilian use. If it allows China to emit less carbon by closing more coal plants, the net effect will be beneficial for everyone.
The crime here is not espionage, but theft of TVA's intellectual property.
Which, needless to say, is a strong indication he really was spying for the Chinese.
Not really. The 1950s were a time of totalitarian Maoism, and millions were starving during The Great Leap Forward. He had little choice but to do the bidding of the Chinese government. There was no evidence that he committed any espionage will he was in America, nor was he ever even accused of that. He was just accused of having "communist sympathies". His return to China was controversial at the time, and some high level people thought it was extremely stupid. But McCarthyism was raging in America at the time, and common sense was in short supply.
Not only that - but the Nuclear Industry - as far as generating power and operating reactors safely and economically - they all share information widely and openly on how to achieve those aims, because they all know that the nuclear power industry as a whole rises and falls based on the performance of all of them, and a single bad operator can ruin the reputation and the industry for 10+ years (looking at you - Japanese operators).
I'm really concerned that law enforcement might not know the difference between "technology secrets" and "operational knowledge that is freely shared between operators in all countries".
It really hinges on this particular undefined statement:
> "development and production of special nuclear material" ..however that's immediately followed by this paragraph:
> " the TVA executive provided Ho with Florida Power & Light "information regarding nuclear power plant outage times" in 2004 for use at China General's Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant "
That sounds exactly like the type of information that operators throughout the world share amongst each other and work hard to help one another do better at!
But evil Chinese citizen not registered as an agent of a foreign power ... oooooh. Anyway, time will tell. Hope he has a good lawyer who knows how the industry operates.