China's State-Sponsored Theft of Nuclear Technology

Szuhsiung Ho, a Taiwan national-turned U.S citizen-was working for a state-owned company, China General Power Company, and as facilitator through his own company in the U.S to help make nuclear reactors and nuclear fuels.  This from the Justice Department statement, "According to documents filed in the case, beginning in 1997 and continuing through April 2016, Ho conspired with others to engage or participate in the development or production of special nuclear material in China, without specific authorization to do so from the U.S. Secretary of Energy, as required by law. Ho assisted CGNPC in procuring U.S.-based nuclear engineers to assist CGNPC and its subsidiaries with designing and manufacturing certain components for nuclear reactors more quickly by reducing the time and financial costs of research and development of nuclear technology. In particular, Ho sought technical assistance related to CGNPC’s Small Modular Reactor Program; CGNPC’s Advanced Fuel Assembly Program; CGNPC’s Fixed In-Core Detector System; and verification and validation of nuclear reactor-related computer codes.". 

As usual, the Justice Department is a little short on details and long on credit-taking for the wrap-up of another case of a foreign national becoming a U.S citizen and stealing our technology along the way.  An article in the Knoxville News says a little more about this case:  "Ho, his firm Energy Technology International, and Chinese nuclear power plant China General Nuclear Power were indicted in April in U.S. District Court on charges of a plot 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 below the radar of the U.S. government."  

So, China is using a third party with U.S citizenship to facilitate stealing technology by hiring U.S experts in our country to help them.  These people were, in turn, traveling to China and helping them make "special nuclear material" for the Chinese enterprise.  So, from 1997, until sometime before this indictment was brought, we had nuclear experts flying back and forth to China and nobody in the U.S noticed anything going on.  It looks like there should be a whole lot more of these indictments than just this one.  

Our Department of Energy is not the most brilliant of organizations but you would think they would have someone looking into this a long way before 2016.  What do we have them for?  Their own website, even the section on national security, seems to emphasize the importance of global warming and the work done to minimize the damage.   Maybe they need to think about their other mission instead of helping the Chinese with theirs.