A dual citizen of China and the United States pled guilty on Monday to stealing American missile defense technology for the Chinese government. 

The Justice Department announced that 59-year-old Chenguang Gong pled guilty to theft of trade secrets. Gong, a former engineer who lives in San Jose, California, admitted to stealing information developed by the U.S. government for detecting nuclear missile launches, tracking ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and technology to assist fighter jets evade heat-seeking missiles. 

Gong, who faces up to 10 years in prison upon sentencing, is currently free on $1.75 million bond. 

In his plea agreement, Gong said that he transferred 3,600 files from the Los Angeles area research and development company where he worked and moved them to personal storage devices, including a personal laptop. The file transfers took place between March 2023 and April 2023, when he was fired by the company, which was identified as a victim of Gong.

The files contained blueprints for infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect missiles and blueprints for sensors for American military aircraft to combat heat-seeking missiles. Some of the files were later discovered at Gong’s private residence, the Justice Department said. 

The information on the files was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to prosecutors.

From 2014 to 2022, Gong applied for multiple “talent programs” run by the Chinese government while working for major American technology companies.  

The Justice Department said that China “established these talent programs as a means to identify individuals who have expert skills, abilities, and knowledge of advanced sciences and technologies in order to access and utilize those skills and knowledge in transforming the PRC’s economy, including its military capabilities.”

Gong sent in applications to the talent programs that mirrored technology produced by his employers. For example, in September 2020, Gong submitted an application for “low light/night vision” image sensors that had the model number of a sensor produced by a defense industry company he worked for from 2015-2019, according to investigators. 

The Justice Department also said that Gong took several trips to China to meet with talent program managers. In a 2019 email, Gong admitted that he “took a risk” to fly to China “because [he] worked for…an American military industry company.”

The guilty plea comes as government officials have attempted to crack down on intellectual property theft by China. It is estimated that Chinese-backed IP theft costs American companies between $300 to $600 billion per year.

The owner of the famed In-N-Out Burger chain, billionaire Lynsi Snyder, a devout Christian, has announced she is leaving California, where her family spent three generations building its fast-food empire, and moving to Tennessee.

In-N-Out has 400 locations in California, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Utah, but has deliberately not expanded its chain nationwide.

“While McDonald’s and Burger King serve well over 80 different items, In-N-Out famously serves fewer than 15: burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, milk shakes and the signature two-patty Double-Double,” Forbes noted in 2018, adding, “Snyder is popular with her 26,000 employees. She has a 99% approval rating on Glassdoor.com, the job-reviews site. … The average In-N-Out manager has been with the company for 17 years and makes $163,000, more than the typical California dentist, accountant or financial advisor. Managers get profit-sharing, too. … Bible verse numbers have appeared on burger wrappers and cups since 1985.”

In-N-Out is building an office in Tennessee to serve as a hub for expansion in the southeastern United States. Snyder cited rising crime in California as one of the motivations for her move, saying the company was forced to close its Oakland location last year because it had become too “dangerous” for employees.

“We’re building an office in Franklin, I’m actually moving out there,” Snyder told conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey. “Raising a family is not easy here. Doing business is not easy here. … It will be wonderful having an office out there, growing out there. … We’ve kind of given it a longer runway so that it’s smoother for everybody, so they can plan. … a lot of notice because we love them and want to make it as easy as possible, but by 2030, we’ll close the Irvine office.”

When the Irvine, California, office closes, operations are expected to be consolidated in Baldwin Park, where In-N-Out was founded more than 77 years ago. The Baldwin Park headquarters will oversee operations on the West Coast.

During the COVID pandemic, the restaurant refused to check the vaccine status of customers in San Francisco’s only In-N-Out, flouting the city’s regulations. “There were so many pressures and hoops we had to jump through. … It was really terrible … that was definitely where we held the line and were like ‘We’re not policing our customers.’ … We were shut down for a brief moment but it was worth it,” Snyder recalled.

“Number one priority is really keeping the company the same company that my grandparents started,” she stated. “I want the legacy to continue. We’re doing that but we’re growing and we’re so much bigger than when they started it. So growth is healthy and we have to have that growth and so it’s really having that balance of okay, we have all of these amazing people coming up through management; they want to have a store one day. So we have to have some growth, but we don’t want to be on every corner; we don’t want to be in every state; we don’t want to ever compromise our values and standards; the cornerstones that my grandparents laid down.”