The US Justice and Commerce department have formed a joint Disruptive Technology Strike Force to target illicit actors and protect critical technologies from being used by nation-state adversaries. The group involves 14 US Attorney Offices, including the FBI, and Homeland Security Investigations and provides data and intelligence sharing to help members build cases. It has just announced five coordinated enforcement actions taking aim at individuals seeking to help China, Russia, and Iran gain access to sensitive US technologies such as quantum and autonomous technologies.
Two of the cases bougt charges against procurement networks that US law authorities say were designed to help Russia violate American export control laws to obtain technology that is vitally important to national security such as quantum cryptography. These charges come three months after the Disruptive Technology Strike Force was launched in February.
In a related case, Nikolaos Bogonikolos, a Greek national, was charged by the Eastern District of New York with smuggling technologies to Russia. According to the Justice Department, he shipped the technology to Russia where it was shared with nuclear and quantum research facilities. In a separate case, two Russian nationals were charged in Arizona for conspiring to violate the export control reform act to send parts to Russian airlines and to commit money laundering.
Moreover, the Justice Department also announced charges against Weibao Wang, a former Apple software engineer who is facing six counts of theft or attempted theft of Apple’s autonomy source code, including plans for autonomous driving technology. Wang was just part of an estimated 2% of the company that had access to the databases involved.
The Strike Force is working to continue the identification of similar criminal activities beyond these cases in the coming months. The theft of sensitive US technology by adversaries was described as a top threat in the Director of National Intelligence’s annual threat assessment and these cases demand immediate and high priority.
In conclusion, the government is making an effort to prevent the transfer of technology, acknowledging this issue as detrimental to the country. By the actions taken by the Joint Strike Force, the government is prioritizing these issues and will continue to identify further criminal activities, taking steps to protect national security.
<< photo by Pew Nguyen >>
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