[ad_1]
The Justice Ministry unveiled Thursday the charges against a Chinese state-owned company and its Taiwanese partner for allegedly stealing trade secrets from America's largest memory chip maker,
Micron Technology
Inc.
The indictment, announced alongside a massive US initiative to counter threats to China's national security, is the latest in many accusations of Chinese technology theft.
The case, which followed related criminal charges filed by the Taiwanese authorities last year,
United Microelectronics
Corp.
, a Taiwan semiconductor foundry that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange; Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., a Chinese public enterprise; and three Taiwan nationals.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions also condemned China for what he said was a flagrant violation of an agreement reached with the Obama administration under which the two governments agreed not to support the cyberattacks to steal business secrets.
"In 2015, China is publicly committed to not targeting US companies for economic gains," said Sessions. "Obviously, this commitment has not been kept."
According to the indictment, one of the defendants was a former Micron employee in Taiwan. He moved to UMC in 2015 and recruited the other two accused to join him and bring Micron's trade secrets with them. The alleged leader arranged for UMC to collaborate with Jinhua, where he then went to work, to develop the same technology, says the indictment.
Representatives of Jinhua and the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not immediately comment. A UMC lawyer declined to comment. Individuals, who are not in US custody and are suspected of being abroad, could not be located for comment.
Micron praised the indictments in a statement, saying he had invested billions of dollars over the decades to develop his intellectual property.
The announcement of the indictment, obtained in September and made public on Thursday, comes just days after the Commerce Department struck a potentially fatal blow to Jinhua by banning exports and trade. technology transfers from the US to the company, which depends on the technology used to produce its products. own chips. Jinhua, a publicly funded start-up of $ 5.7 billion, is a key part of China's plan to create a world-class semiconductor industry and break free from foreign technology.
The Justice Ministry has also filed a civil suit to prevent UMC and Jinhua from exporting the allegedly stolen technology to the United States in order to compete with US chip makers. "We are not just reacting to crimes … We are acting to prevent the accused from doing more harm to our American society, Micron," Sessions said.
Also on Thursday, Sessions announced a new "Chinese initiative" to better combat the theft of trade secrets, corruption, illegal foreign lobbying and trade agreements that could give foreign investors access to critical technology. United States.
Mr. Sessions said that as part of this initiative, a new task force consisting of Justice Department officials, including the largest federal prosecutors from California, Texas and other states districts, would strengthen the commitment of law enforcement with American universities, where the Justice Department believes that the Chinese Communist Party's initiatives target technology and threaten academic freedom.
US officials have intensified pressure on Beijing for what they describe as a massive campaign to unduly gain critical technologies in the United States. Earlier this week, federal prosecutors unveiled the charges against two Chinese intelligence agents and eight others who allegedly worked with them for a multi-year campaign to steal information on a commercial jet engine developed by a company. American and French firm.
"Taken together, these cases, and many others like this, paint a dark picture: a country determined to climb the economic ladder at the expense of the Americans," said John Demers, director of Justice. security division.
With a combination of cyberattacks and field recruitment, corporate raids on Beijing companies cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year, according to some government estimates. FBI officials said the agency had opened investigations into economic espionage in the FBI's 56 field offices covering almost all sectors and industries.
On Thursday, FBI deputy director David Bowdich said that China is one of the "biggest, most complex and longest threats we face," and pointed out the insiders, the students and academics who share research results with unauthorized individuals. the types of spies that preoccupy the FBI.
The administration's renewed focus on eliminating spies from the scientific community has raised concerns among Sino-US leaders and others who feared that the Justice Department would define this community in a racial way. The Ministry of Justice has denied this, but it has abandoned several high-profile cases related to Chinese espionage in recent years, after their collapse.
Speeches by senior Justice officials contrast with President Trump's description of a "long and good call" earlier Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, including on trade and North Korea .
The Justice Department's action against UMC and Jinhua comes after Micron sued the companies in federal court in California in December, alleging that they had stolen his talent and trade secrets. Jinhua disputes the complaint and the case continues.
Jinhua then sued Micron in January in a court in China's Fujian Province – which the government partially controls Jinhua – and obtained a blocking order to prevent certain Micron units from selling products in China, for which each company claims patents. Micron said that Jinhua's lawsuit was a false measure of retaliation and had criticized Beijing for its treatment.
Hundreds of pages of documents and large Microsoft Excel spreadsheets containing precise design specifications for the architecture of various Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) products are among the stolen files in Micron. Micron is the only US-based company to manufacture DRAM devices, and the value of stolen intellectual property has risen to at least $ 400 million and reached $ 8.75 billion, according to the report. indictment.
Thursday's allegations also added to a growing consensus that China was violating the 2015 bilateral pact between Xi and President Obama at the time on computer theft. Officials have stated that even though the Micron case was not in itself a cyber-case affair, it involved insiders who stole information with the help of cybertools.
US intelligence officials and several private sector cyber security firms believe the deal has resulted in a significant reduction in the spying of Chinese companies via hacking, but that malicious activities have resumed since taking office Mr. Trump, while trade-related hostilities and other problems have intensified.
Micron, based in Idaho and valued at around $ 100 billion, has a 20% to 25% share of the dynamic RAM sector, a computer technology that the Chinese did not have until now, said Mr. Sessions.
Write to Aruna Viswanatha at [email protected], Kate O'Keeffe at [email protected] and Dustin Volz at [email protected]
