Engineer Chenguang Gong Pleads Guilty to Stealing Over 3,600 Files on Missile-Detection Technology
On July 21, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that engineer Chenguang Gong had pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles, a city in Los Angeles County, California, to one count of theft of trade secrets. Gong, 59, lives in San Jose, a city in Santa Clara County, California, holds dual citizenship of the United States and China, and had briefly worked at a research and development company in the Los Angeles area; he remains free on $1.75 million bond.
In January 2023, the victim company hired Gong as an application-specific integrated circuit design manager responsible for the design, development and verification of its infrared sensors. According to his plea agreement, between March 30 and April 26, 2023, Gong transferred more than 3,600 files from his work laptop to three personal storage devices, including more than 1,800 files transferred after he had accepted a job at a company that directly competes with the victim company.
The transferred files included blueprints for sophisticated infrared sensors designed for use in space-based systems to detect nuclear missile launches and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles; blueprints for sensors designed to enable U.S. military aircraft to detect incoming heat-seeking missiles and jam their infrared tracking; technology for 'next generation' sensors capable of detecting low observable targets; and blueprints for the mechanical assemblies used to house and cryogenically cool the company's sensors. Many of the files were marked PROPRIETARY, FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY and EXPORT CONTROLLED, and the victim company is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the files were later found at Gong's temporary residence in Thousand Oaks, a city in Ventura County, California. The intended economic loss set out in the plea agreement exceeds $3.5 million.
The Justice Department also said that from 2014 to 2022, while working at several U.S. technology companies, Gong repeatedly applied to talent programs run by the Government of China, including a 2014 proposal involving high-performance analog-to-digital converters for military and civilian use and a 2020 proposal involving night-vision sensor technology; in a 2019 email, he wrote that he 'took a risk' by working on China's 'high-end military integrated circuits.'
U.S. District Judge John F. Walter scheduled sentencing for September 29, 2025, when Gong faces a statutory maximum of 10 years in prison. The case was investigated by the FBI Los Angeles Field Office's counterintelligence task force, the U.S. Department of State's Diplomatic Security Service and Homeland Security Investigations, with assistance from the FBI San Francisco Field Office and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. The prosecutors are David C. Lachman, Nisha Chandran and Brendan P. Geary.
(Source: U.S. Department of Justice)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于洛杉矶市中心的 Edward R. Roybal 联邦大楼与美国法院大楼，加州中区联邦地区法院建筑群之一，本案在洛杉矶的联邦法院认罪。Alexis Doine 摄，CC0，经 Wikimedia Commons（本站裁取大楼主体画面）。 / Photo: The Edward R. Roybal Federal Building and United States Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, part of the courthouse complex of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; the guilty plea in this case was entered in federal court in Los Angeles. Photo by Alexis Doine, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped to the building.
