But the prosecutors apparently did not consult technical experts before issuing the indictment, says Nelson Dong, a former DOJ official and an attorney with Dorsey & Whitney in Seattle, Washington, who was not involved in Xi's case. Court documents state that "the government seized extensive electronic evidence and searched multiple hard drives" in the process of investigating him. government has charged scientists without understanding the science at the heart of its allegations. In several instances, critics say, the U.S. A sixth defendant, a New York University (NYU) medical imaging researcher accused of passing confidential information about NYU research into magnetic resonance imaging technology to a company in China, pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor last March. In the past year alone, charges have been dropped against five Chinese-born scientists accused of crimes related to trade secrets theft or economic spying. Yet a growing number of scientists have been targeted improperly as Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys have stepped up prosecutions, advocates say. In September, economic espionage and cyber espionage were forefront at the meeting between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the two leaders vowing in a landmark agreement not to target each other's companies. In July, the FBI launched an ambitious public awareness campaign around the issue, releasing a dramatic film depicting a Chinese company attempting to steal trade secrets from a U.S. According to testimony by Randall Coleman, assistant director of the FBI counterintelligence division, the number of cases overseen by the bureau's dedicated unit grew by 60% from 2009 to 2013. 3 priority, after terrorism and counterintelligence. Together with cybercrime, economic espionage is now the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) No. The Obama administration names economic espionage and trade secrets theft as among the primary threats facing the United States. "The whole case against Xiaoxing Xi was just completely misconceived," asserts David Larbalestier, a physicist at Florida State University, Tallahassee, who submitted an affidavit for the defense. The devices Xi had discussed with Chinese colleagues were not the pocket heater, they say, and the exchanges posed no threat to U.S. attorney's office abruptly dropped the charges, noting that "additional information came to the attention of the government." A spokesperson for the office declined to comment further on the case.Īt issue, Xi's lawyer and scientists familiar with the case assert: a glaring misinterpretation of the science involved. But on 11 September, before a trial date had been set, the U.S. attorney's office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had charged him with four counts of wire fraud, for four emails sent to contacts in China about establishing labs and a collaboration involving a thin film deposition device. Over the months that followed, they drained their bank accounts to pay legal fees.Ĭiting a nondisclosure agreement Xi had signed in 2006 in order to conduct research with a pocket heater, the U.S. For days, his family avoided the windows in their home as television stations broadcast live from their front yard. ![]() Xi was released after putting up his home as bail, but his passport was confiscated and his domestic travel restricted to eastern Pennsylvania. (STI) of Austin, that makes thin films of the superconductor magnesium diboride-and faced 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine. But now he stood charged with trying to transfer designs for a proprietary technology to China-a device called a pocket heater, produced by Superconductor Technologies Inc. At the time of his arrest, he was in what he calls a "very productive" phase of his career, overseeing nine research projects, including work for Temple's Energy Frontier Research Center, which is funded by the Department of Energy. He is among the world's leading experts on superconducting thin films, which carry electricity without resistance at very low temperatures. citizen who has lived and worked in the United States since 1989. Then interim chair of the physics department at Temple University in Philadelphia, Xi is a naturalized U.S. His wife and daughters-one in middle school and the other in college-watched in horror as agents handcuffed Xi, who was still not fully dressed, and escorted him away. ![]() When he rushed to open the door, they drew their guns and announced that they had a warrant for his arrest. Just after dawn on 21 May, physicist Xiaoxing Xi awoke to find a dozen or so armed federal agents swarming his home in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, suburbs.
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