COVER BLOWN

Chinese Secret Agent Jailed for 8 Years for Spying in U.S.

Ji Chaoqun, 31, was planning to get a job at the CIA, NASA, or the FBI, authorities say.

A Chinese engineer was sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday for spying on behalf of the Chinese government. Ji Chaoqun, 31, came to the U.S. in 2013 as a graduate student studying electrical engineering and went on to enlist in the U.S. Army Reserves. He was arrested in 2018 and convicted last September of making a material false statement to the U.S. Army and acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China. Ji had been ordered by an intelligence officer to gather biographical information on potential recruits to become Chinese spies, prosecutors said, including Chinese nationals working in the U.S. as defense contractors. He was ultimately caught after meeting with an undercover American law enforcement agent posing a representative of China’s Ministry of State Security in which Ji claimed he could use his military ID to take photos of aircraft carriers and, once he’d obtained security clearance, would apply for a cybersecurity job at the CIA, NASA, or the FBI in order to access sensitive databases.