US Investigating UCLA Researcher for Trying to Transfer Controlled US Software to China

A researcher at a California university is being investigated for trying to transfer sensitive U.S. software or technical data to a Chinese company on the U.S. Entity List, the Justice Department said Aug. 28. Guan Lei, a Chinese national and researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, was arrested for allegedly destroying evidence on a hard drive that may have implicated him in the illegal software transfer, the agency said. The Justice Department said it is investigating whether Guan, of Alhambra, California, tried to send the software to China’s National University of Defense Technology.

Guan allegedly threw the damaged hard drive into a dumpster in July after he was not allowed to board a flight to China and after he refused to let the FBI examine his computer, the Justice Department said. The data on the hard drive was “removed deliberately and by force,” the agency said, adding that Guan also hid digital storage devices from U.S. investigators and falsely told them he had no contact with the Chinese consulate.

Investigators also alleged that Guan lied on his 2018 U.S. visa application about his connections to the Chinese military. Guan later admitted that he underwent Chinese military training and “wore military uniforms” while at NUDT, where one of his faculty advisers was a lieutenant general who developed computers and nuclear technology for the Chinese military. The Justice Department said it suspects NUDT of “procuring U.S.-origin items to develop supercomputers with nuclear explosive applications.” The U.S. is seeing a rise in Chinese efforts to steal technology from universities (see 2008130036).