A Chinese professor accused of stealing trade secrets for Huawei Technologies Co (華為) would plead guilty to a reduced charge and be allowed to return to China, lawyers told a US judge on Thursday.
Bo Mao (毛波), a computer science professor at Xiamen University in China and a visiting professor at the University of Texas, would admit to a single count of making a false statement.
US prosecutors would dismiss more serious counts of conspiracy and trade-secrets theft, they said at a hearing at the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
The case, initiated last year, was part of a series of moves against Huawei by the the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has portrayed the Chinese telecom giant as a national security threat.
Mao was initially held without bail in a federal prison.
The plea is a setback in the government’s battle against what it alleges is trade-secret theft by Chinese technology companies.
Prosecutors initially accused Mao of stealing a computer chip on behalf of a Chinese telecommunications company while claiming to be doing academic research in 2016.
The government’s case against Mao mirrors allegations CNEX Labs Inc made in a civil suit in which Mao was accused of helping Huawei steal the technology.
The case is part of a broader crackdown by the US Department of Justice targeting Chinese scholars working at US university labs, some of whom have been accused of being “spies” or threats to national security even as they have been charged with more prosaic crimes, such as visa fraud.
Under an agreement with prosecutors, Mao would be sentenced to time served and allowed to return to China, his lawyer, Morris Fodeman, told US District Judge Pamela Chen.
Huawei was previously accused of violating US sanctions against Iran and North Korea, as well as engaging in a 20-year pattern of corporate espionage.
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) was last year charged with fraud and is currently fighting extradition to the US from Canada.
Meng’s lawyers have argued in court that she did nothing wrong, while Huawei has pleaded not guilty and called the charges “unfounded and unfair.”
The US separately on Thursday announced a similar plea deal with a Chinese professor who admitted to making false statements in grant applications to the US National Institute of Health that concealed his affiliation to a university in China.
Zheng Songguo (鄭頌國), an immunologist at Ohio State University, was described by US prosecutors as having ties to China’s Thousand Talents Plan that the US says is designed to siphon intellectual property.
He was in May charged with making a false statement and fraud or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, an offense punishable by as long as 10 years in prison, and was in July ordered to be held without bail pending trial. The false statement charge he pleaded guilty to carries a maximum term of five years.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy