Kuo Tai-shen (郭台生), a Taiwan-born naturalized US citizen and a member of a prominent Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) family, on Tuesday pleaded guilty in a US federal court in Virginia to spying for China on US military sales to Taiwan, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment
Kuo, whose father-in-law is General Xue Yue (薛岳), a long-time a key adviser to dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), admitted in an appearance before US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema to having bought secret information on US arms sales to Taiwan from a highly placed US defense official and delivering it to a Chinese military official at the behest of Beijing.
The information centered on Taiwan’s “Po Sheng” air defense system intended to ward off attacks from China, as well as information on the US’ planned five-year arms sales program to Taiwan.
While Taiwan’s defense ministry said in the wake of the original reports of Kuo’s arrest that his activities did not compromise the Po Sheng system, US Justice Department information indicates that all the damaging information on the system that China might need had been delivered to Beijing before Kuo’s arrest.
The US agency arrested Kuo, 58, in February, along with Gregg Bergersen, an official with the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the organization that arranges US arms sales to other countries, including Taiwan.
Bergersen, who recently pleaded guilty to a related charge and quit the agency, was in charge of the DSCA’s section that controlled the sale of the key communications programs that enable modern militaries to operate.
These are the so-called C4ISR capabilities (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) — in short, virtually everything aside from hardware and human resources that makes a military structure operate.
That information could also tip off China about joint Taiwan-US military plans and procedures aimed at coordinating operations against an attack on Taiwan, which would have an impact on US national security, as well as the defense of Taiwan against a Chinese military attack, information revealed by the court showed.
Before the espionage case came to light, various C4ISR pages in the DSCA Web site referred interested people to Bergersen as the agency’s leading expert in the field.
Kuo remains behind bars in a northern Virginia suburb detention center pending sentencing on Aug. 8. Bergersen is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11.
Bergersen faces a maximum sentence of 10 years on the charge of giving secret information to a person not entitled to receive it.
Bergersen’s lawyers argued that he believed the information he gave to Kuo was meant for Taiwanese military officials.
A Justice Department fact sheet said that Kuo told Bergersen that if he supplied him with information, Kuo would give him a well-paid job with a company Kuo said he planned to start in order to sell US defense items to Taiwan.
“If you help me in the next 10 to 15 years [when Bergersen planned to retire] ... you can ... get paid two, three-hundred thousand [US dollars] a year in my company,” Kuo was recorded by US authorities as saying.
US documents released at the trial said Bergersen had earlier asked Kuo to introduce him to Taiwanese military officials in Washington, a request that Kuo apparently never fulfilled.
A third person in the case, Chinese citizen Kan Yuxin, a US green card holder, was arrested with Kuo and is still in custody without bond in northern Virginia on the same charge as Kuo.
The US has until May 30 to indict her.
Kang is alleged to have been Kuo’s intermediary with an unnamed Chinese official, who had mailing addresses in Hong Kong and southern China, to whom Kuo sent his information.
The trio were arrested on Feb. 11.
The trial comes at a time of heightened concern in Washington over Chinese espionage in the US. Several high-profile cases have been brought to light over the past two years, all with warnings by law enforcement officials of the danger they pose to US national security.
“Today’s guilty plea [by Kuo] is the latest demonstration of the serious threat posed by international espionage networks,” said Patrick Rowan, the Justice Department’s acting chief of national security.
For his efforts, Kuo apparently received US$50,000 from the Beijing official, the US said.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
SILICON VALLEY HUB: The office would showcase Taiwan’s strengths in semiconductors and artificial intelligence, and help Taiwanese start-ups connect with global opportunities Taiwan has established an office in Palo Alto, one of the principal cities of Silicon Valley in California, aimed at helping Taiwanese technology start-ups gain global visibility, the National Development Council said yesterday. The “Startup Island Taiwan Silicon Valley hub” at No. 299 California Avenue is focused on “supporting start-ups and innovators by providing professional consulting, co-working spaces, and community platforms,” the council said in a post on its Web site. The office is the second overseas start-up hub established by the council, after a similar site was set up in Tokyo in September last year. Representatives from Taiwanese start-ups, local businesses and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
RSS