Chi Mak (; born 28 September 1940) was a Chinese-born

naturalized Naturalization (or naturalisation) is the legal act or process by which a non-citizen of a country may acquire citizenship or nationality of that country. It may be done automatically by a statute, i.e., without any effort on the part of the i ...

American citizen who worked as an

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

for California-based

defense contractor The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and ...

Power Paragon, a part of

L-3 Communications L3 Technologies, formerly L-3 Communications Holdings, was an American company that supplied command and control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) systems and products, avionics, ocean products, training ...

. In 2007, Mak was found guilty of

conspiring A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...

to export sensitive defense technology to China. He was not formally charged with espionage as the information was not officially classified. Mak's legal defense was that he thought there was nothing improper about leaving the U.S. with a CD carrying his own published work on U.S. defense technology, despite his training from his employer indicating quite the opposite. He had intentionally released it without his employer's permission at a 2004 international engineering conference. He had been briefed every year on regulations regarding documents designated "For Official Use Only" (FOUO) and items restricted by export controls. His defense argued that making the data accessible to scrutiny by the general public negated its military value and made it acceptable to transport outside the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, despite the fact that Chi Mak was the one who released the information, without authorization. The defense also argued that the data was in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

. The information Mak passed on allegedly helped China build its own version of Aegis, an American radar system built to protect military ships. The prosecution indicated that the data was nevertheless export-controlled and that it should not have been shared with foreign nationals without authorization. The

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

presentations cited by prosecution in the trial are currently available on a worldwide basis, due to Chi Mak's unauthorized releases. Mak's brother and sister-in-law were apprehended by the FBI after boarding a flight to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

carrying one encrypted CD which contained defense-related documents. They, along with their son as well as Mak's wife, all pleaded guilty to related charges. They served out their sentence and were deported to Mainland China. On March 24, 2008, Chi Mak was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months in federal prison. Chi Mak died in prison on October 31, 2022, at the age of 82.

Early life

Mak lived in Hong Kong before, in the late 1970s, moving to the U.S. as an immigrant.

Early life

See also

References

Further reading