Two active-duty U.S. soldiers stationed in Washington state and one former soldier in Oregon were arrested on Thursday, accused of passing classified information including weapons documents and hard drives to contacts in China as recently as December, according to federal court documents unsealed on Wednesday and Thursday.
Sgt. Jian Zhao, who was stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in western Washington, allegedly handed over around 20 government hard drives — some marked “secret” — along with military documents detailing missile-launcher technology and U.S. military exercises in the Indo-Pacific.
In a separate indictment, 1st Lt. Li Tian, also stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, allegedly conspired with a former U.S. soldier called Ruoyu Duan, to steal military secrets, Oregon prosecutors say. Tian allegedly gathered sensitive data on U.S. weapons systems, including Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles, and sold it to Duan who in turn received payment from unnamed people in China.
The indictment said that Duan made routine payments to other security clearance holders and active-duty members in the U.S. military, but only Tian and Zhao have been named in indictments this week.
The indictments do not name the final recipients of the stolen military information, but officials from the attorney general’s office and FBI linked the thefts to Beijing.
“The defendants arrested today are accused of betraying our country, actively working to weaken America’s defense capabilities and empowering our adversaries in China,” said Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi in a statement. “They will face swift, severe, and comprehensive justice.”
Tian and Duan are charged with conspiring to commit bribery and theft of government property, while Zhao faces those and a further charge of conspiracy to obtain and transmit national defense information. In both cases, the prosecutors note there are further people involved, some of whom are unknown to the grand jury.
The charges suggest a larger scheme targeting soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and sheds fresh light on how Beijing’s expansive intelligence network targets U.S. service members — cultivating individuals with security clearances through regular payments for sensitive data.
In a statement on the charges, FBI Director Kash Patel pledged to continue to root out efforts by Beijing to steal U.S. military information. “While bribery and corruption have thrived under China’s Communist Party, this behavior cannot be tolerated with our service members who are entrusted with sensitive military information, including national defense information,” he said.
Col. Jennifer J. Bocanegra, public affairs officer for Joint Base Lewis-McChord, said they were aware of the indictment of two active-duty service members and they are “fully committed to supporting the ongoing interagency investigation and prosecution” of the case.
Zhao is not named in the separate Oregon indictment against Tian and Duan, but details in the documents indicate the cases are connected. Duan — who left the military in 2017 and resides in Oregon — acted as a liaison between Zhao, Tian and buyers in China seeking the stolen material, the indictments allege.
The Oregon indictment details how Tian, the active-duty lieutenant with secret-level clearance, sold sensitive information to Duan, fielding specific requests for instruction and technical manuals for various military vehicles. That included Google Drive links containing open-source intelligence reports and manuals outlining the capabilities of the Stryker, an eight-wheeled U.S. Army combat vehicle.
Images taken from security footage at the military base and included in the indictment show Tian taking pictures of his computer screen in the base with his smartphone. Duan, who payed Tian for the information, allegedly received tens of thousands of dollars from PayPal accounts based in China during the scheme.
Prosecutors separately allege that Zhao, who held a security clearance granting access to secret documents, received at least $15,000 from July to December 2024 while engaging in extended conversations with an unnamed contact based in Changchun, China. According to the indictment, the contact also offered to broker military information and hardware to other buyers in China. The Oregon indictment suggests that Duan introduced Zhao to the China-based contact.
Zhao mailed the broker in China around 20 hard drives, containing what he claimed was government information. Images sent by Zhao to a Chinese buyer show the hard drives laid out side-by-side, some with labels attached that say “unclassified” and “secret.” The indictment did not detail what information was on the hard drives.
But in communications with his co-conspirator transcribed in the court documents, Zhao offered missile-related data for sale, setting a starting price of $3,000 to $4,000 for “anything that touches himars,” he said, referring to the missile launch technology that has seen action on the Ukraine battlefield.
Prosecutors say that to appease his Chinese buyer, Zhao also went to his office at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on a weekend and used his phone to scan a document on rocketry and missiles. Another document Zhao is alleged to have offered the buyer included details of military exercises in the Indo-Pacific. Both documents were marked as “controlled unclassified information” — meaning that they are not classified but require special handling.
Zhao served as a battery supply sergeant, responsible for overseeing “records and accountability” for more than $55 million in U.S. military property, according to court documents. He also allegedly offered to send his Chinese contact an encrypted U.S. military computer, asking for $1,800 in exchange.
The FBI has previously warned that active-duty service members and people with security clearances have increasingly been targeted by Chinese agents online.
“These arrests underscore the persistent and increasing foreign intelligence threat facing our Army and nation,” said Army Counterintelligence Command Brig. Gen. Rhett R. Cox in a statement on Thursday.
There is a thriving private market for U.S. national security information in China that is encouraged by the state. This week, the Justice Department announced charges against 12 Chinese citizens, targeting a network of private hackers-for-hire who breached U.S. agencies to gather data that was sold to Chinese government police and intelligence agencies.
In 2023, two U.S. Navy officers based in California were charged in separate cases for allegedly transmitting photographs, technical manuals of U.S. naval ships and classified plans for naval exercises in the Indo-Pacific to Chinese intelligence agents.
Also in 2023, Joseph D. Schmidt, 31, a recently retired service member at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was charged after allegedly approaching to Chinese authorities to offer sensitive information about U.S. military surveillance and interrogation techniques. Last month, Schmidt was deemed competent to stand trial after spending nine months in a federal psychiatric facility.
