California Resident Admits Violating Export Controls in Bid to Ship Software to Chinese University
Jonathan Yet Wing Soong of Castro Valley, California, pleaded guilty Jan. 17 to violating export controls by conspiring to ship aeronautics software to a Beijing university, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California announced. Soong admitted to violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, making him subject to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
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From 2016 to 2020, Soong worked as a program administrator at space science research nonprofit Universities Space Research Association. In April 2016, the organization contracted with NASA to license and distribute Army flight control software. The defendant was tasked with conducting export compliance screening for customers, among other things.
In pleading guilty, Soong said he "willingly exported and facilitated the sale and transfer of restricted software to Beihang University knowing that the university was on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List," The U.S. Attorney's Office said. Beihang University was placed on the Entity List due to its involvement with the Chinese military's rocket system and unmanned air vehicle systems. The defendant put together plans to sell and transfer a software package, known as CIFER, to the university without acquiring an export license, the office said. CIFER lets a user develop a dynamic model of an aircraft based on flight test data using system identification techniques.