Two active-duty soldiers and an Army veteran were arrested for conspiring to sell classified materials on Army combat vehicles, rocket systems and military exercises to agents of the Chinese government, according to federal officials.
Sgt. Jian Zhao and Lt. Li Tian are soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and Ruoyu Duan is a former U.S. soldier who was active between 2013 and 2017, according to federal court documents. All three were arrested this week on charges of handing over classified information to Chinese agents for as much as $50,000.
“The threat from China remains particularly pervasive across multiple different domains whether it’s cyber, whether it’s individuals like this who have been recruited to provide information or other means to penetrate both our intellectual property as well as our national defense information,” FBI special agent Mike Herrington said at a press conference Thursday.
Zhao was a battery supply sergeant for the 17th Field Artillery Brigade at JBLM who oversaw $55 million worth of Army equipment. He was charged in Washington for conspiring to obtain and transmit classified materials for money to an unauthorized individual who purportedly lived in China, according to the DOJ.
Zhao allegedly received around $15,000 for 20 hard drives that contained secret and top secret information, a stolen encryption-capable computer, documents on the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and information about an Army Pacific exercise with regional allies, according to DOJ officials and a federal indictment.
He negotiated prices for the classified U.S. military material trades through multiple encrypted online channels and “tasked” his China-based conspirator with finding buyers for the information, according to the indictment.
During one of their conversations, Zhao offered to sell a classified document that he described as “brigade level,” calling it very “sensitive” and “super difficult to get,” court documents show. In another discussion about the sale of documents relating to military exercises, Zhao said, “do you know how risky this is ?!?” The conspirator replied, “[i]f I were in your position, I would not dare,” but promised to call the buyer he had in mind.
Tian, a health services administrator at JBLM, was arrested for allegedly transmitting sensitive materials on Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles for $500 to Duan. According to court documents, Tian received $1,500 from Duan for a white paper on commercial real estate investments on the East Coast.
According to an Oregon federal indictment, Duan himself received $38,500 from two PayPal accounts based in China and $14,600 from two Zelle accounts.
According to a federal indictment in Oregon, Tian allegedly emailed classified Stryker materials to his personal email and in another instance, sent Google Drive links of open-source intelligence reports to Duan.
Tian and Duan were charged in an Oregon federal court with conspiring to commit bribery and steal government property between November 2021 and December 2024, the DOJ said.
Brig. Gen. Rhett R. Cox, commanding general of the Army Counterintelligence Command, said in a Department of Justice release Thursday that the arrests “underscore the persistent and increasing foreign intelligence threat facing our Army” and told soldiers to “increase their vigilance” and report any suspicious activity.
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