YIKES: Former Military Pilot Caught Spying for Red China

As America painfully convulses and her domestic issues rip her apart, particularly issues related to gun control and abortion access, its enemies abroad continue to circle and strike, perhaps the most dangerous of which is communist China.

That nation, ideologically opposed as it is to America and a major competitor of ours in the Pacific is known for spying on America. It uses greed to convince Americans to send national security or industrial secrets to the red dragon or for using cyber attacks to steal what information it wants, as has been the case with its development of stealth fighters, the plans for which were largely stolen from defense contractors like Lockheed Martin.

And now the mischievous red dragon has struck again, this time by convincing a former US Army pilot working as a defense contractor to send it American secrets in exchange for cash. The Department of Justice, noting what happened, said that:

A former U.S. Army helicopter pilot-turned-civilian-contractor pleaded guilty in federal court today, admitting that he acted as an unregistered agent of China and accepted thousands of dollars from representatives of the Chinese government to provide aviation-related information from his defense-contractor employers. He also pleaded guilty to making related false statements during national security background checks.

Shapour Moinian, 67, of San Diego, served in the Army in the United States, Germany, and South Korea from approximately 1977 through 2000. After his service, Moinian worked for various cleared defense contractors in the United States – including in San Diego – as well as the Department of Defense. “Cleared” is a term that indicates a contractor is permitted to work on projects that involve classified information.

So China had a spy working on classified projects and sharing information about them, likely giving the Chinese a major step up either in mimicking our projects or, perhaps worse, figuring out how to counter them.

Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, the Assistant Attorney General, spoke on the case as well, saying:

“Moinian was a paid agent of the Chinese government who sold American aviation-related technology. The Department of Justice has no tolerance for those who help foreign governments break the law to undermine American competitiveness and innovation.”

While the catching of a spy is always somewhat shocking, what is particularly bad here is that Moinian was, according to the DOJ press release on the matter, engaging in his espionage activities for Red China since 2017.

So for five long years he has been feeding our greatest enemy aviation-related secrets, secrets made all the more important by the fact that the aviation sphere of military conflict would likely be particularly important if the United States were to fight China.

Where was the FBI? Where was the CIA? Though it’s great he was finally caught, how was Moinian able to work on classified project for so long while traveling to Hong Kong and collecting checks from China? Given the nature of his work, why was he able to travel to China at all? Such questions must be answered; it’s great that he was finally caught, but that is far from enough to ensure the security of the United States.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Facebook and Subscribe to My Email List