A former engineer at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has been charged with breach of trust after using his position at the CSA to negotiate satellite station installation agreements with Iceland on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company back in 2018, while he was still an employee of the CSA.
“Mr. Zheng allegedly used his status as a CSA engineer to negotiate agreements for the installation of satellite station facilities in Iceland. He allegedly acted on behalf of a Chinese aerospace company,” the RCMP said in a statement.
According to RCMP Inspector David Beaudoin of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) in Quebec, “we do consider this to be a matter of foreign actor interference.”
The company Zheng consulted for, Spacety, has said they wish to launch small satellites and use Satellites as a service, making Synthetic Aperture Radar imagery available to any user in the world. With a classified payload, some of their satellites were launched on a Chinese Long March 8 rocket in 2020.
China’s international espionage in aerospace and defence is nothing new. In November, Yanjun Xu was convicted in Cincinnati of stealing trade secrets from multiple US aviation and aerospace companies, including GE Aviation’s composite aircraft engine fan.
In 2016, Su Bin, a resident of BC, pled guilty in California to hacking into the computer systems of US defence contractors from 2008 to 2014. In this, he targeted multiple US defence projects, including the F-22, F-35 and C-17 aircraft programs.
According to CSIS Director David Vigneault, 2020 was a banner year that saw the highest level of foreign espionage and foreign interference directed at Canadian targets since the end of the Cold War.
