14 months ago Taiwanese Major General Lo Hsieh-che was arrested for being a Chinese spy. Since then 3 more people have been arrested for the same crime. The Chinese spies all seem to want one of two things. Either the Lockheed Martin and Raytheon-built Patriot Missile System made famous in the first gulf war for it’s ability to shoot down Scud missiles, Or the Lockheed-designed Po Sheng command and control system.

Defense expert Arthur Ding of Taiwan’s Institute for International Relations said “China wants radar data so they can develop countermeasures, If you have this data, you can jam the system or redirect its missiles.” This would obviously be a blow to any future conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan. The United States has publicly declared that an attack on Taiwan by China would be considered an act of war against the U.S..

Two former U.S. government officials familiar with American defense sales to Taiwan said that “despite some Taiwanese media reports, China’s recent espionage activity on the island does not threaten the integrity of U.S. defense technology. They said Washington withholds sensitive information and equips highly classified electronic components with anti-tamper devices.”

“How Po Sheng is used, the network layouts, what systems are integrated into the network and what are not, all this would be very useful for the Chinese to know,” he said.

The tension between the United States and China has been ramping up in the past few months. China is angry with the U.S. for getting involved in disputes in what it claims is it’s territories, and the U.S. is constantly admonishing China over it’s human rights violations. With China’s recent air craft carrier launch and leak of a new stealth fighter, they are looking to be a bigger player on the world wide scale. And the one place that the U.S. is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world is military proprietary software. The defense systems in planes and ships is what the enemies want, not necessarily the hardware.

(image)

(image)