China’s ongoing and coordinated industrial espionage in the U.S. is threatening our economic and national security, and you don’t long or far to find scary examples. Early last week, two engineers working at a tire plant in Tennessee were charged with stealing trade secrets from Goodyear Tires and passing the information along to a Chinese company. The Chinese tire manufacturer paid the two thieves – who, fortunately, turned out to be more like the Keystone Cops than James Bond --  to enter a Goodyear facility under false pretences and use cell phones to photograph processes and technology that it could then use to make similar tires without going through product development.  In a year of huge layoffs in our manufacturing sector, this scheme could easily lead to Goodyear having to unfairly compete with a knock-off of its own proprietary design.  Stuff is really cheap when you steal it, and it appears that the Chinese have decided not to waste years and millions – or even billions – of dollars on research and development when they can pay far less obtaining critical product information from spying and theft. American consumers are familiar with China’s designer knock-offs and pirated DVDs, but its industrial espionage goes beyond breaking intellectual property laws on consumer goods.  Indeed, China’s plan to steal propriety information is organized, strategic and a danger to U.S. interests.  China’s wide-reaching and aggressive industrial espionage is not just about tires, handbags or movies; it is an enormous threat to our national and economic security.  In the mid-1980s, China’s government adopted a specific plan called “Project 863,” designed to steal emerging technology from other countries, and then financially reward any Chinese entrepreneur or manufacturer who took the stolen information and turned it into a viable product or system. Although many of the stolen products and technology come from the consumer or business sector, many of these items are “dual use” technologies that the Chinese utilize in military applications as well.  In 2007, a former Motorola employee - a naturalized American born in China - was caught at Chicago’s O’Hare airport with $600M of proprietary computer files and paperwork stolen from her employer, thirty thousand dollars in cash and a one way ticket to Beijing.  Apparently, she had forgotten that since 9/11, one-way tickets trigger a big red flag (pun intended) for airport security.  Hanjuan Jin had been paid for the theft by a Chinese technology company, and according to the indictment, the stolen material was classified military communications and combat use tactical technology.  Jin and four family members and co-workers are awaiting trial. The Motorola case is just one example of the on-going theft of sensitive information occurring in the U.S. at the hands of Chinese agents.  These include government defense and technology contractors, private industry and even agents operating within our military itself -- Chinese nationals hold sensitive positions on many of our warships.  Stolen information has military, biotech, software, pharmaceutical, energy and agricultural applications.   China has gone out of its way to encourage American manufacturers to move to China -- a brilliant strategic move on its part as American products brought to China, or made in China by U.S. companies, are regularly “reverse-engineered” and marketed both in China and for export markets with no consideration of patents or intellectual property laws.  Chinese companies are not even required to prove that designs that they present for patent protection are even their own.  American law enforcement and security agencies need to pay closer attention to this activity and more aggressively and publicly pursue prosecution of these high level bandits.  American companies and our military should scrutinize more carefully any Chinese nationals involved in technology or product development.  If not, we may have our economic and national security interests stolen from right under our collective noses.