Shi Fengyun is currently a student at the University of Minnesota
A Chinese national will appear in court next month charged with espionage after being caught using a drone to photograph a naval shipyard in Virginia.
Shi Fengyun, 26, will appear in court next month charged with two violations of the Espionage Act: unlawful photography of military installations and the use of an aircraft to do so.
The incident took place in January, according to court documents. Shi, a student at the University of Minnesota, flew to Virginia and then rented a car and drove to Newport, where he used his drone to photograph the Newport News Shipbuilding shipyard, which is used to construct nuclear submarines and Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.
Shi’s activities were discovered when he got the drone caught in a tree and sought assistance from a local resident. The resident quickly grew suspicious and took photos of Shi, his ID and the car he had rented, before contacting the Newport News Police Department.
Shi was questioned by the local police department at the scene. He was advised to contact the local fire department to help collect his drone, but instead he left the scene. The next day, the resident collected the drone himself and it was then seized by the FBI.
The FBI discovered photographs and videos of US naval vessels on the drone’s memory card. On the day of Shi’s visit, three submarines—the USS Boise, Columbus and Montana—were at the shipyard.
“Naval aircraft carriers have classified and sensitive systems throughout the carriers,” the court documents state.
“The nuclear submarines present on that date also have highly classified and sensitive Navy Nuclear Propulsion Information… and those submarines even in the design and construction phase are sensitive and classified.”
His trial had been scheduled to begin on Friday, but will now take place on 8 July.
According to The Epoch Times, Shi refers to himself as a “startup manager” on his LinkedIn page. He previously studied at China’s Jilin University. He also worked for China’s State Grid Corp., a state-owned enterprise.
In recent months there has been growing alarm about repeated attempts by foreign nationals to gain entry to secure military installations in the US. Two Jordanian men were detained for attempting to ram their way into a Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, in what may have been a “dry run” for a terrorist attack.
Vehicles have attempted to breach gates at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek–Fort Story, in Virginia, Naval Base San Diego and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, California. The attempted breach at the Air Ground Combat Center involved a Chinese national.
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