Two soldiers and one former soldier were arrested on Thursday in schemes to sell information about U.S. weapons systems to China, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in a press release. The leakers allegedly sold classified, secret, and top-secret information regarding the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) and Bradley and Stryker fighting vehicles, as well as a stolen, encryption-capable computer.

“It is unconscionable that a person who wears the uniform of a U.S. Army soldier would betray our country and the trust of his fellow soldiers,” declared W. Mike Herrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Seattle Field Office.

The DOJ on Wednesday charged Jian Zhao in the Western District of Washington “for conspiring to obtain and transmit national defense information to an individual not authorized to receive it, and also for bribery and theft of government property.”

During the relevant period (July through December 2024), Zhao was a battery supply sergeant for the headquarters of the 17th Artillery Brigade at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash. There, he was “directly responsible for the request, receipt, issue, turn-in, and accountability of all individual, organizational, installation, expandable, and durable supplies and equipment” and “manage[d] the records and accountability of over 55 million dollars of Army property.”

The DOJ posted Zhao’s indictment “as a courtesy to the public,” detailing how he delivered 20 military hard drives to a Chinese contact in exchange for $15,000 — a surprisingly paltry recompense for his risky espionage.

At the same time, the DOJ charged Li Tian and Ruoyu Duan with conspiring to commit bribery and theft of government property in the District of Oregon. Tian was an active-duty U.S. Army soldier who worked as a health services administrator at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, while Duan was a former soldier at the same base. According to the indictment, Tian sold U.S. military information to Duan in a conspiracy that ran from November 2021 to at least December 2024.

The arrests continue a trend of federal employees leaking classified information. Last April, a National Guardsman in Massachusetts was arrested for posting classified military documents to a gamer forum. In November, a CIA official was arrested for leaking classified U.S. intelligence assessments of Israel’s preparations for a strike on Iran.

The latest leak may be the most devastating, as it informed our most dangerous geopolitical adversary about some of our most effective military systems.

“The defendants arrested today are accused of betraying our country, actively working to weaken America’s defense capabilities and empowering our adversaries in China,” announced U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. “They will face swift, severe, and comprehensive justice.”

The U.S. intelligence community has known about China’s escalating espionage efforts in the U.S. for years, which included operating a secret police station in Manhattan. In April 2024, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that China’s espionage efforts were “both broad and unrelenting,” aimed at prevent the U.S. from intervening in a “crisis between China and Taiwan by 2027.”

More recently, China responded aggressively to President Trump’s 10% tariff hike (to 20% total) by calling and raising their own tariffs on American goods by 15% (to 25% total), indicating that recent confrontations are likely to escalate further.

It’s noteworthy that the alleged acts of espionage occurred throughout all four years of the Biden administration, while the indictments and arrests came in the opening months of the Trump administration, only two weeks after FBI Director Kash Patel was confirmed on February 20. These facts suggest that these alleged spies were caught and prosecuted due to greater vigilance or increased scrutiny implemented under the Trump administration.

We don’t know this for certain. The DOJ, FBI, and U.S. Army Counterintelligence Command, which also investigated the case, have not said publicly when the investigation began. Perhaps investigators discovered the stolen data recently and only later found the culprits.

However, it seems unlikely that the U.S. military would allow individuals suspected of actively leaking classified material to a foreign adversary to remain at liberty for months while they dawdled on assembling a case. It also seems unlikely that the Biden administration, with its last-minute administrative push to “Trump-proof” the federal government, would leave this loose end for Trump to take the credit.

This interpretation of the facts raises the question, why didn’t the U.S. military catch these spies under President Biden? As it turns out, the Biden administration redirected military investigators to a far more politicized task, which turned out to be a wild goose chase.

The Biden administration launched this initiative at the very beginning with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s “stand-down” order (February 5, 2021) to combat extremism in the ranks. (Of course, this order only included far-right forms of extremism and failed to detect multiple left-wing servicemembers who committed violent acts on President Biden’s watch.) After several years of searching, multiple investigations, and more than 300 pages of reports, the investigationsconcluded that the military did not have an extremism problem.

Meanwhile, Tian and Duan were smuggling classified secrets to China, entirely undetected.

The other priority of the Biden administration Defense Department was indoctrinating servicemembers with left-wing ideology. In 2022, around the time the Chinese Communist Party launched a new warship, the U.S. Navy launched a video teaching their soldiers about preferred pronouns.

But President Trump’s administration has entirely reversed the direction of federal agencies, from the U.S. military’s recruiting numbers, to the zeal with which federal investigators root out foreign agents. “These arrests should send a message to would-be spies that we and our partners have the will and the ability to find you, track you down, and hold you to account,” Herrington warned. “Protecting the nation’s secrets, especially those necessary to preserve our military advantage and protect our troops, is one of the FBI’s top priorities.”