DBN competed with Pioneer and Monsanto in the Chinese market.
It turned out that Mo, who also goes by the first name Robert, worked for DBN, an agricultural company based in Beijing. Agricultural technology is among the sectors designated for strategic development in China, and the US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, which advises the president on intelligence matters related to national security, had identified it as a frequent target of industrial spies. His name was Hailong Mo.īack at the FBI field office, Betten soon learned of two other suspicious incidents involving Hailong Mo and other seed companies operating in Iowa-including Monsanto, another agricultural giant, which would earn over $2 billion in profits that year.
Industrial espionage license#
Pioneer security later used the license plate to trace the rental car to a man with a Florida driver’s license. When the farmer asked what they were doing, the kneeling man stammered out an excuse then he bolted for the car and jumped in the passenger seat as the car sped away. Another man waited nearby in a parked car. A Pioneer security officer mentioned that a few months earlier, a contract farmer in a remote part of Iowa had found a Chinese national crouched on his knees in a field where the company grew genetically modified inbred seed. To catch Mo stealing agricultural trade secrets, the FBI pulled out tools it might use against drug cartels.Īt the meeting, Betten explained the bureau’s efforts to combat economic espionage and tackle cybersecurity threats. In the years that followed, that focus would only intensify. By then, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) had already brought at least four federal trade cases on behalf of DuPont subsidiaries and affiliates on trade-secret theft. DuPont was already a giant corporation: it would make a profit of over $4 billion in 2011, on revenue of nearly 10 times as much. The bureau worked closely with companies to identify the secrets targeted by Chinese competitors, and the relationship with DuPont, Pioneer’s parent company, was particularly cozy. A dizzying array of technologies were now portrayed as critical to national security: wind turbines, paint whiteners, corn seed.
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