US jails two Chinese nationals for 30 months over spying on military personnel
Two Chinese nationals have each been sentenced to 30 months in a US prison after admitting they worked under the direction of China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on American military personnel and installations.
Two Chinese nationals have each been sentenced to 30 months in prison in the United States after admitting that they acted as agents of China’s government, targeting American military personnel and installations in a covert intelligence operation that ran for years.
Liren “Ryan” Lai, 40, and Yuance Chen, 39, were sentenced on Friday by a federal court in California, the United States Department of Justice said. Alongside the prison terms, each man received three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Attorney General, and to acting as an agent of a foreign government without that notification.
According to court documents cited by the department, the two men agreed to operate under the direction and control of China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s principal civilian intelligence service, and began acting as its agents no later than May 2021.
Their work, prosecutors said, included facilitating secret “dead drop” cash payments in exchange for information related to United States national security. In such an arrangement, cash is left at an agreed location for collection by someone else, avoiding a direct meeting between the payer and the recipient.
The government’s sentencing memorandum detailed one clandestine payment of approximately $10,000 in January 2022. Reporting on the case put the total value of the secret cash payments facilitated by the pair at at least $30,000, although the Justice Department did not say how many payments were made in total or how many people were successfully recruited.
From 2022 onwards, Chen gathered information about United States military installations and personnel at the direction of Lai and Chinese intelligence officers, the department said. The pair also assisted efforts to recruit potential intelligence assets from within the American military, a strand of the case that prosecutors described as a direct threat to serving personnel.
The two men were arrested and charged in June 2025 as part of a Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-espionage operation. Lai admitted both offences on 12 December 2025, and Chen pleaded guilty on 20 February, clearing the way for Friday’s sentencing.
“Liren Lai and Yuance Chen operated in a long-running scheme to undermine US national security by supporting Chinese intelligence operations and recruiting in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg said in the department’s statement, adding that the National Security Division was committed to holding accountable anyone who aids such espionage efforts.
US Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California said the sentencing should serve as a clear warning, saying: “If you attempt to jeopardize the safety and security of our service members, our citizens, or our nation, justice will find you.”
The case lands against a backdrop of mutual espionage accusations between Washington and Beijing. In late August, US President Donald Trump said he knew China spied on the United States but added that the United States spied on China too, while in June China announced it had arrested a US citizen accused of espionage. No Chinese government response to Friday’s sentences had been reported at the time of publication, and it remains to be seen whether Beijing raises the case through diplomatic channels or whether further related prosecutions follow in the United States.
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