October 16, 2024 — A Chinese student studying at the University of Minnesota has been sentenced to six months in prison after being charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for using a drone to film a high-security naval shipyard in Virginia. The Department of Justice viewed the student's actions as espionage.

In January of this year, 26-year-old Fengyun Shi (name transliterated) used a drone to take photos over Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) in Norfolk, Virginia. He was reported by local residents. In June, Shi was charged with six counts of violating the Espionage Act, a misdemeanor. In July, he pleaded guilty to two charges: filming military facilities in a restricted defense airspace and using an unregistered aircraft to capture footage of critical military installations. The Department of Justice dismissed the other four charges.

This case is considered highly unusual.

On October 2, Shi was sentenced in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, with U.S. media reporting on the case on Tuesday (October 15).

At the time of the incident, Shi was a graduate student studying agricultural engineering at the University of Minnesota. Under a provision of the Espionage Act from World War II, he will be under court supervision for one year after his release.

His lawyer, Shaoming Cheng (name transliterated), filed court documents the day before the sentencing, arguing that his client "took a few photos of NNS without realizing that they might contain sensitive information."

Cheng requested a lighter sentence, asserting that the incident was essentially an accident. He added that Shi "was unaware of the law and... thought it was cool and interesting to take photos from a different angle. He had no intention of acquiring or transmitting sensitive information to any foreign entity."

According to Shi’s plea agreement, he purchased the drone on January 3 and arrived in Norfolk from San Francisco the next day. On January 5, he flew the drone over the BAE Systems shipyard but did not take any photos.

On January 6, Shi’s drone got stuck in a tree near NNS. He asked nearby residents for help retrieving it, and one of the residents reported the incident to the police.

When the police arrived at the scene, Fengyun Shi explained that he was on vacation during his graduate studies. The police questioned him about flying a drone in the area, particularly given the poor weather conditions that made it unsuitable for drone operation. Shi appeared very nervous and could not explain why he was flying the drone in such bad weather.

The police advised him to contact the fire department for assistance. However, Shi drove a rental car back to Norfolk International Airport, took an Amtrak train to Washington D.C., and flew to the San Francisco Bay Area 25 hours later.

On January 18, federal law enforcement arrested Shi before he could board a one-way flight to China.

On January 7, the drone fell from the tree onto a local resident's lawn and was retrieved the following day by members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). According to court documents, the drone’s SD card contained footage of U.S. Navy vessels or vessels intended for Navy use, violating the Espionage Act, which prohibits filming companies manufacturing classified military equipment.

Joshua Quitaro, the security manager at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), wrote to the court during sentencing. He explained that the shipyard builds and maintains Navy aircraft carriers and submarines, including refueling nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

"Much of the work on these Navy projects and certain components are classified as top secret," Quitaro stated. "Ensuring that NNS airspace is free from unauthorized private drones, as in the case of Mr. Shi, is essential for the shipyard’s continued work for the U.S. Navy."

He added, "To my knowledge, this is the first instance of an unauthorized private drone flying over the shipyard and taking photographs of the facility."

Shi's LinkedIn profile shows that he graduated from Jilin University and interned with China’s State Grid Corporation for nearly a year and a half. In his spare time, he was a player of the online game League of Legends and was developing an app called Gopher Eye to detect crop diseases through photographs. The app, funded by the National Science Foundation, had a patent pending, and Shi referred to himself as a "startup manager" on LinkedIn.

(This article referenced reports from the Minnesota Star Tribune and The Forum.)

Editor: Ye Ziwei