Hack of the US Office of Personnel Management In 2015, hackers working on behalf of the Jiangsu SSD obtained access to 22.1 million
SF-86 records of US federal employees, contractors, and their friends and family. Representing one of the largest breaches of government data in U.S. history, information that was obtained and
exfiltrated in the breach included
personally identifiable information such as
Social Security numbers, as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses.
Espionage against the United States military In 2013, Jì Chāoqún (), a Chinese graduate student studying in the United States, was recruited by officials from the JSSD and agreed to "dedicate the rest of his life to [China's] national security." He graduated from
Illinois Institute of Technology in 2015 and enlisted as an
E-4 in the
United States Army Reserve through the
Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI) program the following year. In response to a
security clearance investigation at the time of his enlistment, Ji falsely claimed to have had no close contact with officials of any foreign government in the prior seven years. In 2018, Ji met with individuals he believed were with the MSS, but were in fact undercover agents of the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). During these meetings, Ji said he could leverage his military credentials to take photos on board the destroyer
USS Roosevelt, and that he would seek work in cybersecurity at the
CIA, FBI or
NASA, in order to gain greater access to databases of classified information. He was arrested later in 2018. Following a trial in 2022, Ji was convicted on one count each of acting as
an agent of China without registering under the
Foreign Agents Registration Act as required (18 USC § 951),
conspiracy to wit, and
making false statements (18 USC § 1001) to the US Army. In early 2023, Ji was sentenced to eight years in prison by
a federal court in
Chicago. Ji appealed his conviction and sentence and his appeal was denied in July 2024.
Industrial espionage in the aviation sector In 2017, an engineer at
GE Aviation in
Cincinnati was contacted by officials from the Jiangsu SSD through
LinkedIn, and convinced to give a presentation to officials ostensibly from
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. After being identified by the
FBI and GE security, he was forced to take part in an offensive counterintelligence operation run by the FBI. After the engineer reengaged his Chinese acquaintance at the behest of the FBI, search warrants of the email address the man used revealed him to be Xu Yanjun, a deputy division director of the Sixth Bureau of the JSSD with nearly 20 years experience. Soon after, Xu asked the engineer to obtain details on the composite materials used in the structure of the
Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. Xu was ultimately arrested in a
sting operation in
Belgium arranged by the FBI. After examining his devices, an
iCloud account revealed the JSSD was engaged in
cyberespionage against global aerospace conglomerates
Honeywell and
Safran, and California-based
gas turbine manufacturer
Capstone Turbine. The companies were contractors for the first indigenous Chinese commercial aircraft, the
COMAC C919, and the information revealed that China was working to steal the data necessary to cut the vendors out of the supply chain. At a discussion at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Sinologist Peter Mattis said Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), otherwise known as Nanhang University, was the eventual customer for the stolen technology, and played a key role in setting the
intelligence requirements for the JSSD's collection efforts. == List of directors ==