A jury on Sept. 25 convicted James Fondren Jr., a retired USAF lieutenant colonel and former Pentagon civilian employee, of passing classified information to the Chinese government. He could face up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in January, the Associated Press reported Sept. 26. The Justice Department accused Fondren, 62, of providing the classified information from November 2004 to February 2008 to Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan who was a Chinese spy, while Fondren was deputy director of the Washington, D.C., liaison office of US Pacific Command. The trial began Sept. 21 in US District Court in Alexandria, Va. (For more, read the Washington Post’s Sept. 25 report.)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…