By CHRISTOPHER DREW

Huang Kexue, federal authorities say, is a new kind of spy. For five years, Mr. Huang was a scientist at a Dow Chemical lab in Indiana, studying ways to improve insecticides. But before he was fired in 2008, Mr. Huang began sharing Dow’s secrets with Chinese researchers, authorities say, then obtained grants from a staterun foundation in China with the goal of starting a rival business there.

Now, Mr. Huang, who was born in China and is a legal United States resident, faces a rare criminal charge ? that he engaged in economic espionage on China’s behalf. Law enforcement officials say the kind of spying Mr. Huang is accused of represents a new front in the battle for a global economic edge. As China and other countries broaden their efforts to obtain Western technology, American industries beyond the traditional military and high-tech targets risk having valuable secrets exposed by their own employees, court records show.

Prosecutors say it is difficult to prove links to a foreign government, but intelligence officials say China, Russia and Iran are among the countries pushing hardest to obtain the latest technologies. “In the new global economy, our businesses are increasingly targets for theft,” said Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division. “In order to stay a leader in innovation, we’ve got to protect these trade secrets.”

Mr. Huang, 45, who says he is not guilty, is being prosecuted under an economic espionage provision in use for only the seventh time. Created by the United States Congress in 1996 to address a shift toward industrial spying after the cold war, the law makes it a crime to steal business trade secrets, like software code and laboratory breakthroughs.

The crime rises to espionage if the thefts are carried out to help a foreign government. Economic espionage charges are also pending against Jin Hanjuan, a software engineer for Motorola who was arrested with a laptop full of company documents while boarding a plane for China, prosecutors said. Scientists at the DuPont Company and Valspar, a Minnesota paint company, recently pleaded guilty to stealing their employers’ secrets after taking jobs in China.

American officials and corporate trade groups say they fear economic spying will increase as China’s quest for Western know-how spreads from military systems to everyday commercial technologies.

But security analysts say some American companies must share the blame for thefts because they do not adequately monitor employees. Catching and prosecuting wrongdoers is also made difficult by the refusal of some companies to report breaches.

“When you have public companies with their stock values tied to their assets, the last thing they want the buyer of that stock to think is that their assets are compromised,” said Michael Maloof, the chief technology officer of TriGeo Network Security, a company that provides computer monitoring systems. Spies Pilfer Trade Secrets Globally


Sarah Chen contributed research