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Ten former Samsung employees arrested for allegedly leaking 10nm chip technology to China
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 at 01:12 AM
South Korean authorities have arrested ten former Samsung employees on charges of industrial espionage. The individuals are accused of illegally transferring 10nm-class semiconductor manufacturing technology to a Chinese chipmaker.
Context
Ten individuals, including five former Samsung employees and a former executive, were recently indicted for allegedly leaking proprietary 10nm-class DRAM technology to Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). The group reportedly orchestrated a complex espionage operation starting in 2016, which involved poaching key engineers and manually transcribing confidential process recipes to evade digital surveillance. This coordinated theft allowed CXMT to bypass years of research and development and achieve mass production of 10nm DRAM by 2023, becoming the first firm in China to do so.
The financial fallout is significant, with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office estimating that Samsung suffered a revenue loss of approximately $3.7 billion (5 trillion won) in 2024 alone. Total economic damage is projected to reach tens of trillions of won as China scales its domestic memory production using stolen intellectual property. This high-profile case highlights the extreme vulnerability of the global semiconductor supply chain to targeted talent poaching and industrial espionage in the race for AI-driven memory dominance.
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