By Sarah N. Lynch, David Shepardson and Karen Freifeld
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said it plans on Tuesday to announce the first enforcement actions from a “strike force” of federal prosecutors formed in February in part to keep sensitive technologies away from countries like Russia and China.
The department scheduled a press conference for 10:30 a.m. EDT (1430 GMT) to make an announcement regarding the strike force’s work but did not provide details.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, the department’s No. 2 official, said in February that the new group was a joint effort with the U.S. Commerce Department to safeguard American technology from foreign adversaries and other national security threats. Monaco said at the time that the United States would “strike back against adversaries trying to siphon off our most advanced technology, and to attack tomorrow’s national security threats today.”
The strike force includes 14 U.S. attorney offices across the country working to target illicit actors, strengthen supply chains and protect sensitive technologies from being acquired or used by foreign adversaries.
In a case that may be related to the strike force’s work, a criminal complaint was filed in Arizona last Friday against Oleg Patsulya and Vasilii Besedin, two Russian nationals living in the United States, for allegedly conspiring to send aircraft parts to Russian airlines in violation of U.S. export control laws.
The Justice Department in recent years has increased its focus on bringing criminal cases to protect corporate intellectual property, U.S. supply chains and private data about Americans from foreign adversaries, either through cyber attacks, theft or sanctions evasion.
The Commerce Department last year imposed new export controls on advanced computing and semiconductor components in a maneuver designed to prevent China from acquiring certain chips.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Karen Freifeld and Sarah Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham)
