Chinese American physicist Xiaoxing Xi is still haunted by the memory of an early morning in 2015, when a group of FBI officers surrounded his home in Pennsylvania.
The agents pointed guns at his wife and two daughters and then handcuffed him.
The former chair of Temple University’s physics department was charged with leaking sensitive technology to the Chinese government.
Prosecutors accused Professor Xi of secretly sharing the design of a pocket heater for a supercomputer with scientists in China.
Overnight, Professor Xi’s face was splashed across US media and he was branded a “Chinese spy”.
He faced up to 80 years in prison if found guilty.
But just four months later, Professor Xi’s case came to a dramatic turning point.
Before the trial had even kicked off, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped all charges against Professor Xi, with a document filed in court explaining that “additional information came to the attention of the government”.
According to Professor Xi’s lawyer Peter Zeidenberg, the scientist had never shared secret technology with Chinese colleagues.