In July 2019, a former University of California professor was convicted for his involvement in a scheme “to illegally obtain integrated circuits with military applications that later were exported to China without the required export license”. According to evidence, Yi-Chi Shih gained access to sensitive semi-conductor technology and transferred it to Chengdu GaStone Technology Company, a Chinese firm placed on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s entity list due to national security concerns. The investigators also found that Shih had received payments from a Beijing-based company also on the entity list.