A former scientist for an American tech company has been charged in relation to a scheme to steal technology from a government-funded project he was working on and transfer it to China. Wang Ji, 59, a former employee for materials science giant Corning Inc., was indicted in late June by a federal grand jury in Rochester on charges of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and unlawful exports. According to the recently unsealed indictment, Wang, who worked for the company from 1998 to 2019, was assigned as the lead scientist to work on a project initiated and partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA injected $16 million into the endeavor. The aim of the project was to develop high-powered optical laser fibers that could defeat hostile drones. Wang and his team were successful. They were able to boost the power of fiber lasers by 1,000 times, …