As if economic trade with China isn’t damaging enough, on May 10, a federal court found Chi Mak, a Chinese-born electrical engineer, guilty of conspiring to export U.S. defense technology to his homeland.

Chi passed thousands of pages of classified documents from his defense contractor employer to Chinese authorities via his family members. He was arrested in 2005 after an 18-month investigation by the fbi in which agents discovered a Chinese “wish list” of American military technological secrets.

Chinese authorities almost got their wish as Chi’s brother and sister-in-law boarded a plane for Hong Kong with three encrypted compact discs. The cds contained data on a quiet propulsion system for submarines as well as other classified technical information. Although the fbi apprehended the two at Los Angeles International Airport (they go to trial next month along with Chi’s wife and other relatives), the Chinese have likely successfully received other items on their list via Chi, who admitted to exporting military secrets to China over a period of 20 years, according to a confession he later disavowed.

The fbi has arrested approximately 30 Chinese in the past two years and has set up over 400 investigations since 2000 involving the illegal exportation of U.S. arms technology to China.

Chi’s conviction and the evidence uncovered in the process show just how absurd America’s “let’s pretend to be friends” relationship with China truly is—yet sadly, there is little chance they will put that relationship in jeopardy.