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Two weeks later, Konnech sued them. In a stunning series of courtroom actions, Engelbrecht and Phillips were jailed and held in solitary confinement—until the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered their immediate release. The FBI stood by and let it happen. After their release, they published thousands of documents exposing Konnech’s ties to China. Within days, Konnech dropped the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, independent researchers quickly pieced together Eugene Yu’s background. Born in China, Jianwei Yu (于建伟) graduated from Zhejiang University in 1982 and worked for the CCP from 1983 to 1985 as a project manager in the Guangzhou Economic and Technological Development Zone. He moved to the U.S. in 1986 to pursue an MBA at Wake Forest University.
In 2002, Yu founded Konnech. By November 2005, he had launched a Chinese subsidiary—Jinhua Yulian Network—funded and overseen by the CCP. That same year, he was profiled as an “overseas scholar” in a Chinese-language publication by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) and the American Zhu Kezhen Education Foundation (AZKEF).
CAST is a formal CCP arm linking Chinese leadership with overseas scientists and technologists. AZKEF, where Yu served on the finance committee, flew U.S. researchers—including Harvard’s Charles Lieber—to Chinese universities. Lieber was later arrested for failing to disclose his ties to China’s Thousand Talents Plan, one of the CCP’s many programs that recruit foreign experts to encourage the illicit transfer of intellectual property back to China.
Konnech’s Chinese ties ran deep. It partnered with Michigan State University’s Confucius Institute, developed software in CCP-run tech parks, and directly served China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
On January 25, 2006, Yu’s Chinese company was accepted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Jinhua Science and Technology Park—a CCP-controlled tech incubator. From that point on, Jinhua Yulian Network and Konnech, were financed, developed, and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Just a month later, on February 25, 2006, Yu registered the domain yu-lian .cn for Jinhua Yulian Network using his Konnech email address (eyu@konnech .com). Archived versions of the company’s Chinese-language website show Yu praising “Comrade Jiang Zemin” and the Chinese Communist Party, while promoting Konnech’s software products used by the National People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Election Management Solutions Detroit, and U.S. Overseas Voters.
In December 2006, Konnech partnered with the Confucius Institute to build a Chinese communication platform called ChineseBrief .com. Yu registered CNBrief LLC, launched www.cnbrief .com, and displayed a banner in Chinese that translated to: “Chinese Brief – Overseas Chinese Network.”
Confucius Institutes are CCP-funded cultural centers embedded in Western universities that U.S. intelligence agencies and lawmakers have long warned operate under the direction of the CCP.
On July 18, 2007, an archived Chinese government website showed Yu offering a 5 million yuan (~$700,000 USD) software development contract on behalf of Jinhua Yulian Network, again using his Konnech email address and website.
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2077929169389006901

Karoline Leavitt @PressSec - Shocking stuff.
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Benjamin Weingarten @bhweingarten
Look at part of an email thread in which officials are debating content and phrasing of an assessment regarding China’s info operations during the 2020 election. They straight up strike a sentence about China seeking to topple Trump and write that China doesn’t have a preference