It's also worth pointing out that their are right ways and wrong ways to export technology. Loral picked the wrong way. There are export laws for a reason, and they're not there just because we don't trust China completely.

Frankly, Loral/Boeing/et al could have faced similar penalties for giving such technology to, say, France without getting the proper approval. You see, when you give technology to another country, you aren't just giving it to that country. You're also giving it to whomever that country may choose to give it. In effect, once you export technology, you lose a certain degree of control over it. And losing control risks hastening the inevitable day when hostile powers figure out how to build the kind of cool stuff our military is already using. The technology gap gives us a profound military advantage, and we'd be fools to just hand it away.

I agree; they're not traitors. But what they did was pretty stupid, because they're big defense contractors and certainly ought to know better. It probably happened because they weren't enforcing internal security processes properly, and somebody decided to take a shortcut when making the decision to help the Chinese out and get that rocket launched quicker.