I’m Ashley Yablon, and I’m a whistleblower. In 2012, I discovered that my employer, ZTE, a huge multinational company with its home base in China, was deliberately and intentionally breaking U.S. law, to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in annual business.

I was faced with a dilemma: do I keep my mouth shut and continue to enjoy my nice corporate law career, or do I say something? The stakes were staggeringly high whichever way I chose.

If I decided to shine a light on what was going on in the company, not only would the company lose billions of dollars in business, but it would also face massive legal consequences from the U.S. government.

If I played along with the scam, then here was the ultimate picture I saw: me standing in front of Congress live on C-SPAN as the sole representative of ZTE USA, swearing to the lies of my Chinese employer. And with each false answer I gave, I’d be further committing treason because, despite assurances otherwise, ZTE was indeed selling spying technology to embargoed countries against U.S. laws. A federal prison cell likely awaited me.

Either way I chose to go, the status of U.S.-China relations would probably be altered. No exaggeration. And it all came down to me.

I’ve never considered myself particularly heroic; I’ll just put that on the table. I mean sure, I’m basically an ethical person, a good person. I am. But I’m no moral purist. As a lawyer, I’ve been known to look the other way when my clients or...

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