Former Chinese Google Engineer Indicted for AI Trade Secret Theft

Linwei Ding, a former software engineer at Google, has been indicted on charges of stealing trade secrets related to artificial intelligence (AI). The indictment alleges that Ding was secretly working for two Chinese companies and used the stolen information to their advantage.

The Charges

Ding, who also goes by the name Leon Ding, was charged by a federal jury in San Francisco on Tuesday with four counts of theft of trade secrets. The 38-year-old Chinese national was arrested at his home in Newark, California on Wednesday morning. Legal representation for Ding has not been identified at this time.

The unveiling of Ding’s indictment comes just over a year after the Biden administration established an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force. This initiative aims to prevent advanced technology from being acquired by countries like China and Russia, which could potentially pose a threat to national security.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking at a conference in San Francisco, stated, “The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence.”

The Stolen Information

According to the indictment, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that enables Google’s supercomputing data centers to train large AI models through machine learning. The stolen information included details about chips, systems, and software that powers a supercomputer “capable of executing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology,” as per the indictment.

Google’s Edge

Some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints were designed by Google to gain an advantage over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their chips, and to reduce its reliance on chips from Nvidia.

The Timeline

Ding was hired by Google in 2019 and allegedly began his thefts three years later. He was being courted to become the chief technology officer for an early-stage Chinese tech company at the time. By May 2023, he had uploaded more than 500 confidential files.

The indictment states that Ding founded his own technology company in May 2023. He circulated a document in a chat group stating, “We have experience with Google’s ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it.”

Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023 and confiscated his laptop on January 4, 2024, the day before Ding planned to resign. Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, said, “We have strict safeguards to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information and trade secrets. After an investigation, we found that this employee stole numerous documents, and we quickly referred the case to law enforcement.”

Ding faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each criminal count.