A former Google software engineer has been charged by a federal grand jury with stealing AI-related trade secrets from the tech giant while secretly working with two China-based companies.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the indictment Wednesday, saying, “The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk.”
The indictment alleges that Chinese national Linwei Ding, who was hired by Google in 2019, stole over 500 confidential files from the company containing AI trade secrets starting in May 2022 until May 2023. Ding transferred the documents from Google’s network to a personal Google cloud account, according to court documents.
The documents Ding stole were related to Google’s advanced supercomputing data centers which are used to train and store AI models.
While stealing the confidential files, Ding allegedly was secretly affiliating himself with tech companies in China.
In June of 2022, an early-stage technology company in China started emailing Ding and even offered him the position of chief technology officer. Ding allegedly owned 20% of the company’s stock.
The indictment further alleges that no later than May 2023 Ding founded his own AI startup in China. A document related to this startup stated: “We have experience with Google’s ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it — and then further develop a computational power platform suited to China’s national conditions,” according to the indictment.
“Today’s charges are the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement.
Ding was arrested this morning in Newark, New Jersey. He was indicted with four counts of federal trade secret theft. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and up to $250,000 fine. Ding will be sentenced by a federal district court judge at a later date.