Former Google engineer charged with stealing AI secrets for China

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A federal grand jury in San Francisco has indicted a former Google engineer for stealing the tech giant's trade secrets related to artificial intelligence technology. According to the investigation, he stole the information for the benefit of two Chinese companies he secretly worked for.

Here's What We Know

Chinese national Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leon Ding, was arrested Wednesday morning at his home in Newark, California. He is charged with four counts of trade secret theft.

According to investigators, Ding stole detailed information about Google's hardware and software infrastructure for training AI models on supercomputers. Specifically, it concerns the chips, systems and software needed to run these computing facilities.

The indictment notes that Google developed some of the allegedly stolen chip circuitry to get ahead of competitors like Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing and reduce its reliance on NVIDIA.

Ding was hired at Google in 2019. According to the filing, he started stealing in 2022 when they tried to poach him as CTO at a Chinese startup. By May 2023, he allegedly downloaded more than 500 confidential files.

"The Justice Department just will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence", US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement in San Francisco.

Ding's indictment comes a year after he set up a task force to prevent the transfer of advanced technology to countries like China and Russia.

Source: Reuters