Former Google engineer found guilty of espionage and theft of AI tech
The Google LLC logo is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York on November 17, 2021.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
A federal jury in San Francisco on Thursday found a former Google software engineer guilty of stealing trade secrets related to the search company’s artificial intelligence technology.
According to the court, the jury found Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leon Ding, guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft related to the theft of thousands of pages of confidential information from Google for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China. documents.
“In today’s risky race to dominate the AI field, Linwei Ding betrayed both the United States and his employer by stealing trade secrets about Google’s AI technology on behalf of the Chinese government,” said Roman Rozhavsky, deputy director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division. expression Friday. “Today’s decision confirms that federal law will be enforced to protect our nation’s most valuable technologies and hold accountable those who steal them.”
The case marks the first conviction in the United States on AI-related economic espionage charges, according to the Justice Department.
Google executives and US leaders are particularly vocal about the AI arms race between the US and China. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently told CNBC: He said Chinese AI models could be “several months” behind US and Western capabilities.
The jury’s verdict was Ding’s original decision. accused In 2024. U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California Vince Chhabria presided over the 11-day hearing that led to Thursday’s ruling.
Between May 2022 and April 2023, Ding stole more than 2,000 pages of Google’s AI trade secrets and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account, the Justice Department said Friday. At the time, Ding was affiliated with two China-based technology companies and was in the process of starting his own technology company.
The trade secrets contained detailed information about the architecture of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and the company’s graphics processing unit systems, according to the Justice Department. The trade secrets also included details about Google’s custom-made SmartNIC, a special network interface card that enables high-speed communication between AI supercomputers and cloud networking systems.
Ding’s lawyer, Grant Fondo reportedly He argued that Google did not do enough to protect the information. According to the Courthouse News Service, he argued that the documents in question were available to thousands of employees and therefore could not contain trade secrets, and said, “Google chose openness over security.”
Ding, whose next hearing date is Tuesday, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each count of trade secret theft and 15 years in prison for each count of economic espionage, according to the Justice Department.
“We are grateful to the jury for ensuring justice was served today and for sending a clear message that the theft of trade secrets can have serious consequences,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, told CNBC. he said.
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