A Chinese employee stole Google secrets

A former employee of Google's parent company Alphabet has gone to court in California on charges of stealing trade secrets related to artificial intelligence for the benefit of two Chinese companies for which he secretly worked. Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted Tuesday by a federal jury in San Francisco on four counts of stealing trade secrets.

 

A Chinese employee stole Google secrets

 

A 38-year old Chinese national was arrested Wednesday morning at his home in Newark, California. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each offense he commits.

 

A supercomputer to train artificial intelligence Ding's indictment comes just over a year after the Biden administration created the interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force, which opens a new phase in the fight to stop the acquisition of advanced technologies by countries like China and Russia, which poses a potential threat to national security. "The Justice Department simply will not tolerate the theft of our trade secrets and intelligence," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a conference in San Francisco.

 

According to the indictment, Ding stole details about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that enables Google's supercomputing data centers to train large AI models using machine learning. The stolen information included details about the chips and systems and software that helps power the supercomputer.

 

Laptop Evidence

Hired by Google in 2019 Ding allegedly started stealing three years later when he was applying for a position as chief technology officer at a Chinese company. By May 2023, he had sent her more than 500 confidential files.

 

The indictment states that Ding started his own technology company that same month and circulated a document to a newsgroup saying he had experience with Google's 10,000-card computing platform. It can only be copied and updated.

 

Google became suspicious of Ding in December 2023. His laptop was taken from him on January 4, 2024, the day before Ding was scheduled to resign from his job. - We have stringent security measures in place to prevent the theft of our confidential commercial information. After an investigation, we determined that this employee had stolen multiple documents and quickly turned the matter over to law enforcement," said Jose Castaneda, a Google spokesperson.