US prosecutors have unveiled an expanded count indictment accusing former Google software engineer Linwei Ding of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for. Ding, 38, a Chinese national, was charged by a federal grand jury in San Francisco with seven counts each of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
The defendant, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted last March on four counts of theft of trade secrets. He is free on bond. Ding's case was coordinated through an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force created in by the Biden administration.
The initiative was designed to help stop advanced technology from being acquired by countries such as China and Russia, or potentially threatening national security. Prosecutors said Ding stole information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centres train large AI models.
Some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints were meant to give Google an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon. Prosecutors said Ding joined Google in May and began his thefts three years later, when he was being courted to join an early-stage Chinese technology company. Ding allegedly uploaded more than confidential files by May and later circulated a PowerPoint presentation to employees of a China startup he founded, saying that country's policies encouraged development of a domestic AI industry.
According to court records describing a Dec. Home News Technology Software. Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here. Click for Restrictions. Partner Content. Sponsored Whitepapers. Post-Quantum Cryptography: Preparing your organisation for a quantum future today.
