A federal court has indicted Google engineer Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, for allegedly stealing trade secrets surrounding the software and hardware used for Google's AI. The first trial (spontaneous) took place on March 5, and the arrest Wednesday morning in Newark, California.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Ding "stole from Google more than 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets while secretly working for China-based companies seeking an edge in the AI technology race."
Much of the stolen data reportedly revolved around Google's tensor processing unit (TPU) chips. Google's TPU chips power many of its AI workloads in conjunction with Nvidia's GPUs, and can train and run AI models like Gemini.
Software blueprints for v4 and v6 TPU chips, hardware and software specifications for GPUs used in Google's data center, and blueprints for Google's machine learning workloads in data centers are among the allegedly stolen data.
Amid a growing AI arms race and efforts by the U.S. government to bar China from access to chips made in the country, some Chinese companies have turned to local chip makers to power the artificial intelligence platforms they are building.
Late last year, the intelligence agencies of the so-called Five Eyes alliance of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand warned American technology companies that Chinese companies were aiming to steal intellectual property on artificial intelligence, quantum computing and robotics.
The US government therefore accuses Ding of transferring these files to a personal Google Cloud account from May 2022 to May 2023.
He did this by “copying data from Google's source files into the Apple Notes application on his MacBook laptop” and then converting it from Apple Notes to PDF to avoid detection by Google's “data loss prevention systems”.
The government says that less than a month after he started stealing files, a Chinese machine learning company called Rongshu offered to make him CTO, he flew to China for five months to raise capital for the company, and then founded and led a machine learning startup called Zhisuan while still working for Google.
He resigned from Google in December 2023 and reportedly booked a one-way ticket to Beijing when the company started asking him about his uploads.
The DOJ also alleges that in December 2023, he allegedly pretended to be present at Google's US office by having another employee scan his badge at the door while he was in China. Ding faces four counts of theft of trade secrets, up to ten years in prison and a $250.000 fine on each count if convicted.
