A former Google employee has been charged with taking confidential AI-related information from the company and sharing it with entities in China.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the charges on February 5, accusing the individual of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
If convicted, Ding could face up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each trade secret charge. Each economic espionage charge carries a possible 15-year sentence and a $5 million fine.
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Linwei (Leon) Ding, who worked at Google as a software engineer since 2019, allegedly transferred over 1,000 internal files to a personal cloud storage account between May 2022 and May 2023.
These files contained details about Google’s AI infrastructure, including proprietary hardware and software used in the company’s advanced computing systems.
Prosecutors claim Ding had undisclosed ties with two tech firms in China and aimed to support China’s technological efforts. Evidence suggests that by June 2022, he had begun discussions with a high-ranking official from one of these companies. By May 2023, Ding had established an AI startup in China.
The DOJ states that the stolen materials included information on Google’s custom hardware, such as its specialized network chips, AI processing units, and graphics systems. The files also contained details about software used to manage these components, some of which related to next-generation AI advancements.
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