Former Google employee charged with stealing AI tech
A former Google employee was charged Wednesday for allegedly stealing technology while secretly working for two Chinese artificial intelligence companies.
According to the indictment, 38-year-old Linwei Ding, a Chinese national living in California, transferred trade secrets and other confidential information from Google’s network to his personal account. The defendant was arrested on Wednesday morning in Newark, California. “The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
According to court documents, the technology Ding allegedly stole includes the core components of Google’s advanced supercomputing data centers, which are designed to support machine learning workloads used to train and host artificial intelligence models.
“Today’s charges are the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. Google hired the current defendant as a software engineer in 2019.
His responsibilities included developing software used in those data centers, which gave him access to confidential information. In early May 2022, according to the indictment, Ding started storing trade secrets from Google’s network by copying them to his personal cloud.
