A Chinese software engineer was arrested for stealing artificial intelligence technology from Google while secretly working for two Chinese companies. Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leon Ding, faces four counts of theft of trade secrets. Ding, who was arrested on Wednesday in Newark, Calif., allegedly transferred confidential information from Google’s network to his personal account while secretly affiliated with Chinese-based companies in the AI industry. “The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland, The Guardian reports. “We will fiercely protect sensitive technologies developed in America from falling into the hands of those who should not have them.”
Ding’s arrest illustrates “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. “The theft of innovative technology and trade secrets from American companies can cost jobs and have devastating economic and national security consequences." According to the indictment, Ding was hired by Google in 2019 and was involved in developing the software deployed in Google’s supercomputing data centers. He allegedly began uploading confidential Google information into a personal cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023. The pilfered files related to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that allows Google’s supercomputing data centers to train large AI models through machine learning.