Chinese National Indicted for Stealing Google's AI Trade Secrets
A federal grand jury indicted Chinese national Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, for allegedly stealing trade secrets on artificial intelligence technology from Google, DOJ announced March 6. Ding, who was residing in California, purportedly transferred the trade secrets from "Google's network to his personal account while secretly affiliating himself with" Chinese companies in the AI industry.
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The allegedly stolen information includes "the building blocks of Google’s advanced supercomputing data centers," which are used to "train and host large AI models" and "support machine learning workloads." Large AI models are used to understand "nuanced language" and generate "intelligent responses to prompts, tasks, or queries," DOJ said. Google employs its "software platform," made up of many layers of software, to conduct machine learning workloads.
The charges were coordinated through the Disruptive Technology Strike Force, the task force created last year by DOJ and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to pool resources toward investigations of high-priority export control cases (see 2402230051). Matthew Axelrod, the top BIS export enforcement official, said the charges should "serve as further warning -- those who would steal sensitive U.S. technology risk finding themselves on the wrong end of a criminal indictment.”
Ding was hired in 2019 as a software engineer, and his responsibilities included developing the software used in Google's supercomputing data centers, DOJ said. The Chinese national was given access to Google's information pertaining to the "hardware infrastructure, the software platform, and the AI models and applications they supported."
Starting on May 21, 2022, Ding allegedly started uploading trade secrets by copying the information into a personal Google Cloud account. The uploads stopped May 2, 2023, after he allegedly uploaded over 500 different files. Ding is purportedly linked with two Chinese AI companies and began working as CEO of his own AI company in May.
Ding is accused of four counts of theft of trade secrets. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said DOJ will "relentlessly pursue and hold accountable those who would siphon disruptive technologies -- especially AI -- for unlawful export.”