The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the indictment of a 38-year-old Chinese national living in California for allegedly stealing proprietary information from Google while secretly working for two China-based technology companies.
Linwei Ding (aka Leon Ding), a former Google engineer arrested on March 6, 2024, “transferred sensitive Google trade secrets and other confidential information from the Google network to his personal account while secretly affiliating with PRC-based companies in artificial intelligence sector,” the DoJ said.
The defendant is said to have stolen over 500 confidential files containing artificial intelligence (AI) trade secrets from Google with the aim of passing them on to two unnamed Chinese companies seeking to gain an advantage in the ongoing AI race .
“While Linwei Ding worked as a software engineer at Google, he secretly worked to enrich himself and two companies based in the People’s Republic of China,” US Attorney Ismail Ramsey said.
“By stealing Google’s trade secrets about its artificial intelligence supercomputing systems, Ding gave himself and companies he was affiliated with in the PRC an unfair competitive advantage.”
Ding, who joined Google as a software engineer in 2019, was accused of stealing proprietary information related to the company’s supercomputing data center infrastructure used for running artificial intelligence models, from the Cluster Management System software (CMS) for data center management and artificial intelligence. models and applications supported by them.
The theft occurred from May 21, 2022, to May 2, 2023, on a personal Google Cloud account, the indictment alleges, adding that Ding had secretly affiliated himself with two China-based technology companies.
This included one company where he was offered the chief technology officer position around June 2022 and another company founded by Ding himself no later than May 30, 2023, as CEO.
“Ding’s company has advertised the development of a software platform designed to accelerate machine learning workloads, including training large artificial intelligence models,” the DoJ said.
“A document related to Ding’s startup stated: ‘we have experience with Google’s ten thousand card computing power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it – and then further develop a computing power platform suited to China’s national conditions.'”
But in an interesting twist, Ding took steps to hide the theft of trade secrets by allegedly copying data from Google’s source files into the Apple Notes application on his company-provided MacBook and then converting the notes to PDF files before uploading them to his own Google accounts. accounts.
Additionally, Ding allegedly allowed another Google employee in December 2023 to use his Google-issued access badge to scan the entrance of a Google building, giving the impression that he worked from his Google office in the United States when, in reality, he was in China. He resigned from Google on December 26, 2023.
Ding was charged with four counts of theft of trade secrets. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each count.
The development comes just days after the DoJ arrested and charged David Franklin Slater, a U.S. Air Force civilian employee assigned to U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), for transmitting classified information on a foreign online dating platform between February and April 2022 .
The information included National Defense Intelligence (NDI) related to Russian military targets and military capabilities related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was said to have been sent to a co-conspirator, who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine, via the dating site’s messaging function.
“Slater intentionally, improperly, and unlawfully transmitted an NDI classified as ‘SECRET,’ which he had reason to believe could be used to the detriment of the United States or to the benefit of a foreign nation, on a foreign online dating platform to a person not authorized to receive such information,” the DoJ said.
Slater, 63, faces up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $250,000 on each count of conspiracy to commit and transmit NDI. No details are known about the motives or the real identity of the individual posing as a Ukrainian woman.