Ex-Google Engineer Charged and Arrested for Alleged AI Trade Secret Theft

In an age where information progressively becomes widespread, accessible, and just as equally valued, knowledge is deemed power, making laws covering intellectual property protection more substantial and significant than ever.

Last January, the act of US intellectual property theft became officially deterred and incriminating when President Biden signed the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act into law. Non-US actors proven to steal intellectual property would face economic sanctions as well as other measures such as criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.

Times have been especially tense since the start of the US-China AI tech rivalry. By now, confirmed and/or alleged cases of intellectual property theft between the two countries are nothing new, with plenty of companies falling victim. This time around, it is alleged that an ex-Google engineer stole files filled with Google’s proprietary information on AI tech and infrastructure, sharing them with two Chinese companies.

Ding’s Way

Linwei Ding, otherwise known as Leon Ding, was indicted and arrested on March 6th when he was caught allegedly transferring sensitive Google trade secrets and confidential information to his personal Google cloud account for the benefit of two Chinese companies he secretly worked for.

The 38-year-old, who has lived in California since 2019 while employed at Google, is assumed to have begun his act of thievery in 2022. Given the responsibility of developing major software for Google, Ding gained access to over 500 files that included detailed information regarding the hardware infrastructure of Google’s supercomputing data centers, which are crucial for hosting and training large AI models. Some of the alleged stolen intel also includes details on chips and software systems that enable Google to execute cutting-edge machine learning and AI technology.

Based on the indictment announced by the US Department of Justice, Ding allegedly continued to upload confidential information periodically from May 2022 until May 2023. Meanwhile, Ding was secretly working for a startup tech company named Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology, in which he was offered over $14K per month along with bonuses and company stock to be the company’s CTO. Ding had also allegedly started his own AI and machine learning-focused tech firm named Shanghai Zhisuan Technology, appointing himself CEO.

These two companies, which Ding never told Google he was working for during his employment in the Big Tech firm, are assumed to be the Chinese companies with which Ding shared Google’s trade secrets. Around this time, Ding either traveled to China without informing Google or applied for professional traveling purposes.

In November 2023, Google grew suspicious of Ding when the company realized he had started uploading more files to his personal computer during his time in China. Ding told investigators from Google that he had done this merely to prove that he was working for the company at the time.

Not fully believing Ding’s statement, Google investigated Ding’s activities further and realized that he had made multiple unauthorized uploads, suspending his access. With evidence present, the company quickly alerted the authorities, prompting a more comprehensive investigation with the FBI.

Intellectual Property Theft

By late December last year, Ding resigned from Google, and in January, the FBI searched Ding’s house and seized all of his electronic devices, allegedly finding his personal Google Cloud account completely filled with confidential files on Google’s AI secrets. Upon investigation, Ding was alleged to have said, "We have experience with Google's ten-thousand-card computational power platform; we just need to replicate and upgrade it” in his company chat group.

According to a Google spokesman, the company has strict safeguards to prevent cases of confidential commercial information theft such as these, and while it was initially thought that the company’s security systems had failed, the FBI investigation revealed the possibility of a second conspirator. It is alleged that another Google employee helped swipe Ding’s ID card at the office during his trips to China.

The entire fiasco, if proven true, may not seem too surprising for some, as China and the US have gone through quite the rivalry in bitter trade battles, now prominently in the field of AI. While American companies have been developing more advanced generative AI and related products so far, Chinese companies are constantly trying to keep up and thrive in the AI game.

While it is not known whether Ding has a lawyer representing him, it is confirmed that, if convicted, he would face up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250K for each of four counts of federal trade secret theft, totaling $1M.

Source: US Congress

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