The Google LLC logo seen at Google Store Chelsea on November 17, 2021 in Manhattan, New York.
Andrew Kelly Reuter
A federal jury in San Francisco on Thursday convicted a former Google software engineer of stealing trade secrets related to the search company’s AI technology.
A jury convicted Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leung Ding, of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft related to stealing thousands of pages of confidential information from Google for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China, according to court documents.
“In today’s high-stakes race for supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence, Linwei Ding betrayed both the United States and his employer by stealing trade secrets about Google’s AI technology on behalf of the Chinese government,” Roman Rosavsky, deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence and espionage division, said in a statement Friday. “Today’s ruling confirms that federal law will be enforced to protect our nation’s most valuable technology and hold accountable those who steal it.”
According to the Department of Justice, this case marks the first conviction for AI-related economic espionage in the United States.
google Executives and U.S. leaders have been particularly vocal about the AI arms race between the U.S. and China. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently told CNBC that China’s AI models could be “months” behind U.S. and Western capabilities.
The jury’s decision came after Ding was first indicted in 2024. U.S. District Judge Vince Chabria of the Northern District of California oversaw the 11-day trial that led to Thursday’s decision.
The Justice Department announced Friday that Ding stole more than 2,000 pages of Google’s AI trade secrets and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and April 2023. At the time, Ding was working for two technology companies based in China and was looking to start his own technology company.
The trade secrets included detailed information about the architecture of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and the company’s graphics processing unit systems, the Justice Department said. This trade secret also includes details about Google’s custom-built SmartNICs. SmartNIC is a specialized network interface card that enables high-speed communication between the company’s AI supercomputers and cloud networking systems.
Ding’s lawyer, Grant Fondo, reportedly argued that Google was not doing enough to protect the information. He argued that the document in question could not have contained trade secrets because it was available to thousands of employees, adding, “Google chose openness over security,” according to Courthouse News Service.
The next court date is Tuesday, and Ding could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for each count of trade secret theft and 15 years in prison for each count of economic espionage, according to the Justice Department.
“We’re grateful to the jury today for ensuring justice was served and sending a clear message that trade secret theft has serious consequences,” LeeAnne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulation, said in a statement to CNBC.
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