After being accused of stealing trade secrets in a U.S. Department of Justice accusation, a former Google expert faces up to 175 years in jail.
A federal grand jury in San Francisco found Linwei ( Leon ) Ding, 38, guilty of seven counts of theft of trade secrets and economic espionage.
Ding, who was detained in March 2024 and is currently the subject of an FBI investigation, is accused of using his private account to upload proprietary information to the Google AI supercomputer’s hardware and software. The DOJ claims he was doing this to gain Chinese firms and, eventually,” the Chinese government and instrumentalities”.
Ding is accused of uploading more than 1, 000 Google records to his private cloud accounts between May 2022 and 2023 and had reportedly been in talks with the chief technology officer of a Chinese tech firm since June 2022.
According to the DOJ:” Executive action on Google’s system was logged, including report payments to platforms such as Google Drive”. According to Ding, he allegedly uploaded the data to his private Google Cloud account.
Ding’s part responsibilities, according to court documents, included “development of technology that allowed GPUs to work effectively for equipment learning, AI applications …” He was authorized to “access Google Confidential Information related to Google’s multiprocessor data centers, including the hardware infrastructure, the software platform, and the AI types and applications they supported”.
By May 2023, Ding had established a Chinese AI and machine learning company, appointed its CEO, and presented PowerPoint presentations inviting China to have” combined with the international level” of computing power infrastructure capabilities.
Another employee using Ding’s card on a regular basis after Google discovered security camera records and began to look into his office. During Ding’s time in China, that person claimed to have been asked to do it in order to appear to still be employed by Google.
According to the DOJ, details about Google’s SmartNIC, Tensor Processing Unit and Graphics Processing Unit chips were all stolen, while Ding is accused of leaking software built for next-gen AI innovations.
The court documents state that the trade secrets” contain detailed information about the architecture and functionality of TPU chips and systems and GPU systems, the software that allowed the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrated thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and executing cutting-edge AI workloads.”
Each trade secrets charge has a maximum 10-year term and a maximum fine of$ 2,500,000. This means that if found guilty, Ding could face up to 175 years of imprisonment and fines of up to$ 36.75 million.
Generally Intelligent Newsletter
A generative AI model’s generative AI model, Gen, tells a weekly AI journey.
