The Google LLC logo is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York on November 17, 2021.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
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.
The jury found Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leon Ding, guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft related to the theft of thousands of pages of confidential information from Google for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China, according to the court. documents.
“In today’s high-stakes race to dominate 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 Rozhavsky, deputy director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterintelligence Division, said in a statement. statement Friday. “Today’s verdict affirms that federal law will be enforced to protect our nation’s most valuable technologies and hold accountable those who steal them.”
The case marks the first conviction for AI-related economic espionage in the United States, according to the Justice Department.
Google American leaders and leaders have been vocal on the AI arms race, particularly between the United States and China. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind recently said CNBC that Chinese AI models could be “a few months” behind American and Western capabilities.
The jury’s decision comes after Ding was initially indicted in 2024. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California oversaw the 11-day trial that led to Thursday’s ruling.
Between May 2022 and April 2023, Ding stole more than 2,000 pages of Google’s AI trade secrets and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account, the DOJ announced Friday. At the time, Ding was affiliated with two China-based technology companies and was in the process of starting his own technology company.
The trade secrets contained detailed information about the architecture of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and the company’s graphics processing unit systems, according to the DOJ. The trade secrets also included details about Google’s custom SmartNIC, a specialized network interface card that enables high-speed communication between its AI supercomputers and cloud networking systems.
Ding’s lawyer, Grant Fondo would have argued that Google wasn’t doing enough to protect the information. He argued that the documents in question were accessible to thousands of employees and therefore could not contain trade secrets, adding that “Google chose openness over security,” according to Courthouse News Service.
Ding, whose next hearing is Tuesday, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each count of theft of trade secrets and 15 years in prison for each count of economic espionage, according to the DOJ.
“We are grateful to the jury for ensuring that justice was served today, sending a clear message that there are serious consequences for stealing trade secrets,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement to CNBC.
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