Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National in Relation to Alleged Plan to Steal Proprietary AI Technology

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Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National in Relation to Alleged Plan to Steal Proprietary AI Technology

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Note: View the superseding indictment here.

A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment today charging Linwei Ding, also referred to as Leon Ding, 38, with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade tricks in connection with a supposed plan to steal from Google LLC (Google) exclusive details associated with AI innovation.

Ding was at first arraigned in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets. The superseding indictment returned today explains 7 categories of trade secrets stolen by Ding and charges Ding with seven counts of financial espionage and 7 counts of theft of trade tricks.

According to the superseding indictment, Google employed Ding as a software application engineer in 2019. Between approximately May 2022 and May 2023, Ding published more than 1,000 distinct files containing Google confidential details from Google’s network to his personal Google Cloud account, consisting of the trade tricks declared in the superseding indictment.

While Ding was utilized by Google, he secretly affiliated himself with two People’s Republic of China (PRC)- based technology companies. Around June 2022, Ding remained in conversations to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology business based in the PRC. By May 2023, Ding had actually established his own technology company concentrated on AI and artificial intelligence in the PRC and was acting as the company’s CEO.

The superseding indictment declares that Ding intended to benefit the PRC government by stealing trade tricks from Google. Ding supposedly took technology connecting to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that permits Google’s supercomputing information center to train and serve big AI designs. The trade tricks contain detailed details about the architecture and performance of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems and Google’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, the software that enables the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates countless chips into a supercomputer efficient in training and carrying out advanced AI workloads. The trade secrets likewise pertain to Google’s custom-designed SmartNIC, a kind of network user interface card utilized to enhance Google’s GPU, high efficiency, and cloud networking items.

As declared, Ding flowed a PowerPoint presentation to employees of his innovation company citing PRC national policies encouraging the development of the domestic AI industry. He likewise developed a PowerPoint presentation containing an application to a PRC skill program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment explains how PRC-sponsored talent programs incentivize individuals engaged in research and advancement outside the PRC to transfer that understanding and library.kemu.ac.ke research to the PRC in exchange for wages, research study funds, laboratory area, or other incentives. Ding’s application for the talent program specified that his company’s item “will help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the global level.”

If convicted, Ding faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and as much as a $250,000 fine for each trade-secret count and 15 years in jail and $5,000,000 fine for each economic-espionage count. A federal district court judge will identify any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory elements.

The FBI is investigating the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey Boome and Molly K. Priedeman for the Northern District of California and Trial Attorneys Stephen Marzen and Yifei Zheng of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

Today’s action was coordinated through the Justice and Commerce Departments’ Disruptive Technology Strike Force. The Disruptive Technology Strike Force is an interagency law enforcement strike force co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce designed to target illegal actors, safeguard supply chains, and prevent important innovation from being obtained by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.

A superseding indictment is simply a claims. All defendants are presumed innocent up until proven guilty beyond a sensible doubt in a court of law.