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, likewise known as Leon Ding, 38, with 7 counts of financial espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets in connection with an alleged plan to take from Google LLC (Google) proprietary details connected to AI technology.
Ding was initially arraigned in March 2024 on 4 counts of theft of trade tricks. The superseding indictment returned today explains 7 categories of trade tricks taken by Ding and charges Ding with seven counts of financial espionage and seven counts of theft of trade tricks.
According to the superseding indictment, Google worked with Ding as a software engineer in 2019. Between approximately May 2022 and May 2023, Ding published more than 1,000 distinct files containing Google personal details from Google's network to his personal Google Cloud account, consisting of the trade tricks alleged in the superseding indictment.
While Ding was utilized by Google, he secretly associated himself with two People's Republic of China (PRC)- based innovation business. Around June 2022, Ding remained in discussions to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology company based in the PRC. By May 2023, Ding had actually established his own innovation business concentrated on AI and artificial intelligence in the PRC and was functioning as the business's CEO.
The declares that Ding planned to benefit the PRC government by taking trade tricks from Google. Ding allegedly took innovation relating to the hardware infrastructure and software application platform that allows Google's supercomputing data center to train and serve large AI designs. The trade secrets 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 application that allows the chips to communicate and execute jobs, and the software application that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and performing innovative AI workloads. The trade tricks likewise pertain to Google's custom-made SmartNIC, a type of network user interface card used to enhance Google's GPU, high performance, and cloud networking items.
As declared, Ding distributed a PowerPoint discussion to workers of his technology business pointing out PRC nationwide policies motivating the advancement of the domestic AI market. He likewise created a PowerPoint discussion containing an application to a PRC talent program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment explains how PRC-sponsored talent programs incentivize people taken part in research study and development outside the PRC to send that understanding and research to the PRC in exchange for wages, research funds, lab area, or other rewards. Ding's application for the talent program stated that his business's product "will help China to have computing power infrastructure abilities that are on par with the global level."
If convicted, Ding faces a maximum charge of 10 years in jail and up to 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 determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
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 collaborated 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 illicit stars, protect supply chains, and prevent important technology from being obtained by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.
A superseding indictment is simply a claims. All offenders are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond an affordable doubt in a court of law.